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If you give blasters the same range as Auto cannons they WILL be the next FOTM. Everyone here keeps ranting about how auto cannons are better. Why not just go fly Minny like everyone else? Because all your doing is trying to create an even more unbalanced weapons platform.

This still does nothing to address the problem with hybrids, and it does nothing for information warfare links. Speaking of which, did you notice at all that whilst ecm/painter bonus from the info link went from 2 to 2.5%, the damp/TD bonus went from 1.2 to 1.25%? I guess CCP a) Cocked it up, or b) Think damps are overpowered already whilst ecm needs a helping hand.

Currently, frigates are good. No need to do anything more to either the ships, the blasters or the rails for those. Job done, congratulations CCP.

Cruisers and Battleships however are no different. Having a bit more fitting to play with has been useful, but ultimately changed nothing about the dynamics of fighting in hybrid ships. Sorry CCP, the changes were completely ineffective.

And I'm with those who don't want blasters to become autocannons under another name. I personally would like overwhelming dps at very close ranges AND a way to deliver it. I do not believe webs are the way to achieve this. I think the way it will have to happen is through a change in the speed/armour rig penalties (going faster and lose my tank, or tank and go even slower just doesn't work) and by changes to the affected ships.

If hybrid ships aren't made the fastest in normal play, then the problem will never be fixed. Period. Unless you call increasing range so blasters become AC clones a solution, but most of us actually like variety in game play.

Yeah web range bonuses hulls would just make the premier weapon of Gallente ships webs and not hybrids

let us think that through. once we would make the blaster platforms the fastest ships ingame, so to say they could catch anything, they definitly would become the new fotm and quite surely op.
one could trash all kiting ships, because they would not be able to maintain a distance, dieing horrible fast because they sport tanks much more on the thinner side of life (speed tank, etc). in fact every ship would have to bow before the blasterspeedster which will rush in and melt face as soon as on grid.
the only viable option in this department would be to give them much thinner tanks, or in other words copy the minmatarstyle and put a gallente sticker on it. nobody wants that homogenisation or that kind of talos swarms.

i still think it is worth a try to give hybrids a unique benefit in making them little cap booster, thus every firing hybrid gives the ship a little cap back, the amount would be a question of balancing, but it would defenitly make hybrids desireable.
it would also make blaster/hybrids much less vulnerable to neuts, a common danger lurking in blaster range.
of corse there would be amarr and minmatar pilots putting hybrids onto their ships, but after all we want make hybrids to be used, aren't we?

increasing range of blasters and making blasterboats fastest ships ingame is not the way to go, imo
and the other limitations of hybrids still would be "needed".

edit: and no, it would not make hybrids a new fotm, because blasterrange still would be very limitet and rails still would be only viable for long range engagements.
and yes blasterboats would have a defence against kiters, because combined with an active tank (which would need some love.. i admit) they could tank as long as they tickle the kiter with missed shots and strife shots.

I just wanted to point out, that besides a webifier bonus, being the fastest race in the game or making you the most tankable race in the game, there still is the already mentioned alternative of a short speed boost module of some sort.

I can't give you any numbers or how it should be implemented exactly, but given the possibility of getting up close in a short period of time, without making you the fastest race in the game doesn't leave much else left.

Yes, this is a hybrid thread, but to sum it up there are two major problems:

1.
Rails have no reason to exist becouse on their optimal range where they make sense you just can use "Warp to 0".
So you either can transform rails into Artillerie or fix the broken game mechanics. We all don't want to transform Rails into Arty, do we?

2.
Blasters are not able to apply the theoretical supperior damage becouse their plattforms will never get close enough to their opponend befor the ship dies.
So you can either transform Blasters into Auto Cannons or fix the game mechanics. We all don't want to transform Blasters into AC, do we?

The only good use for Blaster ships is to camp a Wormhole and kill passing travalers.
The only good use for Rails is to... ... erm... ... I don't know, do you?

I posted this idea before, but since CCP is showing some willingness to change hybrids and make them more useful, I'll post it again here.

Get rid of railguns and blasters and combine them to make 1 hybrid turret. Let the hybrid ammo loaded into the guns determine the characteristics of the guns (optimal and tracking, cap usage, damage, etc). Tweak the stats on ammo, so the damage projection at range is similar (or slightly less) to projectiles and lasers. Split the optimal/falloff stats at 50/50, this is the middle ground between projectiles and lasers.

Now, you can carry enough ammo or a variety of ammo to deal with range/kiting issues without the need to alter Gallente hulls to be the fastest in the game, and Caldari gunboats have the option of switching ammo depending on combat engagement ranges.

This makes the weapon system very unique in the EvE universe, both short-range and long-range weapon system in 1 package, also lives up to the "Hybrid" moniker. Allows the pilot of hybrid ships a lot of flexibility (aka. makes them desirable) in how they want to set-up to fight without making sweeping changes across 2 races.

As far as CCP goes, they need to either wake up to this reality and end their love affair with minmatar, or they will never accomplish their stated goal of balancing hybrids and hybrid ships.

And as far as killing kiting setups, no ****, that's the whole point. Kiting is way too easy in this game, especially if you're Minmatar. You don't even have to fit a speed mod of any kind on a cane to make it easily able to kite just about every other BC out there, though people often slap one on there just for ***** and giggles. All of this without sacrificing any gank or tank. Try accomplishing that feat in a Brutix. In the blaster ships we have now we inevitably have to find a three way balance between speed, dps, and tank, which results in a ship that can't really provide anything satisfying on any of these fronts, either because you have to find a 'meh' balance that makes it shittier in every way to an AC boat, or you make it useless because you overcompensate on one of the three and you don't have a viable pvp ship. It should be the other way around, if you don't want to get shot at, then you need to make some sacrifices on tank so that you have the speed to escape and stay out of range. Anything else is just completely OP, which is the situation you see now with Minmatar boats.

How often do you actually wind up inside scram range when facing off against a Brutix or similar blaster ship? I can tell you from experience it is not often, even less so if you're by yourself and you don't have the help of a teammate or cloaky alt. Even when you actually wind up in range, you have to deal with incoming neuts, EWAR, and dps from your target and all his buddies, in whose optimal you will most certainly be. Meanwhile, all you have to deal with this situation is tank and dps. Outside of drone boats, Gallente ships don't have much versatility in their high slots. That's the reality as it stands now, and that's if you even make it into scram range. If you land outside it, without a teammate you will never catch an opponent, be it a Drake or a Minnie boat.

In order to balance the situation, blasters need to be the best at close range period. That means they need better tracking than ACs (so they can maneuver and actually mitigate some dps) as well as increased dps (to make up for the travel time and the tank that's already gone from getting shot at before they can even hope to return fire). The ships themselves need to be the fastest so they can at least control the engagement. Frankly I don't think that's too much to ask for a race that must 100% commit to every single fight they get in, and put themselves in the optimal of every nasty effect and turret that we can dream up in the EVE universe.

P.S. and for all you out there who are going to say "but you'll just make rails the new kiters," that's a load of crap. The whole point of kiting setups is to stay within point range. Rail tracking in point range is absolutely crap (for mediums anyway), and other race's boats already have the ability to hit out to point range with their "close range" weapons, already dealing more dps than a rail ship could ever hope to achieve. Ironically, the only ships that rail ships could reasonably kite are blaster boats. Not to mention you can work around that through agility tweaks to ships to change the dynamic from "fastest and most agile" to "fastest by turns like a pig" and "not quite as fast but handles like a hawk." That would allow skilled pilots to shine with different skills for different boats, and wouldn't be the oversimplified bollocks that we call pvp nowadays.

Is this a joke or serious?
I really don't get it...
What is your sollution to allow the short range guy to apply some damage?
And please don't tell me some EFT CRAP that "proves" that Blaster Boats have more DPS and are therefore almost OP.
What is your solution to fix hybrids for 1v1 or small scale fleets combat?

I'm sick of all you guys who tell others being trolls but never post a solution them selfs.
How do you want to fix Hybrids?

How many of you great pr0s use Gallente BC or T2 ships (Cruiser or bigger, please no Frigs) for PVP?
What ships do you use and why?

Where is the experienced FC that will tell us here that he builds his PVP fleet with mostly Gallente ships becouse Blasters have insane damage?