Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I agree to an extent, drones are really big right now because of these lame ass gecko's. Everyone and their mother has been using them and getting ridiculous dps out of them. 2 shotting frigs with a large drone... yea good job CCP, like sentries weren't bad enough. Granted, they're limited and will eventually become unavailable or so expensive only the space rich can use them, so i'm not overly concerned. I'd like to see where drone boats stand once Gecko's out price themselves.

Drones are really a whole other issue. Which i think maybe the easier way to manage them is bandwidth reduction or losing cargo capacity so you can actually kill them and cause issues, without 5 more being pushed out in replacement. Since, with combo of drone durability and large drone bays, makes it completely unreasonable to shoot drones on bonused hulls.

I'd actually consider dropping the drone durability bonus altogether. Maybe only allow the frigate sized drone boats have durability bonuses. We don't need frigate sized EHP from a drone, what do gecko's get with durability bonus? I've heard cruiser sized EHP numbers, but don't know for sure.

Regardless though, buff A/C's by giving them more fall-off, either through the bonused hulls, or a base increase across the board.

True, but are 35m per drone. So for a set of 5 is 175m. That doesn't include replacements. Last i checked, gecko's were around 25-30m, but use up 50 bandwidth. So, normally they fly with 2 which equals out to around 50-60m.

I'd ask for double the falloff of smalls, 1/3rd more for mediums, and larges are fine. That way they will all have significantly more range than blasters. As it stands currently, small autocannons have about the same range as blasters, less if you compare with tech 2 ammo.

Just 18 months ago nulsec was nothing but CynaVag Online. Meanwhile entire lines of ships sat unused in their hangers; environmental seals weeping with despair.

18 months ago the cynabal and vaga were rightly considered garbage because of tier3s making them obsolete

And then they nerfed an entire line of weapons because of a few powerful hulls, THEN they nerfed those hulls far past the point they were even considered viable, THEN buffed every other weapon to hell and back.

This is also the story of heavy missiles

The lesson is that CCP doesn't balance the game around how it is now, they balance around how it was 2 years ago, presumably because that was the last time they played

Proposal:

Make Projectiles distinct from other weapon types by altering their Overheat Bonus.

Possible would be for example, a vastly increased optimum range when overheating your autocannons - allowing for astounding damage projection, but only while heating. (Talking about a few 100% here, for, you know, not being in falloff when shooting regular targets at regular ranges. This would mean that Optimum-Bonused hulls are having a sick, sick modifier to heating their guns.)
For Artilleries, there might be a huge benefit to Tracking, for example.


Or all in all:

Sick performance while heating, still **** when not.

Yeah, whatever, but overheating is such a static mechanic right now.
You use it, you deal more DPS. That's a choice, for sure, and it takes a little expierience to know when to heat and when to stop etc, but all in all it's mandatory and isn't a really tactical decision that yields high rewards.

Also, you could overheat your turrets so their safety mechanics of their motion routines are overridden, and voila, your guns track faster!

Or you use increased size on the propellants, resulting in higher velocity, thus in higher optimal range, and damage your guns, too.

Okay, let's crank it up: Any 'good' autocannon barrage kiting fit that people can come up with does less *raw* dps than hybrid platforms deal with medium railguns.

This is not factoring damage projection in.
Just raw, paper DPS. The Hybrid Long Range variant has more.
It's actually so much dps you can get out of rails that a Proteus - without drones! - can break the 1k dps.

But that's not the point, the point is of course the 'combat capability', and since it's common knowledge that Blasters will **** anything up close, brawling is a bad idea for autocannons, at least on the Cruiser-Level.
So, that leaves us with kiting.

Kiting is a technique where you basically use your velocity to keep range on any enemies closing in, and by reducing that delta V of your reavers who are actually faster than you, you have enough time to force them off-field before they get on top of you, or you can disengage on your own.

Unless in really up-close-kiting (20km, roughly), tracking isn't an issue that favors one weapon type over another. Most of the time you're able to keep that transversal low.
So, Railguns are a valid weapon of choice for kiting.
And in the usual engagementrange of Autocannons (Barrage, ~20km - 30km) they just outperform them by a huuuuge amount. Hell, they almost have the same falloff range PLUS a good chunk of optimum PLUS a ton of DPS at the cost of, let's be honest, tons of powergrid and half the tracking.
But screw tracking, you're shooting MWD targets.
Screw huge PG costs, fitting 250mm Rails is the same as trying to fit 425mm ACs. You gotta make some adjustments.


So, what we now have is a Weapon System that is outperformed on short range because Hybrids are better, outperformed at med range because Hybrids are better, and with pretty much no Ship in the Minmatar line being able to fit Artilleries, at long range Hybrids are better.


Projectile weapons, especially mediums, and i particular Autocannons are the Rifter of Guns.
Awesome before iteration, everything is getting buffed, they aren't, add the changed surroundings of ships and you have something that is just plain bad to fit and fly, not because it got nerfed, but because everything else got buffed.

My worm does more damage. A Deimos more than doubles that value with rails or just exceeds with Null.

Also, a weapon is probably broken if there are only two fits for one ship left using them (active Sleipnir), with100% of other hulls being exclusively fitted with 720s or ignored.
(hurricane, rupture, cynabal, muninn, loki, gangnir all fit 720s; given that stabber/stabberFI are very craptastic as they struggle with artillery)

General profile between ACs and Blasters is
25% more falloff and 25% more tracking respectively (from Slasher and Atron with biggest Small Turrets both setup for falloff, clear difference being hull bonuses)
That's not considering the damage.

Thing is, 25% flat out tracking is significant, whilst 25% more falloff over a small optimal range isn't much at all - it's not like you will be shooting from the edge of falloff where your DPS is 40% of max.

With this, IMO, falloff buff to AC suggestions are perfectly justified. This is under the principle that, stats shouldn't be balanced proportionally to other stats, but to their application. The falloff buff should be therefore done with considerations on the typical decent falloff operation of 30%.