Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Empirical data suggests otherwise. You just don't see many people flying stabbers or ruptures these days, where everyone and their alt are flying the heck out of Caracals and Cerberus.

It's not a single thing making them bad, i.e.:

A)The ship meta is a toxic mess of caustic goo that absolutely ruins anyone's will to fly in general, but when they do, their choices are limited to about 15 good ships. Abominations like the Orthrus should never have been.

B)Other weapon systems are too good.

C)Autocannons are just plain awful.


40% A, 30% B, and 30% C.

If you do not address speed creep, you are just going to play musical chairs with weapon systems.

3)Cruisers need to be rebalanced so HAMs and HMLs are more viable against them.

FTFY.

Scram kiting is done with blasters too. With null. Except maybe electrons. Otherwise acs and blasters project very similarly within scram range. Using 180s, and you are deep in your falloff at the edge of scram range. Acs have lower dps compared to blasters, combined with fighting almost explicitly in falloff makes for projected dps at scram range very comparable. Blasters also track better than acs. I just recently had a nuetron brutix hitting my nado at 23km. So dont give me that crap that blasters cant project out past scram range. Yes, an electron fit using void or faction ammo will struggle. Load null and still hit comparitively as acs in scram range.

My hurricane was an arty cane, not ac. An ac cane if properly fit could handle a couple thorax. My point is, using the no cap usage crutch in a comparison is moot, when you have slots available for a CB. A single medium CB can overcome 2 neuts to keep a blaster, or laser ship shooting and tank running without much issue.

You are also comparing a battlecruiser to a cruiser. How bout a thorax vs a ruppy instead? Of course an AB cane could scram kite a thorax. Hell a cane could sit a 0 to 1v1 a thorax and still win.

Once again, you miss the point. The point we are making is not how well acs fight in scram range, its how poorly their dps applies at point range when you KITE with them. ANTI-SUPPORT role, meaning you arent scraming frigs for your gang, you are shooting incoming tackle in the 20-40km range before they are an issue. Even the falloff bonused ships like stabber and vagabond have pitiful dps at 20-25km. Especially the vaga which costs quadruple what other ships are. Those ships can apply the same (or more) dps at the same ranges.

Why fly a vagabond for 200m when a 30m caracal, 60m scyfi, or 90m nomen can do the SAME ROLE, but better and cheaper?

On small ACs, Neutron Blasters loaded with Null
breaks-even in damage
with 200m ACs loaded with barrage
at half the ACs falloff range.
Makes the falloff trait irrelevant and people who claim ACs operate in the falloff range sound daft.

deleted

Realized it was a waste of my time.

This.

Additionally doing this will shake up the weapon landscape so until we do it, we're just rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic/$Cliché of choice.

I actually think that the falloff only concept can work, it just cant be that the falloff ENDS where the usual engagement range begins. In theory it adds flexebility to the balance as you can chose to do SOME damage at engagement range and kind of good damage at close range with the same weapon system and without reloading. Its just that in practice (especially on t1 hulls, but not only) even at close range youre operating in deep falloff and at medium range your falloff has long ended.

@OP: Edit Title to be: " Friendly reminder that MEDIUM autocannons are still terrible"

My Suggestion: Have Ammo effect the optimal AND the falloff.
What about: "more optimal -> less falloff" and vice versa? (also on laser and hybrids)

Oddly enough, This shows a bit of a different story on what seems to be the best.

Obviously it shows the Caracal to be a powerhouse, but that's not what I'm pointing out here.

In this list, you see 2 medium missile boats, 2 medium hybrid boats (though the Vexor is a drone boat as well), 2 drone boats (also including the vexor) though these aren't specifically medium weapons in particular, 1 medium laser boat (oracle doesn't count as it's large guns), and two medium projectile boats.

Top damage is of course drones (almost everyone has drones, so this makes sense), then light missiles (it's actually odd that these aren't at the top of the list considering the Caracal has almost 1/3 more damage inflicted than any other ship on this list).


The main thing this list points out though, is that 200mm ACs and scourge heavy missiles are the only cruiser class weapons represented on this list.

Now, the heavy missiles being on this are represented by the drake more specifically, while there are some Caracals that were likely fit with heavies, but not nearly as many as there are rapid light fit.
But, we also can't say that all the light missiles are tied only to the Caracal, as the Condor and the Blackbird likely were majority fitted with light missile systems. However, we can likely say that the Caracal is a solid 3/4 to 7/8 of the light missile damage.

We'll say 7/8, so 7/8 of light missiles would bring 9660 down to 8452.5, which is still pretty significant, and leaves navy scourge lights in the same spot.
On the topic of Rapid lights, I think this can be adjusted by removing the range bonus for rapid lights from Crusier class hulls, which falls in line with BS class bonuses. Though, the Mordu's Legion hulls may remain the exemption (though this might get balanced as well).

Now, we're all aware of that, but that then goes to show that after rebalancing rapid lights, 200mm ACs are the leading damage weapon of all cruiser class weapon systems, and 1 of only 3 medium class weapons that are actually present on this list, the second being Heavy scourge and third being rapid light which we already discussed.

Now, I realize this info is limited to Eve University Alliance, but it is the only statistic i can locate that actually shows weapon type as well has hull.

that being said, it shows 200mm ACs to be the preferred medium class weapon (excluding rapid lights due to balance issues), with only one other medium weapon system even being present on this list.


Soo, tell me again, how bad are medium ACs?