EVE General Discussion

Lol yeah I hate those kitebaddon fleets.

Well, they were acceptable in situations where range doesn´t matter much.
Now they got better in their niche as long as they aren´t up against a competent minmatar pilot (what you are saying about the talos being on par with the tornado is ridiculous, minnie ship is orders of magnitude better; if the tornado isn´t performing vastly better than the talos, then the tornado pilot just sucks).

The problem is minmatar perform better in the close combat area, their ships are faster and more agile, their weapons can´t be neuted, they have utility slots for neuting blasters, multiple damage types make sure the paper dps and real dps aren´t as far apart as they are with Gallente... even sniping works only with minnie weapons, the arties, because you can´t have sniping in a game without a high alpha weapon.

It´s like the Minmatar are the race that´s been optimized for that combat style that the Gallente are forced into, although they are not suited for it.

It´s often said, the Gallente have their niche, they work there, so it´s fine.

Nope, it´s not. They were never intended to be used only in few situations. Amarr, Minmatar and Caldari aren´t restricted to any niches, so why should the Gallente be? Especially if those niches are so small that you would design two or three ships for filling that niche, not an entire race?
No, the Gallente aren´t optimized for close combat although that is the style of combat that is the most difficult and disadvantageous eve has to offer, and tons of advantages -the best ships and weapons- would be needed just to make up for that (with Minmatar close combat and sniping could be reinvented in fleet warfare). Lacking all this the Gallente are pushed back into a few niches, where the environment is so advantageous that even these weapon/ship design failures won´t lose always.
But the intention was originally to make close combat and sniping a viable alternative in all kinds of pvp, not a niche solution, so you would have some variety in the game - in the deployed ships/weapons and in the tactics used.

I said it already in other threads and i say it again: let Minmatar handle close combat and sniping and let Gallente handle the medium ranges. The Minmatar alone can make these tactics work widely from solo to fleet, and the Gallente can do the current Minmatar tactics without seeeming overpowered, they don´t have a ton of inherent advantages that gets married to the most flexible engagement range.

So just exchange the ranges of AC/blasters and Rails/arties and adjust dps/tracking according to the range change and most balancing issues of minmatar gallente and caldari (they have gunboats too) will be solved.

Or just forget about balance, it won´t work any other way. The Minmatar will continue to seem op because they have many addvantages and the most flexible engagement range, the gallente will always be gimped because they need the Minmatar stuff for their tactics, caldari gunboats will still be quite useless and sniping won´t ever come back because high alpha is an absolute necessity for that.