Ships & Modules

My suggestion would be to replace one of the optimal bonuses with a +5% medium hybrid turret ROF/skill level bonus, to bring it in line with almost every other HAC out there.

I'm also with the RoF bonus, the damage might actually go to a level where anything larger than a poorly tanked Cruiser would actually notice.

But, :Ti3BC's:

The Eagle is a bit unlucky in general in it's role. Think about how HACs are used in EVE at present...

1) Fast, guerilla like the Vaga / Liang-Deimos
2) AB / low sig AHAC gangs
3) Sniping - somewhat of an ancillary role because there are several classes of ship that can perform it.

The Eagle does not do 1 and 2 well at all being slow and shield-based. 3 is performed by a load of different ships, many of which have a better insurance yield than the T2 Eagle hull should things go wrong.

To make matters worse, medium Railguns do not have the alpha that snipe fits require to perform well. I seem to remember that a fully skilled Eagle pilot would struggle to alpha a stationary frigate (Edit: 1500 volley on the above fit) whereas a arty-cane would have no trouble whatsoever.

A nice Eagle buff might be...

- Significant increased hybrid damage multiplier
- Significant decrease hybrid ROF multiplyer
- Maybe Increase Sig Resolution a little (faster targeting)

Would make rails on this particular hull more "snipey" but ofc stand on arties toes a little.

Also... it needs to lose the utility high slot. Why a snipe ship with no drone bay was given a utility high slot is beyond me. Auto-targeter?

Travel at only 1354 m/s. That's slower (just) than fully plated and rigged armor Ishtar.

Yep. Best to throw a match on the Eagle and walk away.

I've looked into a B-eagle right after the new patch and the blaster boost etc, but...did not come up with something worth flying.

Ppl, plz, do not keep focusing on rail eagles...it's bad. The Teir 3 BCs and/or Rokh are a better platform for that.

I wish the Eagle was rebalanced, along with all HACs to be something fast and nimble, just like the T3 BCs, but with good resists (T2 resists) and perhaps a slight sig rebalancing / sig bloom bonus, like the proposed "fix" for ASs. The naturally untanked Tier 3s will be the sniping platforms, while HACs could be sig/speed tanked to counter them, in close ranges.

The eagle is fine. The problem is that it excels at something that is currently useless... >150km sniping. It's useless because getting a warpin on something isn't hard.

I would prefer to fix the eagle by fixing the game mechanics that break stuff like this rather than making the eagle (and other Caldari snipers) just clones of the other races' snipers. Unfortunately the only non-exploitable way of doing so that i can think of is increasing the min warp distance to 250km.

It's inconvenient, but it makes sense. Warping shouldn't really be used to get around within a fight.

OOC: Kirith Kodachi had an eagle fix contest in his blog recently. I'll post here what I also posted there.

*Intercepted transmission from Ishukone top management.*

From: Tsilo Ralttilo (Head of Ishukone Corporation Security Division)
To: Ekulela Siakkawai (Head of Ishukone Corporation R&D Division)
CC: Landea Vrankef (Head of Ishukone Watch Security Division), Mens Reppola (CEO of Ishukune)
Subject: Eagle Class Heavy Assault Cruiser
Classification: Confidental

Dear Eku,

Since the recent deployment of Naga class Battlecruisers, Hyasyoda had been gaining an increasing market share on the equipment provided to Caldari Navy. Today I have witnessed a discussion among our own troops in Ishukone Watch on whether our Eagles should be replaced with Nagas or not.

As a person with military background I couldn't agree more with the idea(Naga is a damn good ship) but as the head of ICSD I know this would spell the beginning of the end for Ishukone's part in supplying Caldari Navy.

So I joined to the discussion with my subordinates. An hour later we came up with the conclusion that Eagle needs to be revised. Here are the main ideas that came up during the discussion:

* We all feel that Eagle was, is and always should be a sniping rail platform that can reach beyond 200k range. There are 3 basic requirements of being a sniper. Range, Volley Damage and Mobility.

* Right now Eagle is mainly outranged due to presence of BS class weapons. Those bigger weapons can reach further than eagles optimized weapon range. Still, being with smaller signature guns that have higher tracking has its advantages so most of the soldiers were content with the range Eagle provides. There were some concerns about acquiring a lock on targets at 200k. Right now Eagle needs to spend considerable resources to be able to lock on targets far away. The sensor boosters used for this purpose could be changed to more benefical modules, if the onboard targetting system can be improved for both range AND locking times.

* The volley damage of an Eagle at 200k using spike ammo is lower than what some frigates do. What the sniper pilots love doing is making a "Hit'n-Warp" run. Right now it is "Tickle'n-Try to Warp, get tackled and die". I know we are limited to Hybrid weaponry in Eagle. But an optimization of firing timers to provide us with two(three?) consecutive weapon activations with longer(much longer?) cooldown times would be much more desirable on this platform.

* The mobility of Eagle remains a bigger issue. Align times are simply too long. Many of our pilots stated that they would prefer having a faster and nimbler ship to optimized shield resistances. Is it possible to divert some of the shield optimization routines on energy core to engines to prodive this.

* Most of our experienced (read: Old) pilots are complaining that sniping has been dead since Gallente scientists introduced new means of probing. Eagle is already benefiting from its smallish signature. But we believe you guys can optimize our shields even further to reduce the signature radius. We also believe an increase in gravimetric sensor strength will make our ship much harder to scan.

* One crazy guy had an idea we all laughed about. But I'll put it here regardless. It was about the regular cloaking devices. The stealth bombers utilize special subroutines to be able to lock immediately after decloaking. We were wondering if it was possible to implement these subroutines to Eagles. Crazy right? Initially I thought so too. But whatever changes you come up with Eagle, its competitors will be on a different scale and league. This will make Eagle unique again.

* Oh and one other guy suggested something about changing the hull. I've sent him to run solo surveliance runs in Angel space...in an ibis.

These were the main points that came up in our discussion. I know our company has a good relationship with Hyasyoda but if we don't intervene, Hyasyoda is going to be the main contractor for Caldari Navy in a few months. We need to make sure they don't. With these changes to Eagle we just might do that.

Best Regards,
Tsilo Ralttilo
Head of ICSD