Ships & Modules

Well pre-TE nerf, shield tanks were pretty much the order of the day unless you are talking fleet scale, ASBs had just been released solidifying shield superiority and armor rigs reduced speed making the job of kiters that much easier if you used them. This also contributed further to Minmatar dominance as ships with bonuses to shield boost could rep entire shield HP bars per cycle with an oversized booster and links and/or implants. This also lead to complaints that ASBs were insanely hard to break by the barrage wielding masses.

Times have changed, killboards no longer have so much orange in the background of ship icons that without looking you'd be certain that nebula was in the background of your driver's licence photo as well. I see a much wider variety of both race and tank types now than I did even a year ago. Armor tanks are a lot more common in small scale fights these days in which case, what damage type would you prefer to deal over what is primarily explosive? Certainly feels better than primary thermal damage. Speaking as someone who didn't start using projectile turrets until after the TE nerf they don't feel particularly weak to me although that being said I pretty much only fly hulls that have falloff bonuses unless I'm using artillery.

As for tackle mods having a falloff range, I like neither the idea of a point/web you can lose beyond optimal even though you are cycling it on target nor do I like the idea of the kind of range you could get with a faction point on an Arazu with links for example. Also how much falloff are we talking here? If it's a lot then there is the potential that something like an Arazu or Lach has an almost useless bonus because normal ships can point anything they can target if only slightly shakily. If the falloff is small then it won't effectively extend point range by much at all as too many cycles would miss beyond optimal (it would have to be like ECM as well where the cycle either works or not, as how do you partially warp scramble a target? It would just have to be a 100% success rate if below optimal). ~20-24 km or less engagement range should be fine, there's no reason to extend it much farther than that on small scale.

*COUGH*railguns*COUGH*

While you can swap ammo mid fight, you cannot swap gun types.

Furthermore, your comparison doesn't take into account tracking.

Yes, blasters are the kings of scram/web range damage.
Lasers are the kings of long range damage.

Autocannons are the red headed bastard child of the two, tracking much better than lasers, with the range to hit decently beyond scram/web range.

That's the problem, in reality you don't have better damage past 10kms unless it's on a bonused hull like the vagabond. Null gets better projection out to 17kms, so the only ships who are ever at an advantage with autocannons are 20+km point kiters (even then, unless it's a bonused hull, your doing HALF of your dps at that range and barrage already has pretty low dps to begin with.

This is what these weapons should look like http://i.imgur.com/aDcfYNV.png

You realize I hope that you pegged Antimatter, Null and Barrage at roughly the same damage @ 10 km and ACs as having an optimal range around the 8-9 km mark with EMP. Since optimal range and falloff are a product of gun + ammo and EMP carries a 50% optimal penalty, the default optimal of the AC in this case should be somewhere between 16-18 km (compared with 15 km base optimal for Heavy Pulses). So much for lasers, as now ACs have better optimal (trampling the only advantage of lasers) way better falloff, better dps and better tracking to go with lesser factors like selectable damage type, no cap use and lower fitting requirements. Additionally the EMP graph loses 50% of its damage by around 18 km which would put falloff at approximately 10 km (1 km less than 220s have currently assuming a non falloff bonus hull) Literally what this graph looks like a suggestion that ACs should (assuming 220s on account of the falloff) get a roughly 600% boost to optimal range while sacrificing roughly 10% falloff or that they should become super lasers whichever description you prefer. There is no way to call this balanced with a straight face, although I could certainly see the appeal if you really like Minnie ships.

Your graph doesn't include any details about ship bonuses or fits so I have to assume this is all guns and ammo only on a non bonus hull.

I would like to see tracking enhancers get their falloff back to somewhere between the pre and post nerf value or perhaps a small boost to AC falloff to differentiate them from blasters a little bit more, the latter option being my preference as it prevents blasters from benefiting from the increased falloff and optimal of a TE particularly when using null which I feel is a big part of the problem. I feel ACs need to exploit their superior falloff and the TE nerf prevents that on ships without a falloff bonus which is why as I said before I only fit ACs to falloff bonus hulls. Ships like the Hurricane I swapped to artillery fits so they can project a decent amount of damage and very high alpha.

EDIT: Now I have some time to look a Thorax and compare it to a Stabber and check 17 km. If you fit Neutrons with null to a Thorax and 220s to a Stabber with Barrage each with one damage mod and no TEs the Stabber is ahead by 55 gun dps @ 17 km and that is despite having one less turret and lower caliber guns than the Thorax. Be sure when you are comparing guns you are not including drone dps or it makes the comparison very disingenuous, the Thorax barely edges out the Stabber at 17 km if you include 5 Hammerhead IIs instead of 5 Warrior IIs but that is not on account of the guns. I justify using a falloff bonus hull in this comparison for two reasons. First there are no Gallente T1 Cruisers that have bonuses to optimal or falloff and second as I said falloff hulls are where you use ACs. Just for the sake of argument though, a Rupture (1 gyro no TE with 220s and Barrage) still beats out the Thorax by 33 gun dps @ 17 km and this is again with 1 fewer turret and smaller caliber, so I have no clue where you are getting this Null = Barrage @ 17 km.

1. too lazy
2. thats exactly what i want
3. too bad it projects **** damage

blasterds dont need nerfin they allready have range problems, but its funny when someone tries to kite me when im using rails muhaha

[quote=Caitlyn Tufy]The thing with short range guns is, in theory:

Blasters: 526
Railguns: 489
Autocannons: 386 .156rads/s
Arty: 338
Pulse: 429 .12rads/s
Beam: 476
HAM: 435
HML: 313


So tell me again that autocannons have the 2nd best dps. Cause I'm seeing the only things they out-dps are Heavy Missiles and Artillary.

* auto-cannons out-track pulses? When has this ever happened? They have almost the same amount of tracking. .036 tracking on a cruiser hull doesn't make up for the loss in dps. Throw the 2 into a tracking graph and pulses will still ALWAYS out-dps autocannons.

* auto-cannons out-range blasters? Have you seen what Null does?

The only ship that fully utilizes the "get under lasers, stay over blasters" is the vagabond because it's SPECIFICALLY bonused for speed, range, and agility.

Small and Large guns seem to work for the most part, it's just the bastard medium guns, where the autocannons don't have enough base damage or falloff. Medium autocannons aren't the jack-of-all trades guns, they are just **** at everything.

The age of winmatar was a lie. Minmatar were the easiest shisp to sue but smart players were aware that it was a myth.

Also minmatar for a LONG time has been deprived of their speed advantage.


Check the agility of minmatar ship comapred to gallente. Comapre rupture to thorax.. check the damm Navy omen that is faster than ANY minmatar ship bar the vagabond (that has the same speed.. the all mighty to be the fastest of the fastest is jsut same speed of the race that was supposed to be the slowest)

1. Nobody said anything about dps, because dps isn't everything. I said specifically range, because that's how you use ACs to beat a blaster ship.

2. 425mm AC has a base tracking of 0.11; Heavy Pulse laser has a tracking of 0.08; Both Barrage and Scorch have a tracking multiplier of 0.75.

3. It gives a 40% bonus to Blaster optimal and falloff as opposed to Barrage's 50% bonus to just falloff. Of course, blasters are 50-50, whereas ACs get 80% in falloff and on average get about 40% more range by default. So yes, the ACs will, when all else is equal, deal less overall damage, but they'll do so at greater range. To put it mathematically, ships would be equal when the average total damage of AC while kiting plus within null range is equal to the average total damage of a blaster ship within null range. Or to rephrase: if an AC ship can kite indefinitely, as long as its damage is high enough to break the tank, it would be overpowered. On the other hand, if an average AC ship can't kite long enough to overtake a blaster boat's damage, it`s underpowered.

Well, the above is overly simplified, but the general idea is, keep the AC ship out of blaster range as long as possible and keep pounding the enemy. Hopefully, by the time you're out of cap, the enemy is weak enough to break it, even if you do take some damage.



Incidentally, it's also the dedicated AC ship, unlike the Muninn, which is built more towards the artillery. Interesting, isn't it?



A jack of all trades, which is what Minmatar are supposed to be, is by definition not supposed to be easy. The reason for that is while others have their major strengths and weaknesses, a jack of all trades will never shine at anything in particular - it will just be ok at everything. The problem in the past was that the enemy vulnerabilities were huge and easy to exploit and now that they're improved, the Minmatar margin for error was reduced. Those who were used to the "easy mode" suddenly find them "underpowered".



Apples and oranges. Rupture is a combat cruiser and the fastest one at that. Thorax is a an attack cruiser and as such slower than the Minmatar variant, my beloved Stabby.

First, who said Amarr are supposed to be the slowest? Second, Navy Omen is considerably slower than ScyFI, the minmatar navy attack cruiser (thus a ship compareable to Nomen), slower than Cynabal (thought that's technically an Angel ship) and even the normal Stabber will easily outrun it in a straight line. Obviously, Nomen has superior agility, but that's another story.