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+1

I thought, versatility should be the name of the game.
Versatility is the big minmatarian flavor.

Pls make using AC's (and Arties) on the Svipul worth it.

it's double silly because it actually says it's good at autocannons and artillery, even though it's not.

I'm more going to chime in on the projectile rebalance, from the perspective of a nullsec FC.

Honestly, a big problem with artillery is just, well, artillery. From a DPS perspective you have a strictly worse railgun, leaving you with something entirely designed to be flown in an alpha fleet composition.

The problem here is that raising the alpha of the currently otherwise underpowered small and medium artillery would make certain compositions extremely toxic to the game. Notably, arty claws with small artillery are already quite good at large scale fleet PvP, and any increase in straight damage will reduce the number of ships in small alpha comps (claws, thrashers, possibly Svipuls) needed to alpha any given target (T2 logistics generally being the major breakpoint).

For small autocannons, honestly things are pretty bad right now. They're a somewhat under-represented weapon type in faction warfare, and with the Talwar usurping the Thrasher as the blob pvp destroyer of choice, they really don't get used for anything besides unbonused hulls that need a gun with low fitting requirements. Small ACs just straight up need some love right now, or the commonly fielded ships that carry them may instead. I'm on the fence about that, as I've still had success with Thrashers and Firetails in my gangs.

Note however that the alpha of small artillery is EXTREMELY short ranged, and that if you do not have the issue of flight time, missiles are strictly better at any range past the optimal of the shortest range ammunition types. Again, this is why arty claws are good: they don't care. They also won't care if you make it longer, or give artillery a broader role. They only care if you up the alpha per gun.

The same really goes for medium artillery and the Muninn (and lesser so the Cynabal, Stabber Fleet Issue and Hurricanes). They get used mostly against HERO because they bring a crapton of T1 logi, and so can load long range ammo and alpha the cheap off the field from a surprisingly long way off. Otherwise, again, they really rely on critical mass to alpha targets, and have no other role.

Medium autocannons are just garbage, being unable to compete with pulse lasers at mid-range, unable to hit at long range, and unable to compete with blasters up close. They don't even come close to the drone dps HACs and faction cruisers start bringing to the table either. They try to be far too general, much like pulse lasers, but pulse lasers literally do EVERYTHING better than medium autos. Please look at the recently hilarious popularity of pulse laser hurricanes. They outperform autocannon hurricanes, even with the hull bonus, in nearly every way. Medium ACs are GARBAGE, and I am ashamed to see no serious attention being paid to them in these dev notes.

Large artillery is honestly in a good place. The Tornado is a name feared by everyone in hisec, and the Tempest Fleet Issue is one of the few battleships we still see out here in null.

Large autocannons on the other hand, see medium autocannons and multiply by ten billion. They see absolutely no serious play, and while part of that is the fact that battleships are pretty bad, and brawling battleships are worse, a brawling-intended weapon that can do significant damage out to point range should at least be usable as such!

Overall, what I feel projectiles need:

- Small and medium arty needs more DPS that does not impact its alpha.
- Large arty should be left as the pure alpha option, as unlike the above, missiles cannot compete.
- Small autocannons need some tight-band tweaking to keep that flexibility. The additional falloff and changes to Barrage will help, but I think the numbers are too small.
- Medium and Large autocannons need an all-out rework. Their role still has to be versatility, because everything else is covered, but this is a game of specialization. What I might suggest is applying more specialization to autocannon ammunition, and somewhat increasing the overall power of these weapon types.

A while back I posted in a related thread about how these new ships scare me quite a bit, because they're hilariously silly. The one I'm most worried about is the Caldari one which will undoubtedly be LML, it'll be broken as hell.

The Mordus are a kiter's wet dream as because of that, indeed, silly. It's almost as if previously none of the devs in balancing were really PVPers so they just mixed & matched some stats and bonuses for all the bling ships and we had to be "lucky" to find one that had the right combination to be funky. But now that we have 2 PVPers for ship balancing they went straight for the jugular; "uber kiter".

These new T3D will **** **** up.

Something I think we are all interested in. And I pretty much agree with the rest of Prom's post as well, as much as I might hate to admit it.

I was really really looking forward to a fast, falloff bonused AC boat with some flexibility. Optimal bonuses make so little difference when using ACs, it's like it is missing a bonus. (At least as far as my understanding goes) I never pilot within optimal with ACs - that's blaster territory - if I want to fly a catalyst, I'll fly a catalyst. Would have been fun though.

Just a question regarding how the stats are worked, too - Does having both tank options work the same as split weapon systems, in that it just ends up being mediocre? I really like this idea, but worried that it'll just mean you are underpowered in both areas.

It's been one and a half weeks now.

I'm surprised you didn't reduce the amount of ammo types per turret. I can't think of a worse thing to inflict on new players than having to go search for ammo charts to print out.

+1

My thoughts exactly

Hey everyone. Thanks for the feedback so far. As always, I encourage people to hop onto SISI and give the ship a try for yourself as the feedback from actual experience with new ships is always extremely valuable.

I want to address a few of the requests that are popping up in this thread.

Optimal Bonus vs Falloff
This is the most common request showing up here, and I can definitely understand why. A falloff bonus instead (or alongside) the optimal bonus would unequivocally make the Svipul more powerful, as it would be very useful for autocannons in addition to helping artillery (especially artillery with close range ammo).
However it's very important to remember that we don't always want to give the most powerful possible bonuses to every ship. Rather than asking if falloff would make the ship more powerful (it definitely would), we should be asking if falloff would make the ship more balanced and provide more viable choices. This is a much more complicated question.
It's important to remember that specific ship fittings can be extremely powerful even if they aren't using all of their bonuses. It is out belief that the proposed Svipul stats would create an extremely effective autocannon ship. In fact, I can practically guarantee that if we release with the proposed stats autocannon Svipuls will be even more popular than artillery Svipuls.
If we turn out to be wrong and the autocannon Svipul doesn't end up being powerful enough to be worth using, then adding a falloff bonus would be an extremely effective way to increase the ship's power level and we would definitely consider it.

MWD Sig Bloom Bonus on the Defensive Mode
There have also been several concerns raised about the MWD sig bloom reduction. Some people think it fits better in the propulsion mode, and others claim that it pigeonholes the ship into MWDs.
For the second concern, I'd give the same answer as we did to the optimal bonus above. Just because a ship gets a bonus to one specific module doesn't mean alternative modules are useless on it. We expect afterburners to be extremely useful on the Svipul, especially as part of dual prop and 10mn fits.
As for the concern about the placement of the MWD bloom bonus in defensive mode, we set up the defensive mode on the Svipul to create one of the largest differentiating factors between it and the Confessor. The MWD bonus is obviously not useful when scrammed, but it is a very powerful way to reduce damage when taking fire while unscrammed (the resilience of ships like the Talwar against longer-range damage provides a good example of the potential of MWD sig bloom bonuses). It is also important to note that the double resistance bonus provided by the Svipul's defensive mode, combined with the traditional Minmatar shield resist profile and a naturally smaller sig (and higher speed) than the Confessor combine to create a very durable ship even when brawling within scram range.

Powergrid
This is a common complaint we see with most ships we release, because we intentionally attempt to create interesting choices through scarce fitting resources. Use of fitting modules, implants and rigs is not always an admission of failure. If a player isn't forced to make any compromises when fitting a ship that means we've missed an opportunity to create interesting and valuable gameplay.

The three concerns above combine to cause some people to worry that the Svipul will be underpowered. We will be closely watching results of test server testing (and TQ activity after that) to ensure that everything is healthy, but overall we are not of the opinion that the proposed Svipul stats are underpowered. On the contrary, this is an extremely powerful ship that enjoys excellent base stats, powerful bonuses (even though not all of them will always be used) and a lot of flexibility. I'll remind everyone that there were many players arguing that the Confessor would be useless before we launched Rhea, and that turned out not to be the case.

Increasing Choice in Projectile Ammo
We completely agree that the changes we're making to autocannons and barrage in Tiamat do not solve all the problems with projectile ammo. The fact that autocannons suffer virtually no penalty for using the shorter range T1 ammo as opposed to the longer range T1 ammo reduces the number of interesting choices available to players and the tracking bonused ammo only goes so far towards correcting that problem. Tiamat is not the end of the work we want to do on projectile weapons and their ammo.