Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ogre II's do just fine, the Geko is like cracking an egg with a sledge hammer.

When do these changes go live?

Pretty much exactly what I expected, a tanky ship with fleet 'phoon DPS. An excellent addition to the toolkit. I suspect you cuold probably get by without the cap booster and sling another TP on there.

I like it, I can see quite a few neat uses for this.

It seems like people seem to be forgetting the important qualities of the Rattlesnake.

Lets look at the stats and see if we can draw some conclusions on what this thing does better than other battleships. Hint. (its not sniping)

These are the shield values for various shield-tanked battleships.

Golem 8800

Navy Issue Raven 10500

Rattlsnake. 12750

With no shield boost bonus, clearly the Rattlesnake is the most optimum choice for a passive tank.

Now ask yourself. What good is a passive tank?

A passive tank is excellent against energy neuts and vamps and close range fighting.

Another thing the Rattlesnake has is a 400m3 drone bay and bonuses to all its drones.

Now ask yourself. What are a strong and versatile array of drones good against?

Having strong and varied set of drones is a strong defense against e-war, being that even if your ship gets jammed, much of your damage will continue to be dealt. You have the ability to chose the correct damage type and speed of the drones you want and can even have space for backups. During jamming, it is also far more viable to target faster locking ships such as battleships, and thus launchers that do the most damage to battleships are preferable.

These two things, passive tanking and use of bonused and versatile drones makes the Rattlesnake the best suited battleship for dealing with a combination of e-war and neuts/vamps and high incomming DPS while steal dealing large amounts of DPS.

Now ask. Yourself what is missile velocity good for on a battleship?

Missile velocity helps give the Snakes torpedoes range and thus viability throughout a mission, ensuring that DPS is kept relatively high despite having a massive tank. Missile velocity also greatly helps when the Snake is played as a Sniper, a role with higher effective dps, but with ultimately slower times to loot and finish a mission than a tanky torpedo snake, due to mission loot being scattered. Sentries are still used on torpedo snake to hit distant targets out of the range of javelins well.

It doesn't make sense that the tanky torpedo Snake is losing its bonuses on all its drones since it is clearly preferable to fit launchers to destroy battleships and allow light and medium drones to zip around the battlefield killing everything else. The sooner the light and medium drones are finished with their job, the sooner salvage drones can be deployed. This is a great way to play as it saves you the trouble of having to lock onto many small targets and count missiles to remain effective. Torpedos blow up Batteships faster than Cruise missiles and drones with +50% damage and HP clean up everything else quickly.

TLDR: The snake is losing its great strengths with the loss of torpedo viability and +50% damage and hp on all its drones. The nerfs are far greater than the buffs to a ship already considered as being underpowered. Stop the DPS-centric thinking allow the Snake to keep what it does better than other Battleships.

RHML are a better option for roaming if you dont know what your fighting. If you are going to go in with the plan of sweeping the grid of frigates then rlml rattle is king of the anti frig ships now.

Yeah those were my original thoughts too, that precision heavy would be good enough in a hitch, then the little garmur showed up and I'm re-evaluating if it's likely to be worth it.

I suppose it depends how popular those wee frigs become for long points

"
Your passive tanked rattlesnake's DPS is probably just around ~860 DPS (assuming you use CN torps) which is less than my Fury Golem's 900 DPS. Never mind your rattlesnake's poor damage projection and damage application. "


That seems rather low to me. My passive RS (220 hp/sec) with Geckos in the drone bay and two types of sentries ( Gardes and w/e long range is mission appropriate) runs 1033 fit window dps. Fury cruise missiles with good, but not all 5 skills, good, but not all 5 drone skills, and 2 t2 DDA's. One TP, one Fed navy tracking link. Gallente BS 5.

930 ish if I take the Gecko's out.

I don't think the RS will be worse in summer trim, just... different. Probably higher fit window dps, perhaps, 10-20 % more depending , with a fair bit higher missile usage.


Would like to reiterate my request for the cargo bay to increase in m3 by the same amount the drone bay shrinks, to help balance this out. The ship did not get any smaller, an interior wall was moved. Therefore that m3 had to go somewhere.
Let it be the cargo bay. Does not affect dps or pvp in any way, and would still be smaller than a Marauder cargo bay by a few hundred m3. Helps for carrying a mobile depot all the time, for drone swap/refit as needed.

That extra m3 might have been allocated to better living quarters for everyone's favourite exotic dancers.

Use that one minute MJD to MJD away and blap the neuts/vamps at range? Drop a TP for an XLASB? Free up some CPU and swap the MSB for a second XLASB? Maybe even turn on bastion mode with the XLASBs?


5 unbonused light drones plus 3-4 TPs plus rigors plus missile damage == +50% bonused light drones? Remember, increasing target sig size is the same as a tracking buff for guns. And a fraction of big missile volley damage is non-trivial damage to a frigate.


Lin. Buddy. Friend. Pal. The biggest problem with your claims is high DPS and passive tank (and more efficient than a Golem.) A passive tank gives up rigs and lows for shield regen. Giving up rigs means losing damage projection with torps, or damage application (rigors/flares) with cruise and torps. Giving up lows means you can only min-max DPS for either drones or missiles, but not both. Never mind that your mids are fighting between drone damage application & projection (omnis,) tank (shield resists,) regen/buffer (shield extenders,) and missile damage application (TPs.)

Four launchers just ain't a lot of DPS no matter how you cut it. So you should focus on drone DPS. But then there's the whole DPS loss from drone travel time if you're not using sentries. Plus DPS loss from sentry damage type inefficiencies. And of course, the dreaded SPS (salvage per second) loss from fielding combat drones.


We all agree that a Passive Fit Rattlesnake is a Thing and has its place. But even if you're constantly swapping out fittings via a Mobile Depot, you still have the problem of rigs. Torps/Cruises *need* missile rigs to be effective/efficient. A passive tank *needs* Purger rigs to be effective. If you go passive, you're not going to have uber DPS. If you go with missile DPS, then you're not going to have an uber passive tank.

So pick one or the other and post a fit.


tl;dr - if a single hull really could field an uber passive tank, an uber buffer tank, have uber drone DPS and uber missile DPS, it never would have seen the light of day long enough to get the uber nerf it needs. (Dev Jovian ships excluded.)

So, given the impact of travel time in missions, what's a good MWD Mach fit for missions? I am having trouble justifying flying a Mach over a Vargur come summer, mainly due to the Vargur's
* ability to carry three TCs while shield tanking (range: 4.2+69)
* with some extra range from bastion mode. (range: 4.8+74)
* ability to get 2.9 AU/s warp speed with a rig and 10% warp speed implant (or 3.5 AU/s with 2 warp speed rigs plus implant)
* tracking bonus

The MWD Mach doesn't look like it can close the range fast enough to outgun the Vargur when using T1 ammo versus the Vargur's RF ammo and because of the Vargur's one minute MJD. Even with RF ammo, the Mach doesn't look that great.

If I armor tank the Mach, then I could use TCs plus sentries (and not rely on the MWD to close the range as much) but armor tank is weaksauce in missions, especially against Angels, and even with four sentries, the DPS difference against the Vargur isn't that great. And if I go apples to apples and use two sentries on the Vargur, then the Mach is sub-par again (unless it uses RF ammo.)


So can anyone fit a Mach to beat this Vargur for missions?

[Vargur, AC 800]
Republic Fleet Gyrostabilizer
Republic Fleet Gyrostabilizer
Republic Fleet Gyrostabilizer
Gyrostabilizer II
Damage Control II

Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script
Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script
Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script
Large Micro Jump Drive
Pithum C-Type Medium Shield Booster

800mm Repeating Cannon II, Republic Fleet Fusion L
800mm Repeating Cannon II, Republic Fleet Fusion L
800mm Repeating Cannon II, Republic Fleet Fusion L
800mm Repeating Cannon II, Republic Fleet Fusion L
Small Tractor Beam II
Small Tractor Beam II
Small Tractor Beam II
Bastion Module I

Large Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer I
Large Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer I

Bouncer II x2

tl;dr - Is it just me or has the Mach as the king of missions dead (especially since the TE nerf) and will remain dead in summer?