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Blaster damage is currently awesome and acceptable.

Rail alpha is still pathetic, the dps is ok and on the talos the tracking bonus makes them useful for nano fleets and ninja rattingin belts. Ganking with blasters and a 1600mm plate also is workable.

However for fleet combat where the target must die on the first volley...apparently low tech projectiles weapons are best. Because IRL a shot gun overpowers a rail gun amirite?

I think one of the biggest problems in EVE right now is an obsession with "balance" and weapon equality rather than flavor and strategic use.

artillery has a massive alpha...ok fine, how about we look at having artillery do what artillery really does best. Area Effect Damage. At least give them an ammo type...say cluster munitions that allows for area effect but gives a 90% reduction on alpha damage. Give them some flavor.

Ac's are fine
Blasters are fine...and do **** face up close.
Rails have no advantage over lasers or artillery since the locking range was capped at 250km.
Spike ammo is pathetic in damage and tickles ships. People aren't even sure they are being hit...or just recieving gang bonuses...

For a special attribute to spike...how about it gets a property where it can actually do some damage straight to hull or armor through shields or progressively penetrates the existing layer of defense to the layer below...yes it could be abused but right now there is no reason to use it.

Void honestly hits just fine on large targets and Null is nearly antimatter dps at a longer range. Nothing wrong there. Javelin ammo seems ok, but as with all rail specific ammo...could use the damage turned up.

rails can still use 20-30% more damage if we are in fact concerned with balance. That or remove the 250km locking cap. That kills rail pilots to be quite honest. And the fact that any useful damage still puts them within auto-cannon fall-off range. WHICH IS WHY RAILS STILL FAIL.

if an AC boat can hit a rail ship with dps...that isn't balance. That is favoritism towards projectiles. Bonus to projectiles? no cap use at all.

Heck I remember when large guns used SOME cap...and it wasn't much either. But more to the point projectiles have range and damage type diversity, use no cap, have great tracking (AC's), high alpha (arty), and are attached to the fastest and fastest locking ships in game with the most agility.

ya...makes me wanna fly an eagle too. How about you?

rail range advantage was nerf'd with the 250km cap. Undo that and maybe...maybe you get some more usefulness out of it. Still needs more damage though.

live is full of surprises isnt it :D
and only a broken promice is a good promice :D

but still im trying not to loose hope that ccp will fix hybrid using ships this month and we can see at least one of them in the top 5 list :)

The lack of support and vodooh
Any sane person in space knows that a lot of players stated way before the introduction of former fixes that the current approach is not able to close the gap to minmatar ships and the solution to design problems is not a matter of more damage and trackig on blasters.There are different synergies working against blaster ships. The lack of support which other ships can provide easily, speed reduction favors range, easy to shutdown with energy neuts and ecm. This was stated 1000 times. A cane has always a neutralizer fitted and some medslot voodooh. Also amar hac fleets are making use of some strange medslot vodooh, like ecm mods on zealots.
gallente design does not support such tactics.


A Niche exists but it is and will stay a niche
Gallente is niche and will be niche in the future. The used ships are Ares for tackling. Phobos as lowsec hic because of the fast locking time (3 sebo's). Vindicator/kronos for Empire Wardec Station brawling, Dominix for PvE, Myrmidon for scout interception and finally some weird people are using shield brutix/astarte in arenas. After this patch the amount of ares reduced significant because of the thrasher armies.

Break habits !
Stats do proove this observations. My only hope left at the current point is that there might be with a tiny glimpse of a chance the bandwidth of some drone boats will be reconsidered. The community is not willing to adapt to any other change beside that. Who the hell likes to throw another year into the skill training without being sure that the results will be nice. Breaking habits is the most difficult part of system design and analytics. same goes for games and in each other part of the life. So there will always be a hughe wall of resistance against more game changing changes. For example see speed nerv. sov changes, The interbus highway changes (yulai as hub), ship spinning and so on and so on.

Innovation and brain storming
The current stats are as expected. no miracle, no out of the box. The design problem which we are currently facing is that we need new models in design. something which will bring a new flavor into the game which was not seen in space till now and which is effecting all ships. For such inovative designs we do not need discussion at the start, we do need brain storming idea clouds. The results of this brain storming can be discussed afterwards but at the start we need something new. witching numbers is boring and won't help anyone. Bringing back gallente ships and bring some fresh blood to pvp and tournaments with shocking effects like micro jumpdrive, surprise buttons (long cooldwon strange ranged effects), decoy projectors, fata morgana/illusions. This would break the range / speed / blob cycle and bring back some gold rush feeling to players without long skill changes.They can but they do not have to and maybe a gallente will find himself usefull again without minmatar pilots to feel like we got XXX now.
My suggestion is do brain storming and let the players discuss the results. Why not ? You do need a VISION


Player knowledge

Eve is heavily relying on the "the player knows" effect. In modern warefare the most important aspects are effects that disturb this knoledge. In EVE ecm is only working on a ship not the player. Cloaking is not effecting player knowledge. there is still a local. Advanced warefare tactics are only possible in WH space which is a really good starting point for further development.


Time investment and design models
Furthermore the gaming community has changed dramaticly. Players are not willing to invest the same amount of time on a given day to a game. Players demand the "get into game , get some action" tactics and log of afterwards. This is refelcted by current F2P models. This is also a major problem for 0.0 space as sov warefare is only possible with a lot of time commitment.

CCP has to find some solutions to these aspect. Unfortunetly i got the feeling that most development is still bound to old rules in the western world. Some asian designers are more tought. they got a better feeling for the changing customer market and do excelent customer research and idea modelling.

Addendum
Well this post will be one post on page 12353 of a thread which is not read and a lot of people will not agree and troll me because they can :) I still hope there will be some new design philosophies. There need to be. *sigh* the only chance i feel to push some more in new designs is to run for csm but thats too time consuming :p

So get me new ideas CCP in the area of ship vs ship and sov warefare. WH space is a good starting point. Get the ball rolling and do some brain storming not only number crushing, you now do have the ressources in human and time aspect. I do like a creativity contest with prices for shocking new ideas.


quinta essentia - TLDR
Old 2001 Design concepts are bad.
Number crushing is bad.
Brainstorming for new warefare modules tactics is needed. (micro jumpdrive, illusion/decoy mods)
Wspace is great start
Get online and get action model.

While dps by it self is becoming interesting, and interesting doesn't mean good ! -a fücking shotgun on his op range should just head shot or balls shot you each time you're in that range, so no the total dps/alpha is not enough considering those ships still can't get in range to apply that POOR dps.

The day I'll get out with some proteus and be able to scare a single cynabal pilot not afk in null, then I'd say blasters and gallente stuff are probably useful.

W8, let me try to explain it differently.

Cyna with 425mm auto canons and regular fit with barrage hits up to 55/60 km, using faction point can just disrupt you at 30km and put shots on you with shortest range/biggest dps ammo up to 35km.

Your poor proteus with it's ubber gazillions eft dps, just good to gank stuff in belts will not only be incapable to catch it but he'll be happy if it ever manages to put 10dps on it.

Let's talk about speed ok? - heu no, never mind, let's forget speed.

W8, "T3 is not faction stuff blah blah blah"

Right, I'm just telling you a single T1 CRUISER, faction yes but still T1, even badly fitted/piloted will kick your ass your eft gazillions dps ubber blaster Proteus.

Rails wouldn't be able to track it unless with sub + tracking witch means no drones and so no drones to pop ecm drones, to ecm the cyna or put some dps on it.

Once again, unless it's some cyna pined down at the gate by rapiers/lokis using double faction webs where in this case the prot will apply the dps.

Even on SISI I'm having dozens more kills solo with 10MN MWD or 100MN AB Tengu than I can ever get with some Proteus HG Slaves and +5 DMG implants+boosters+fleet boosts.
Now I've not even tried gate camping on SISI, first because I don't like looser strats and secondly because I'm perfectly sure I could get at least that much kills at that gate with a HAM's Tengu.

It's all Gallente, "specific situations" or call it backstabbing, but you can do the same with far more flexible stuff in any other race unless it's about warp disrupt at 100km .... I mean it's really interesting to WD at 100km, how could we even fight without that?

The problem is that currently there is no place in large fleets for rail ships (which are out-damaged and out-alpha'd by the laser and artillery ships of the same class), no place in small gangs for fast, mobile fights for either rails (which are out damaged by the pulse/autocannon ships of the same class and out paced by the same) or blasters (which just never get into range to start with), no place in any engagement where you start a fight at over 15km with blasters(when the fight is over before you become vaguely useful). This is not an extreme case, it's every case except camping station undocks (where the gallente blasters really shine but that still leaves rails as unwanted in their entirety).

I'm no fan of bigger = better philosophy since the time of the interceptor introduction. The more we get to that stage the more viable blob warefare gets. We already had this exact gameplay.

The current game mechanics with tracking etc was introduced in 2004 when the megathron was the king of the hill in removing small ships. It wasn't neewb friendly. It was a plain pain in the ass.


Did you ever got removed from game with a hughe alpha strike? That was eve in the beginning as a new pilot. The bigger weapon won. I can remember the so called "speed ravens" removing entire squads from screen. Megathrons and Apocalypse at empire gates removing pilots from 200 km range with a single shot....... Sweet memories, when i was young :)

I accept the fact that not every ship should be able to win vs every ship, there is nothing wrong about it, but:
If you start to play EVE the Game Masters tell you that every factions are equal. You invest a whole year in skills to find out that you have invested into a wrong faction becouse they are NOT equal.
Every faction should have mothods and ships to win vs other factions. It can not be that one faction wins over the other faction!
The principle of stone, paper scissors should apply to SHIPS and SHIPTYPES, not to factions.
So if you are beeing attached by a Hurricane you only can win in a Blaster boat in following two situations:
1. The Hurricane Pilot is stupid.
2. You have more luck on earth than anybody else and you manage to warp, uncloak or wathever right next to the cane. You also have by accident 2 webs fittet and can stay in your blasters optimal.

The situation is very simple: Gallente is usefull for gate camps and some WH situations. Everything else they suck.
Other factions have the right tools at hand to manage more different situations.

For PVP you need one of the two attributes: Speed OR Range.
Unfortunaltely Winmatar have both and Gallente has none of those.

This is the case why in a Drake you can win vs a Hurricane: Becouse you can shoot at it and apply damage on the Canes kitting range. However, the Cane still has the advantage to just leave the fight if needed.

I highly recommend to every Gal Player who wants to PVP to join a Pirate Corp and to camp Gates, becouse this is the only thing the Democrats are able to do :P

And one last thing: I really do not understand why this very simple fact is so hard to understand for CCP and why they needed years to react and still didn't fix the problem. To be honest I loose hope to this issue and in the meantime I belive this will never change in EVE. So the only advise would be: Get over it or leave the game :(

I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday season, even CCP.

Back to the matter at hand.

Hybrids still suck. Gallente ships still suck.

The most painful part about this patch was the introduction of the tier 3 battlecruisers, which illuminate as bright as day, the glaring issues between races. I don't know how devs could have tested a Tornado/Oracle/Naga vs Talos and thought "Yep, this is exactly the way it should be!" Seriously! You must have written-off the Gallente race with the implementation of these tier 3 battlecruisers. There is no other explanation. A real shame too, since the Talos is probably the coolest-looking of all of them.

I digress.

Blasters still lack the range to be effective, railgun damage is still subpar, and hybrid ships are still too slow and defenseless to make the hybrid platform viable.

More importantly, hybrid turrets and the ships designed to use them are ultimately lacking appeal. Many players stated this several times before Crucible, in this very thread, yet it remains an issue post-Crucible. You WILL NOT convince players to change their turret and ship preferences when you refuse to provide any meaningful incentive to do so. A blaster turret with slightly more damage and tracking is still a blaster turret. Ditto for railguns. You haven't changed how they were used, at all, so why should anyone bother to try them? On top of all of this, Gallente ships still lack basic defensive mechanics necessary to survive long enough to use shoot anything in the first place. Amarr have armor resists, Caldari have shield resists, and Minmatar have speed. What do Gallente have?

I don't know why this is so hard for CCP to fix. Stop living in the numbers looking for a solution. Look at the problem conceptually. Here are some suggestions:

-increase the effective range of null ammo to match barrage and scorch
-give hybrid ammo the overhaul it desperately needs (reduced reload timers is worthless without decent ammo selection)
-crown gallente as the speed king
-make local rep MUCH more effective
-swap the properties of hybrids and projectiles
-significantly increase scan resolution and sensor strength on all gallente ships
-reduce mineral costs of hybrid turrets and ships, at least until this is all ironed out (this is the least you could do for CCP customers who make, use, buy, and lose anything related to hybrids)

Side note: I was packing a carrier bound for nullsec when I noticed an assembled Hurricane is roughly 40,000m3 smaller than the Brutix. I couldn't help but chuckle.

So your point is a Supercarrier should be able to kill each none capital ship no matter of size and a titan should be able to DD everythin in space?

b)
If my efficiency should reflect my isk cost i demand my sabre to be able to kill each tier 1 battleship and each bc without any mercy and much effort. A Hurricane is cheaper than a sabre :p


Fitted sabre 115 mio isk.
Fitted dominic 83 mio isk.
Fitted daredevil more than my sabre!