Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Yes sentries are out of balance, and as such other weapon systems seem woefully inadequate by comparison. However when viewing the weapon classes themselves out of the scope of Sentries you will see that they are all relatively equal, with Missiles being on the low end of the spectrum and Lasers being on the higher end. (and in terms of LR weapons Missiles being on the short side, and Rails being on the high side)

Sentries should just be removed from the game, because they are the sole reason there has been nothing but drone metas for the past year+.

NPC frigates dont count.

AC fitting doesnt mean that it's a kitting ship...

Last AC fitted cynabal :

https://zkillboard.com/kill/43611219/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/43610972/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/43610329/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/43609912/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/43609059/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/43608839/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/43608657/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/43607952/

Yes there is not a lot of kitting cyna... Or ppl are trying to say that 180 and less dps at 20km (ALL V btw) is enought to kite... Is that a joke, srly you can't say that it's revelant...

The only one which can kite is https://zkillboard.com/kill/43608950/ but to get range he sacrifices his tank, what does it means ? Everything which can project damage over 20km will destroy it... Drones, RLML, Railgun, Pulse, Beam.

You'll never be able to stay at point range with such a poor tank, and you will never be able to kill anything if you have tank before to get doomed.

I know right. I didn't split hairs between kiting and brawling fits, I assume everyone is knowing what ships are bonused for and generally used for.

AC Fleet Stabbers and Canes are likely split between the two kind of roles.

Data shows that at least half of the AC Canes are kiting fit. There's a lot of better kiters out there, I am assuming overstocks of the things are being spent.

That being said, I do agree with falloff being weak on AC and would need some improvement. DPS gain would be small enough, but non falloff bonused ships would at least be able to kite a bit, and falloff bonused ones be able to apply a reasonable dps at medium range.

Just you. And as everyone can see, determined through KMs which are flawed, and market data that is only representative of transactions - the issue with these is for example, small shield extenders, 75mm Railguns II, and countless other crap.

Facts have been well established, after which further conclusions can be made; you just choose to completely ignore them in light of KMs and trend bars in the market.

1) Only beats Null blasters in range if loaded with Barrage
2) Above defeats the purpose of selectable damage
3) Barrage cuts the already weak damage further
4) Further damage cuts done due to innate shield resistance which is self-regenerating
5) For small A/C Falloff bonused hulls are compulsory, begging the question what should tracking bonused hulls do? Fitting Arties is sound, but only further demonstrates how irrelevant A/Cs are.
6) Majority of A/C use is an after thought - ships that are not bonused to them use them to enjoy the capless and low fitting characteristics, to fill the slots, add some deeps to the paper numbers.
7) Majority of dedicated projectile weapon hulls are shown to have success, but nothing demonstrates with certainty that it is due to A/Cs. The connection is remote, simply because many other reasons for their popularity can be named. Sabres - good slot layout, Cynabals - past glory and current bonuses match to the risk-averse pilots setting up comfortable on GCs, Stilettos - its fewkin tackler that 1v1s drones at best.
8) Useless ammo choice - tracking ammo wins you nothing. The benefit of tracking is lost to the, again reduced, low damage of the ammo. The common sense says to simply use higher damaging ammo to have a higher potential and deal with the losses.

To summarise: plenty of reasons why A/Cs are bad have been given, arguably valid points to why they are "good" were mentioned (capless, low fitting), but what YOU relentlessly do is pervade the discussion by drawing utterly remote parallels basing your entire argument on who managed to whore on what kill (referring again to the goddamn "stiletto means ACs ar good") and market transactions. I buy small ACs. I need to fit them to my slashers and rifters. Cos I like the hulls, not the weapon system. The latter is just something I am stuck with.

TL;DR - AC/Projectile dedicated hulls are used prominently, for plenty of various reasons, apart from ACs. You just seek to attribute that player choice and say they demonstrate ACs are good, ignoring any other POV.

The main which would be that People have trained for AC and Minmatar ships and either don't know better or have not yet cross trained. Also PVE, which projectile weapons are pretty good against.

Also, Minmatar lovers. I am one. For the sake of efficiency though, because I care about being on top on a fight, I very rarely use them anymore.

If you feel that way, make a missile thread. We are free to post our concerns about auto cannons.



Lets try this, i'll provide stats, and link where i found stats (unlike you), and then you can try and cherry pick your way out of it. As of 1/2015, usage stats for cynabal:

Top 10 Alliances with highest kills:
Only For Fun - 393
The Initiative - 297
The Marmite Collective - 272
NC. - 193
Easily Excited: 141
Goonswarm Federation - 99
The Gorgon Empire - 83
The Pursuit of Happiness - 78
Smile 'n' wave - 64
Pandemic Legion - 60

After #5, they fell below 100 kills. So, like we told you, the cynabal is used a lot in ganking/gate camps, inflating cynabal numbers to make it look like they're often used in roaming gangs, or solo. The top 3 alliances that have the most cynabal kills are all GC/Wardec alliances. For example, Only for fun gets 90% of its kills in Tama, meaning they are camping that gate daily, quite often with cynabals.

Top systems where Cynabal gets kills:
Tama - 390
GE-8JV - 221
B-3QPD - 165
V-3YG7 - 156
Ami - 106
Madirmillire - 100
Niarja - 72
Amamake - 66
Amarr - 56
Usi - 50

So, glancing through these systems, the top system, is a gank system and has +100 kills over next system. GE-, B-3, and V-3 are all very common hunting grounds for small gang and gank operations. Amamake, Usi, Ami are common gank systems as well.

Top weapons:
Cynabal using itself as a weapon - 1,138
425mm AC - 759
720mm Arty - 698
Warp disruptor - 503
220m AC - 278
Warrior II - 243
650mm Arty - 103
425mm 'Scout' - 93
Hammerhead II - 87
720 'Scout' Arty - 82

First thing of note, we have 1971 kills that are invalid right off the bat. Since a Cynabal in itself is not a weapon type, and neither are warp disruptors. Warriors/Hammerheads are, but do not tell us if the ship were fit with a/c's or artillery. Remember that thing about KB and market data being worthless? It because its full of variables and inconsistencies, that make it hard to be useful in determining how well autocannon fall-off is at kite range, and if people are actually using them as a kiting ship.

2nd thing, 425 and 720 arty are very close. 61 kills difference. That is not a big margin, if we were looking at accurate data, that would be roughly a 1/2 of all kills made with a cynabal was with artillery. So a/c's are not the go to weapon for cynabals, its a toss up between arty and a/c. Why would they use artillery, when as you claim, a/c's are in a perfect position? For arty to fit, you have to sacrifice a good chunk of tank, or use PG mods. Could it be because people are using them as mobile gank platforms? Something we told you posts ago?


Source: https://zkillboard.com/ship/17720/top/

So lets take at the current trend for ships flown and kills they had in the past few days

Top 10 ships:
Sabre (the go to bubbler for null) 13230
Ishtar (Its OP, we know this) 9072
Stilleto (low signature annoying tackle) 9006
Crow (long range annoying tackle) 8153
Malediction (tanky tackle) 7105
Proteus (common GC/gank long scram ship) 7033
Loki (common GC/gank long web ship) 6575
Thrasher (common GC/FW/Cheap effective ship) 6202
Capsule (capsule OP, need nerf) 5822
Legion (common GC/Neut ship) 5604

So, going back to KB accuracy, we have 5822 kills unaccounted for, since capsules themselves can't actually kill anything, again causing our numbers to be unreliable from the start.

I've explained next to each ship a key reason why its in use, not because of its weapon system. Strange i don't see cynabals or vagabonds anywhere?

So now we come to the part of the discussion that Baltec seems to purposely be ignoring. Solo.

Every solo kill is a frigate, dessie or ratting cruiser. There is 1 PvP cruiser i could find, and it was a nomen, the 1 ship that barrage is actually good for. That seems to correlate pretty well with what we've been telling you. A/c's only project enough dps while kiting to kill frigs, dessies and some lightly tanked cruisers. There are not versatile in this role, they are limited, by providing only support. Unlike say the deimos, who can engage anything the pilot wants to engage.

This is in the beginning of the month, fresh year. These numbers are just as valid as your month long numbers, this is showing current trending, and will trend similarly whether its 5k kills or 500k kills.

Source: https://zkillboard.com/ship/17720/solo/

Ganking systems don't count because they're using artillery most of the time. And this discussion is about Autocannons (name of the thread, and your own argument) try to keep up. What was different about the last 4 days, or the last month? Did Marmite and Tama boy's suddenly decide they should use arty cynabal's starting January 1st?

Because gate camping means 2 things. The weapon system has support with the other dps ships, therefore not making it a clear and accurate argument about a/c application specifically. And more often than not, it will be fit with artillery. Again, completely ignoring the solo perspective, a solo a/c kiting ship will not kill anything more than frigs, dessies and some lightly tanked cruisers on occasion, by itself. Even using a HAC (vagabond).

The cane is used just as often in gate camps and ganking as cynabal. Lets take a look at that KB data you are so in love with (sucks when it goes wrong for you though). You say, well canes are used all the time! Autocannons are used on every cane! So, because you are so narrow minded that you assume if its brown and matari, it has to fit autocannons and not any other weapon system. Or that autocannons can function both as a brawling weapon or kite weapon (like lasers). The specifics of this thread are while kiting.

So, for hurricanes, KB data top 10 weapon systems is:

The hurricane, obligatory bad KB data - 463
T2 720 artillery - 224
220mm ac - 164
425mm - 140
warrior II - 121
warp disruptor - 74
T2 650 artillery - 53
hobgoblin - 40
720 'scout' - 27
t2 dual 180 - 25

So again, we have 698 total kills that are void due to KB "accuracy" for data interpretation. That could have tilted data more towards a/c or arty, but we'll never know. Even with the inaccurate data we do have, it still shows the trend favoring artillery. Which means ARTILLERY has the majority of kills with the hurricane. NOT autocannons like you keep insisting. Maybe you should check your own "data" before claiming it as true.

Source: https://zkillboard.com/ship/24702/top/

Yep, slep is awesome, have you taken a look at its insane bonuses to get to be that good though? Navy stabber doesn't kite with a/c's, it brawls, or kites with artillery. Our argument is on dps application while kiting with autocannons, not brawling.. should have known you can't even keep up with your own argument and topic of the thread. There's that thread derailing thing again.. keep trying to move the goal posts.

If you're talking about the old poor man's AHAC doctrine with the stabber FI, i flew in those fleets and was doing pathetic dps at range (20-40km). I had like 20-200 vollies most of the time.

Yep, ships are popular when they're relatively cheap, with good projection and mobility to gank with. But, again, thats with artillery, not autocannons. Or, i should say 50/50 split between them.

BB is an EWAR boat, and not relavent to the discussion. But, since you insist on using KB stats and ignoring everything else. Bellicose is ranked 138 compared to the BB 77. And actually the other caldari option is the Moa, which its numbers are lower than stabber, but is seeing quite a ramp up in usage, since Brave is fielding moa rail fleets. Rail is #1 weapon for Moa.

Bellicose
Blackbird

Calm down now.. you sound as if you're getting all worked up. You seem to be forgetting that MULTIPLE, if not all weapon systems and ships have been buffed/tweaked since TE nerf occurred. And if you really look at the old TE thread, it shows more reference to Tier 3 BC's, than minmatar ships. Like.. the BLASTER talos with null, shooting out to 40-60km. Like i said when we first had this conversation, stop thinking this is 2-3 years ago.

Wanna see how drastic the change is from Pre-nerf to now? Go read Rise's dps numbers here

Just in case you're lazy, let me put it here:

Again you use 4 days of data to try an prove a point while ignoring the last year.

Moa, blaster kills: 9133

Stabber, a/c kills: 26917

Rupture, a/c kills: 25552

Arbitrator, combined drone kills that are not sentries:19461

Maller, pulse laser kills: 18133

omen, pluse laser kills: 20231



That would be because he used EFT.



If you notice, barrage is quite a bit longer range than blaster boats and its ammo hits most blaster boats in its weakest resists.

The level of irony in this paragraph is staggering.




You have the link.




We arn't looking at long range weaponry, just close range.






Its what the masses use and know. That it doesn't show the correct max range or damage is not suprising because it cant work out the variables that happen in game.




Vagabond has the range to use EMP on a diemost.