Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You'll never be happy. (PRO HINT: you can't have it all)

Nothing wrong with the ASB, it is one of a solo / small gang pilots best friends. I must admit it can get a bit crazy on the Vargur and Golem, but again that is partly due to the massive cargo bay of those ships and so could easily be tweaked.

Armour reps are a lot less cap dependant than shield reps. Combined with the fact that you would have a cap booster/s in the mids which are not as valuable as to an armour tanking ship, you can effectively perma run armour reps too until your cap boosters run out.

Why do you think their is such a prevelance of dual or even triple rep armour ships... it is because it is one of the most powerful combinations for a solo / small gang pilot. Dual armour reps are much more common that dual ASBs.

Out of all things I think ASBs and AARs are in a good position. That being said I don't see why we can't have multiple AARs on an armour ship.

[I'd say the problem with the Paladin is that it needs to be better at tracking targets, when you are stationary it is too easy to signature tank battleship guns. If I were to suggest any change though I'd perhaps look at a drone bonus along with extra drone bay]

for the love of god, don't take away from cargo capacity.

I use the vast majority of it on a daily basis in PVP, PVE, and structure bashing.



Edit...
Also, I'm thinking bastion is going to end up being effected by the upcoming changes to ewar immunity on capitals.
If they're taking it away from them, I'm pretty sure they're taking it from bastion Marauders.

Don't give CCP any ideas. EWAR immunity is one of the primary reasons to use a Marauder. If they take that away, they'd have to give them something massive in return precisely because you'd be right, they would be garbage. Like maybe a very heavy mobility bonus, cap recharge supercharge, or something.

just give the kronos its 90% webs back and all will be fine once again

And why..........couldn't a vargur/golem do the same while being completely capacitor independant?

Because hurrrrrrrrdurrrrrrrrr.

Cap boosters.

The problem with the Paladin is more tracking and damage application IMO. Lasers are the worst tracking weapons and then combine it with the fact that the Paladin is the only Marauder which gets not bonus to tracking.

Easy solution is to increase its drone bay or give it some tracking bonuses.

Mostly agree with you here Moac.

As Vimsy said earlier in this post, CCP should give the Paladins a built in 25% more cap capacity and recharge rate. And replace the 5% bonus to ship capacitor capacity Amarr BS skill with a 7.5% bonus to Large Energy Turret tracking speed.

I'll feel bad for the NMs, but with costing 2.5x less than the Pallys they'll still have their uses.

I happen to like the optimal bonus on the Paladin. It allows me to use higher-damaging ammo at longer ranges with both beams and pulse. And tracking has never been an issue for me. But maybe that's because the Paladin IS a different Marauder and needs to be flown differently. When you do so, it is a stellar ship. It is my preferred Marauder.

If tracking is a problem for you, I'd say look at your setups and your flying/combat technique. If using beams against, say, Blood Raiders, a MJD + two tracking computers (optimal range) script is phenomenal. If using pulse against, say, everything else, MWD alone should get you to where you need. With pulse there's a lot of versatility because of the optimal range bonus. You can equip two tracking computers and switch scripts out for range or tracking, depending on what you're shooting at. Doing that, you get fantastic damage out to damned good range (56km with standard crystals, which is more than enough range and damage to whollop most missions). You can cap boost and targeting computer (sensor res script) to reduce the amount of time you hear that godawful beeping noise while locking.

I also fly a Kronos and it lacks, precisely because it lacks that optimal bonus. Yes I know it gets falloff, and I'll address that, but it's not the same.

Before I even go any further - just think about that for a second. The largest track of guns for sub-caps getting a tracking bonus does so very little because they start with so little tracking to begin with. If you were going to hit a target with the bonus, you'd probably hit it without the bonus anyway. This is opposed to optimal, which large track guns get a lot of to start with, and benefit greatly from bonuses to. And you still have the primary problem of getting things in range while mobility is a problem for your ship class (especially when, and this cannot be emphasized enough, your special ability is sitting still) - hence optimal being awesome and tracking not so much. Also, the irony here is that tracking bonus only really helps to negate the problem it itself creates by forcing you to fly around to chase down targets, increasing your traversal much of the time until you get a proper line-up on your target to negate traversal. And you know what benefits good flying and negating traversal...optimal bonus! So you can hit the guy out from further away if you're piloting well.

Anyway, I use a Kronos and have to fly it very differently. When flying blasters, you are already at a disadvantage because of their severely limited range. The falloff bonus is appreciated, don't get me wrong, but limited in usefulness for really extending the reach of your punch. Blasters have, what, around 2/3 of the effective range of pulse, and make up for the lack of application by trying to fling more overall DPS at the target? That's sloppy. It works, yes, but the impressive DPS you can get from hybrid weapons doesn't mean much without good application. So that tracking bonus really helps when you have to close the distance to about 3 or 4 KM to apply all that damage, but beyond that it really doesn't help.

MWD is a must with blasters because you have to chase things down and get them into range, which is both tiresome and time-consuming. Most of the time, it's quicker just to eqiup rails and MJD and nail them from afar and a tracking bonus does little to help you there anyway, wheras a Paladin in a similar situation is hitting targets with better ammo precisely because of the optimal bonus.

I like the Kronos, but I just find it is not as versatile as the Paladin. You can get better DPS with a Kronos, but only at knife-fight ranges where you lack the mobility (and mids!) to really keep targets there and make it work.

I don't use Marauders in PvP. I'll admit right now I don't have the sort of cohones or team support to try that. So, tracking bonus to help with PvP would be a good all-around benefit.

As for PvE, when I use Pulse Pally, I don't usually have trouble hitting small targets in close, but that might just be luck and/or the order in which I target things. Because pulse hits out pretty far, I generally hit small things out far, while the large things get in close. Then melt the larger things in close with IN Multi.

But I admit I don't run pulse Pally often, usually because MJD + Tachy seems like such a quick and easy way to do things. But perhaps next time you feel like it, try two tracking comps (tracking script) plus a web, perhaps? Or perhaps instead of web, a painter, since that'll be useful outside of 10km.

One thing I love about Marauders is that there's generous fitting and lots of options!