Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Never not nerf Caldari. Even the buffs come with nerfs. o.O

Carriers in need a sig increase or CCP just needs to bump missiles back to where they are now.

Don't want to nerf your precious slowcats or superblob?

It wont be changed to a hybrid ship, it will mean that it can hit subcaps more easily.

Ok here is the problem fozzie

You have 4 dreadnoughts.

The revelation is better at sub-cap blapping than the phoenix and hitting moving caps and supers. Its weakness? One useless bonus I'm sure you'll correct) and a damage bonus in the form of RoF that manages to make that cap bonus even more useless (since you eat cap faster and still only have half the gunnery bonuses the nag and moros have). Still a sub-cap blapping monster if fit right.

The Moros: Sub cap blapping monster and puts out the most raw and modified dps of all dreads - your own definition of OP in this case. It even has mids and lows flexible enough to shield or armor tank and most dps fits are shield.

The Nag: Like the Moros but with 1 less gun - capless shield tanking monster that can blap sub caps, caps and POS's alike with no real difficulty and you can armor tank it in a pinch.

The Phoenix: Supposed best POS basher..but Moros is in reality more effective except in niche situations. DPS is applied in a less than instant manner. Sub Cap blapping requires a silly weak armor tank. Even with changes it doesn't actually do more effective damage. Its damage efficacy is quite literally in the same place or worse than it was before. The only improvement is in its shield tank which is now on par with the naglfar despite the nag not having a resist bonus. (stupid caldari default EM hole to blame).

So if 3/4 dreads are OK to blap caps because 'reasons' and one isn't I would like to know precisely WHY. Due to my experience with CCP for so long (2004 -> present) I would say that you just have no clue what you're doing with missiles and your game design for that weapons system is flawed.

Here's a subcap example of that flawed design. Heavy Missiles were nerfed to hell and back due to OP usefulness at all ranges compared to other medium turrets at the time. Then you buffed all medium range turrets...but left heavy missiles sucking hind-tit. So you now have heavy missiles being semi-useless (dont' get me started on precision t2's).

This is the same issue you have now with the Phoenix. So let me help you. Start with this new Phoenix but don't commit to it for more than a single or two dev cycles. So after Crius you should look at adjusting some things in small ways...like citadel torpedo and cruise missile attributes. You can tweak base damage, explosion radius and velicity as well as flight time and missile velocity all without ever touching the Phoenix. These smaller changes can optimize the scheme you are going for. So by the time you get to rebalancing the Revelation you can make a final adjustment to the Phoenix for a good amount of time. The Phoenix shouldn't worry about hitting super caps and capitals at all moving or otherwise. That makes no fecking sense...nomads...links or whatever. It doesn't make sense in reality or in game design.

It is possible you need to create some weighting in your formulas for how much of an impact sig radius has versus ship speed and hell even ship class or model size. The machariel for example has a gigantic model. That thing should be getting blapped all the time just because its a small moon. the way the math works atm you'd have a tough time hitting the earth cause of its orbit speed! Hell I am pretty sure a real planet would speed tank citadel torpedos.

Well I put out a fantastic commentary on this but clicked post and everything disappeared. So screw it. Do what you will with the Phoenix.

there would be no need to do this if you just didnt change the explosion radius. My math i posted earlier showed a minor, minor change if you didn't. It was like 50% more damage vs a moving battleship but that meant 12% base damage vs 8% base damage. And against a moving archon it was 40% post radius nerf, 48 pre-radius (new explosion velocity.)

Now you are thinking of only increasing dread sig? Carriers, rorquals, freights and jf. its easier to just not increase explosion radius.

This is what you already do with the other blap dreads. There is literally no basis whatsoever to make the Phoenix not be able to hit webbed/painted subcaps (especially if it's Rigor fit) when every other dread in the game is able to do that just fine already.

I'm all for the long-due missile overhaul (the draft from 2004 linked earlier on in this thread sounded pretty damn neat), but I just know it's not going to happen.

If my awkward numbers are right supers are taking less dps now, even without links; can someone confirm that?

- Found error in work I think it's only with links.

During a heated Jabber discussion with a passionate Phoenix fanatic who claimed that nerfing the explosion radius and buffing the Explosion Velocity will actually help with application on subcaps, I ran some numbers. The results were somewhat interesting. Our Phoenixes are fitted with Citadel Torpedoes, 2x T2 Rigors and a T1 Rigor (due to Calibration constraints). Targets have Evasive Maneuvers links, Afterburners, and are webbed and painted to hell and back. Only application is considered, the paper DPS buffs caused by the ROF buff aren't included here as they're largely irrelevant.

First off, the relevant stats from both of the Phoenixes:
CURRENT PHOENIX: 816 Explosion Radius, 30 Explosion Velocity
NEW PHOENIX: 1224 Explosion Radius, 52.5 Explosion Velocity

TARGET: Proteus, double 1600 Reinforced Steel Plates II, 10mn Afterburner II; affected by 4xStasis Webifier II from a Loki and 4xTarget Painter II from a Hyena. Signature: 598m, top speed: 53m/s.

CURRENT PHOENIX APPLICATION:
Damage multiplier: 0.4148168701
Stationary damage: 0.7328431373
Moving damage: 0.4148168701
Minimum tanking speed 21.98529412

NEW PHOENIX APPLICATION:
Damage multiplier: 0.4839530152
Stationary damage: 0.4885620915
Moving damage: 0.4839530152
Minimum tanking speed 25.6495098

(key: damage multiplier is the final percentage of total paper deeps applied to target. Stationary damage is what you would do if the target was stationary, moving damage is what you would do if they were moving. Minimum tanking speed is the minimum speed in meters per second they have to be moving at to effectively be considered moving by the formula)

In other words, against a small target like a cruiser that is moving well above the Explosion Velocity of the current Phoenix, the new Phoenix actually applies more damage. This isn't because of Explosion Velocity being better, it's simply caused by the 25% disparity between the nerf and the buff. As you can see in the numbers here, the new Phoenix would apply about 14.3% better to this Proteus.

What happens when we shoot at a battleship, say an Abaddon?

TARGET: Abaddon, 3x Reinforced Steel Plates II, 100MN Afterburner II; affected by 4xStasis Webifier II from a Loki and 4xTarget Painter II from a Hyena. Signature: 1122m, top speed: 35m/s.

CURRENT PHOENIX APPLICATION:
Damage multiplier: 1
Stationary damage: 1.375
Moving damage: 1.178571429
Minimum tanking speed 41.25

NEW PHOENIX APPLICATION:
Damage multiplier: 0.9166666667
Stationary damage: 0.9166666667
Moving damage: 1.375
Minimum tanking speed 48.125

As you can see, here against a significantly larger and slower target the roles are somewhat ironically reversed. The current Phoenix applies full damage to this Abaddon, whereas the new Phoenix would only apply 91% of its paper DPS. The reason this happens is signature and it isn't really related to speed at all, webbed battleships are well slow enough for even the old Phoenix's measly 30m/s Explosion Velocity to be adequate, whereas the worse Explosion Radius of the new Phoenix gimps it against armor battleships (but would be enough for shield battleships).

Of course the Phoenix pilot could pop Crash and still apply full damage to these battleships with the new Phoenix, but I don't really think that's relevant to these points.

Also, here's the spreadsheet I made and used to get these numbers in case you want to test them out yourself. It's quite barebones, so to get the Explosion Radius etc. for the new Phoenix you'll have to do some calculus.



Probably not. Assuming eg. a Nyx as a target, its signature is several times the Explosion Radius of both the old and the new Phoenix, while its top speed is about 2.5 times the Explosion Velocity of the old Phoenix and 1.7-ish times of the new Phoenix. Both should easily apply full damage to it no matter what. With links and drugs that would change, and both Phoenixes would have to fit Rigors.