Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Actually, I meant in terms of the actual game mechanics, ie: 25% of "0" is still "0". It would be great for L4 missions - you could just run Inferno and be done with it.

Ah... Ok...

You realize that makes no sense right? If 100 dps is the balanced level for a hull, arbitrarily declaring 70 dps also balanced is insane.

Missiles as a system are balanced with fully selectable damage. Those hulls are not magically balanced when you take that damage away by switching to a different ammo type.

Which hulls? T2 - T3? Because they don't have the standard 0-20-40-50 resistances.


Me neither, I was just curious. I like the idea of EM+kinetic, Thermal+kinetic and Explosive+kinetic damage.

The tactical flexability remains unchanged.

You dont get to do full damage of any type you want. You can only select normal damage, with the bonus being applied to the fixed type.

The hulls are not operating at a balanced level at the reduced total dps. If they were, the bonused dps would be overpowered, and I am pretty sure a 50% overpowered amount of dps would not go unnoticed fot long.

I normally don't stray into anything that can be considered a personal attack, but if you are unable to understand why giving what is already considered to be a balanced ship the ability to deal an extra 25-50% damage regardless of ammo choice on a ship specifically restricted from dealing full damage except within narrow boundaries is a tactical buff, then this thread is already dead in the water.

I understand what you dont like. I disagree that it disturbs the balance of the ship as much as you seem to. I consider the reduction of offtype damage to be an unnwarrented and uncompensated nerf to the weapon system as used on those hulls. When something underperforms, it does not need a nerf to balance fixing that.

Those ships are only balanced when using the proper ammo. The weapon is balanced when it has the selclectable damage intact. Allowing the ship to actually use its advantages should not require compensation.

You are not getting a reduction to the other ammo's. You are getting a buff to one ammo. It's a very important difference.

The baseline for "balanced" for a ship like the drake is having a single extremely strong bonus towards a single damage type.
It's not balanced as though it were capable of dealing that level of DPS with all damage types, it is balanced with the restriction of only being able to deal that much dps with kinetic.

If you were to change the Drakes "10% damage bonus to kinetic missiles per level" into "10% extra damage in a kinetic form to all missiles per level", it would be at a far stronger level than it was previously, because it no longer has to stay in kinetic damage to apply the bonus damage, a factor which was taken into consideration during the process where the ships stats and bonuses were decided.

TLDR: The ships with kinetic only damage bonuses are not under-performing, they are performing precisely as intended given the stats which they were given by CCP. If performance is increased by removing drawbacks, either additional drawbacks must be implemented, or bonuses removed to keep the ships capabilities in line with current.

Let me tell you about the time in Tribute 150 Goon drakes all spewed kinetic missiles at my double kinetic hardener fit, overheated 97% kinetic resist Phobos. (Completely true story btw)

Slowboated all the way back to gate, 13km away, and jumped out. All because they decided that their 50% bonus to kinetic was worth shooting straight into my 97% kinetic resists instead of swapping to unbonused explosive and hitting me in a mere mid 80's% resist. If they were able to deal the same raw DPS with all missiles (even if part of that was kinetic) as they could with kinetic, I would have been long dead from the far greater number of people who were using primarily explosive/em/therm damage.

And inside knowledge is not required. I'm never going to engage a vagabond fleet while in a zealot fleet because I know that using EM/Them against t2 Min shield ships is a waste of time. I certainly don't need a ship scanner to tell me the most likely to be lowest or highest resist profile for popular fits on popular ships.

People may not use a combat scanner, but lots and lots of experienced players will change ammo types before engaging another gang based off their own knowledge about the most likely effective damage type to deal.

Giving an equal amount of raw damage to the other missile types is a near total removal of the bonus only applying to kinetic. 100dps of kinetic, or 66dps of explosive and 34 of kinetic, or 66/34% EM/kin, or therm/kin, it's about as effective in 99% of situations as 100dps of a specific type. And in an as many situations as the portion of kinetic reduces actual applied dps, there is an equal number where having the kin portion increases applied DPS.

It's not quite as perfect as a simple 10% damage bonus per level to all missile types, but in PvP where mostly omni tanks are prevalent, it's a massive buff as compared to only applying the dps to kinetic missiles.

And a 10% to all missile damages would be a huge buff to only Kin missile bonused ships, deserving of a commensurate nerf to either damage or ship stats. Your arguments about why it is not a massive buff are still non effective, as they all somehow revolve around the idea that the full kin bonus was the ideal amount of damage for one of these ships to deal, and that the inability to deal the same amount with the other missiles was not a factor that permitted them to be given significantly higher stats than could be justified with a 10% to all missile damage bonus.

It took me a second after looking at it to get what the OP was talking about. I think it's interesting, but has some potential balancing repercussions. One of the primary downsides of missiles is that you're putting all of your damage eggs in one basket. This would remove that downside. So it's a bit dangerous from a balancing standpoint.

Anyone not a braindead f1 monkey, and even a good portion of those know not to shoot kinetic at an armor Phobos, or a shield Ishtar, because of natural resists. Hitting me with any type besides kinetic would have done around 5x as much actual damage per dps. No ship scanner required.

As far as the stats go, they are there. They might not be a super obvious spell it out for you role bonus, but either the ships very high base stats + 10% kin damage (damage bonuses above 5% are super rare) per level bonus + excellent tank bonus (in the case of the drake), or the extremely potent combination of double projection and double damage bonuses (Cerberus) makes them excellent ships, even when partially pigeonholed into kinetic in order to deal full damage. That number or power of incredibly synergistic bonuses are a real rarity on ships in eve.

New Cerb is a monster, capable of ripping apart both frigs and cruisers with long range 700dps HAM's while being fast, agile, sturdy, and dealing more raw and applied dps than just about any non blaster cruiser besides a max skill Ishtar with Ogres or Gardes.

Nighthawk is a tanky, dps monster, as is the Cerb, Drake is ok for how tanky it is.

Raven and rook and caracal don't even have a kinetic bonus and are still excellent ships.

These ships are not underperforming. These ships are already incredibly strong in a wide variety of situations.

Despite all your whining about how it's not fair, all of these ships are still amazing in their respective roles (Well rook is iffy, but that's much more an ECM issue) They sure as hell don't need more buffs for non kinetic missiles. Even currently unbonused missiles on a Cerberus scare the **** out of me when I'm roaming.

So why do we need to buff ships that certainly show no lack of strength?