Player Features and Ideas Discussion

After playing around with Rails in this expansion, I must say that I am severly disappointed. The way CCP has intended these turrets to be used, the damage buff does not really help make this a viable PvP weapon, atleast for Caldari pilots.

Rate of fire does not win battles this day and age in Eve. Any compident fleet commander will have a host of logistic ships in his fleet, and their ability to repair any ship taking damage totally mitigates any rate of fire a comperable sized fleet can attain. The only way to maintain any successful consistancy in destroying ships is by destroying it before logistic pilots can react. This means you need a BIG alpha to destroy the ship within the few seconds before a logistic ship can lock onto the ship taiking damage. This is why Projectile wepaons, and specifically artilery wepaons are so popular.

With the above being a confirmed fact of Eve warfare, how then, CCP, can you consider rails being a useful weapon platform? I understand that DPS can be acomplished through high damage volleys, or through high rates of fire, but DPS is not what carriers a victory in the game you have designed. The only thing that any compident PvP worries about sustaining is his tank long enough to be repped, and that only has ot last a few seconds usually. Add to this the fact that the damage types railgins do are the two most heavily tanked types of damage on player ships, and you end up with a weapon that struggles to find a way to be useful.

It seems to me the role of the rail gun needs to be re-defined. The niche the rail gun fills in Eve is no longer used. It is like trying to figure out tactics for using calvery when armored tanks are used by the other side. Instead of trying to make calvery viable, a commander would just get tanks instead. Its time to change rail guns from calvery to something that would be used on a current Eve battlefield.

Whatever direction is taken, one thing needs to happen: their volley damage needs to come more in line with other turret types. Rate of fire is great, but it is not the primary trait of the turret systsms that win wars.

*quick edit* Rate of fire could be useful, IF you are able to fire two or more vollies of ammo (and do comperable damage of other turret systems) in the time it takes logistics to lock onto a target and repair them. Railguns, however, are far from that in their current state.

I did not mention lasers because, imo, they are the good middleground. Missles are an intresting beat. They have a great alpha, and the ability to select what damage you wish is great, but their travel time to target makes them not as popular as lasers or projectiles. You see most fleets use artileries for a reason. No matter how you try to re-invent the wheel in Eve at the moment, it will not compare to the ability that projectiles have. This is due to their high alpha damage, and this is not an amount of damage that is imbalanced. Their rate of fire times are painfully slow because of it. Its because they do the best job of destroying ships when you take into account all other tactics and strageties used in Eve PvP.

Rail could very well be viable in small gang warfare, but that would mean small nimble gangs usually. I see no need ofr large or capital ship rails then.

Guys, chill.

Rather than the "OMG we're gonna make them OP" way of fixing the hybrid guns (like what CCP did to projectiles a while back), CCP is taking it slow so that EvE PVP doesn't turn into "train hybrids". The plan is not only fixing rails, but also fixing the railgun platforms ...

Also, you have to keep in mind that Tallest wasn't able to get some of the "hey wait, they're still broken here and here" changes in before the deadline for Crucible...

same goes for blasters sadly =(

So in the real world rail guns are being developed because they offer cruise missile type ranges with the cost of projectiles.

Any weapon which is non-hybrid in Eve can be assumed to be a conventional chemical/explosive type weapon. There is an upper limit on the speeds available from this type if chemical (I can't find the limit at the moment). Technically the ultimate limit would be a matter/anti-matter reaction I think.

Rail guns/gauss guns do not have this limit due to the addition of magnetic acceleration as an additive or sole means of accelerating the projectile beyond the above limits.

The problem with Eve is a lack of flight times for these types of weapons, electromagnetic weapons should be the only type with simulated instant hit profiles, lets not bother with C in space please ;)

If I was going to balance these weapons I would add damage delays to both projectile and hybrid systems and consider a method to simulate the better accuracy of hybrids due to the speed of the projectiles.

Or we could increase hybrid ranges to far beyond that of projectiles, perhaps moving blasters out to 40KM and rails to over 200KM thus making the range boost reduce the speed restriction.

Edited.

Found it... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun

"the limits of gas expansion prohibit launching an unassisted projectile to velocities greater than about 1.5 km/s and ranges of more than 50 miles [80 km] from a practical conventional gun system."

I was thinking that just last night as I was pondering this problem. I think you may be on to something here. The physics of a rail gun do lend itself to allowing this to be possible.

Why does everything need to have a unique "niche?" What happens when the good spots/"niches" are taken, leaving only the crap ones? Differentiation makes things more interesting, but not at the expense of a broken game. I'd rather have guns that aren't interesting, but works, over "unique" ones that don't work. Give rails similar stats as lasers. Fixed.

It sounds like the issue has less to do with rails, and more to do with remote reps. If we look at artillery as a crutch to get past OP logi ships, then tweaking logi should make rails (and lasers) competitive again.

I avoid blob fights like the plague, because calling targets and just popping them one at a time from 100km is boring as all heck, so perhaps somone else would have better insight into this.

Sins of a Solar Empire used a similar mechanic. It was partially effective, but that may be all we need to tip the balance. It's not unreasonable from a realistic perspective either, as clouds of vaporized armor and debris could easily effect the effectiveness of weapons or targeting systems.

Well that is quite easily rectified by making RR blow up the signature again. That way you either has to make the decision to not RR the target but let him keep his low signature, or RR him, but be ready to RR him good as he will start taking a heap more damage.