Ships & Modules

wait... woot? where have u been?

No, the problem is that something like FOTM does actually exist.
I sometimes wonder about how it´s possible to screw balancing up this badly. It´s like they have no concept of the whole thing, what they are doing about it and what results they want to achieve. I could do it better without putting in too much effort.

Well - Gallente used to fill these roles just fine years ago -they were just constantly nerfed indirectly whilst other got boosted:

- Changes to speed, webs, scrams and MWDs in QR finally broke them - everyone thought it would hit Minmatar the worst, but all in all, it turned out they were largely unaffected by the changes.
Every Blasterboat had an MWD and a web - kind of sucks to be Gallente when everyone can turn your propmod off way outside your optimal+falloff and your web is nerfed from 90 to 60% at the same time whilst base speed and agility is among the worst in the game.
- Not only were some Gallente ships heavily nerfed with the introduction of dronebandwidth (whatever sicko came up with the idea of 75 mbit/sec bandwidth for the myrm tortures little kitten in his basement), but also medium and heavy drones received multiple nerfs over the years, which again struck Gallente the worst.
- At the same time, Projectiles and tracking enhancers were buffed into oblivion which left autocannons better at being blasters than blasters themselves up close and the bonus of having insane falloff.
- Thanks to on-grid probing, sniping BS fleets died and the only long range system put to practical use are arties, thanks to their sick alpha. So yeah - rails are dead - just as beams.

When asking for better range for blasters, people constantly argued that then, they would be too akin to ACs - well - maybe CCP shouldn't have made ACs the better blasters in the first place.

Yes, Gallente need a few more buffs. See other whiny threadnaughts.

The thing is this. Lets take a Talso compared to a Tornado. An AC Tornado does c. 900 DPS out to 60km which is great for nothing much unless your fleet compa has some form of tackle in it. It does 1700-1900m/s with MWD.

A Talos however does 1380DPS on overload, and cooks into range at 1800m/s, which is enough to get that DPS into range fast. Large Collidable Object whines that the Gallente prop mod gets turned off outside blasters optimal range...which is true but ignores the fact you still coast into range and webs actually outrange scrams, so by the time your MWD is off you should have a big enough head of steam to get into range and stay there.

Blasters have sick DPS. Rails still suck, just not as heavily as before. The problem is that most Gallente boats don't push enough alpha to compete with projectiles for sniper fleets, and don't work with nanofleets.

The other problem is that sensor damps are too weak, preventing a potential scenario of sentry domi, sentry ishtar, damping arazu, sniper rail fleet from working. For example, if an Arazu's damp was as effective at knocking out a target as a single Falcon's ECM, then you could actually sit at range and eat away at people with rails. Sadly, there's just no way of getting Drakes et al's targeting range down far enough for an Arazu to be safe - and forget about larger engagements.

Gallente do need a solid coherent strategy. Minmatar get speed + DPS kiting. Caldari get ECM and missiles and stupid tanks. Amarr get tough tanks, decent ranged DPS (hello Scorch), and neuts. Gallente get gimped damps, long range points and...blasters? Yeah, that makes sense.

Don't buff blasters/ rails, nerf everything else.

Ideally every gun should be as good as rails.

Everything MUST BE NERFED! No useful guns in my eve.

:MISSILESPAM:

Blasters are performing quite a bit better than before. It's nice that I can slap a full rack of heavy ion blaster IIs on a Moa now without having to put an RCU II in the lows.

Small rails are doing great it seems as I've seen several rail harpies recently, and Rokhs have emerged as a fleet BS. Medium railguns, however, are absolute crap.

Extremely hard to fit (on Moa at least), very poor damage potential (Really? 218 DPS out of 200mm railgun IIs with Javelin? 600 volley damage? That's pitiful. This is after two mag stab IIs have been fit; a third would be there, but it's place is taken by an RCU II, because rails use too much grid) and less than average tracking are keeping medium rails in the trash heap.

They're probably marginally more effective on the Thorax because it actually has a power grid, and a damage bonus on it's hull.

Hybrids - blasters and rails - are fine, as is.

The real problem is that projectiles have been buffed too much over the past few years and now need to be scaled back.

Let's start with the optimal + 2 x falloff issue. Plot the damage vs. range curve. With Minmatar ship bonuses to falloff, and ridiculously over-powered modules like the Tracking Enhancer II (30% bonus to falloff), AC's are hitting for nearly full damage at ranges which they were never meant to operate. The damage/range equation needs to be reworked (to more significantly reduce damage in falloff), and/or the falloff bonuses to ships/modules need to be tweaked down.

Let's move on to the other pros vs cons of projectiles.

Pros: Projectiles, unlike hybrids and lasers, use no cap and have variable damage type ammo. Projectiles, unlike missiles, hit instantly (no flight time). Projectile weapons - particularly ACs - are usually easier to fit than other guns or launchers.

Cons: None. Obviously, if you see "standard" Gallente and Amarr ship fits using projectile weapons, rather than hybrids or lasers, this should tell you something is fundamentally wrong.

I think that it is ok for projectiles to either be capless or have variable damage ammo. I don't think it is right for them to have both advantages. I'd vote for projectile ammo keep the capless bonus, but only do Kin/Exp damage - seems more logical to me.

Finally, let's look at Winmatar ships.

I think that a good place to start to fix this problem would be to increase the size of the projectile ammo and reducing the size of Minmatar cargoholds - on combat ships only. This would reduce the ability of Minmatar ships to carry ammo for every occasion, and add the risk of running out of ammo during a prolonged battle. Arguably, Minmatar combat ships should be faster because they are carrying less weight - smaller cargoholds would be a part of that argument.

With the above changes, Minmatar ships would still be able to kite Gallente blaster boats, but doing much less damage at longer ranges and running the risk of running out of ammo.

This is a pretty decent post but I feel it lacks relevance to today's Eve, because there's a whole boost that you're quietly ignoring.

-Liang

Fair enough

-Liang

Talos is pretty much my favorite roaming ship now. Blasters are fine, stop whining.