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no, they are ASSAULT frigates.

First - let me say I like the changes. Other ships are going to have to get balanced though.

Moar Testing:

Jaguar -

The Jaguar has lost some of it's mojo. Before you could argue that it's web and point allowed it to control the range via a Wolf along with having a superior tank. Now - it's just not there. With only three turrets it's outperformed by many of the other AF. I tried an artillery version. I squeezed a full 1k alpha onto it - just a tad bit more then 50% of what the Thrasher can do. I can honestly only see it being used in such away against interceptors and faction frigates in such a way. Even with the tracking bonus it just doesn't spit out enough damage against armored targets.

Enyo -

High:
Light Nuetrons II x 4
Arbalest Rocket Launcher
Med:
Catalyzed Cold - Gas Arcjet Thrusters
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor
Named Scrambler
Low:
F85 Damage System
Adaptive Nano II
Reactive Plate II
MFS II
Rigs:
Hybrid Burst
Hybrid Collision

387 DPS overheated with faction AM plus a drone. So 407 DPS with around 8.5k EHP. The Gank Catalyst - fit w/ MWD and scrambler - gets 534 DPS with 3.75 EHP. That EHP sucks. I can go to smaller guns and a DC and get 502 DPS with 5.66 EHP. Meh. Or 6.83 EHP with 366 DPS - less then the Enyo with both DPS and EHP. The point is that the Catalyst is a one trick pony that doesn't work. You can get nice face-melting DPS but have absolutely no staying power. I would not pick it over an Enyo. The latter is smaller with alot more EHP. It gets the majority of the Catalyst's DPS without the fitting issues. And compare it to the Thrasher which can achieve 400 DPS with 9k EHP. The Catalyst needs more of a fitting grid. Here's a clue: you need more then 12.5 PG difference between the Catalyst and Enyo to fit double the turrets.

Here's a more obvious example. Tested on SISSI:

Sniper Harpy:
High:
150mm II x 4
Empty High Slot
Mid:
Catalyzed Cold-Gas Arcjet Thrusters
TC II
Sensor Booster II x 2
Low:
MFS II
TE II x 2
Rigs:
Hybrid Burst
Hybrid Collision

103km lock range. It can hit out that far w/ 100 DPS too. Antimatter is 234 DPS with 28.6 km optimal.
Recently I had a 150mm Cormorant assist some FW mates in killing other destroyers/frigates coming into a plex. That fit was:

Sniper Corm:
High:
150mm II x 7
Mid:
AB II
TC II x 2
Sensor Booster II
Low:
MFS II
Rigs:
Ancillary Current Router x 2
Ionic Field Projector

For 30 More DPS, the Corm exchanges 16km of lock range, 2km of optimal range, scan res almost half of the Harpy's, less EHP, a much larger sig radius, and a whopping 657m/s compared to 2199m/s. It's not even a contest. Again, the Corm has 6.25 more PG to fit 3 extra turrets.

Summary - I love the AF changes. CCP has more work to do on the Catalyst and Cormorant to make them worthwile.

Quite. Mid slots are incredibly powerful on a frigate level. While it's one thing adding them to ships that are low on them (retri/enyo), adding a 5th to the hawk is problematic



The problem there isn't with the hookbill, it's with the ECM (but that's an entirely seperate issue).




A tank fit ishkur with Warrior IIs cause some issues for the hawk, but it's very, very close, coming down largely to pilot SP. With perfect SP for both it'd be difficult to call, but probably ever so slightly favour the Hawk.

However, that's an aside, the Hawk still seems to be the top AF with these changes, largely due to the extra mid. There is a problem with not having it tho in that currently unless you're fitting deadspace modules that cost three times the hull (and if we're doing that, why not balance everything for everyone having HG implants/multiple link alts/POS'd titan boosters/etc) an active tanked Hawk has to forgo the web to fit a good active tank (either small shield booster+MSE for a mixed active/passive fit or a medium shield booster/cap booster for a pure active fit).

This is a huge issue for a slow rocket ship since you're losing any range control (not a massive issue with the projection of rockets, but it does result in everything that can't kill you just disengaging) as well as reducing it's effective dps (due to the ability of an ab frig or even a fast propless fit to be moving quicker than the explosion velocity.

While this could be solved by changing the shield boost bonus to a resist bonus and removing a mid, this would result in the hawk and harpy effectively being the same ship with different weapons (and due to the inherent lack of falloff/tracking on rockets, would render the harpy obsolete). I like variety in ship choices and a true active tank frigate is a nice option to have.


As such, best idea I can think of would be to remove a mid (possibly adding a low albeit with fairly restrictive fitting room to avoid too many dps mods) and to change the shield boosting bonus to x% reduction to shield booster cap usage per level (obviously numbers would need to be tested, but ideally enough that it could run an MSB with a nos going but not so much that the shield boosting effectively became free). This would keep the hawk as 'the active tank' AF, but allow an active hawk to fit a web for range control/achieving true dps without the insane levels currently available. Obviously this would also still allow people to ignore the bonus and fit a passive web hawk if they wished (for neut/alpha survival) as well as a duel web hawk if they really wanted the dps/range control, but with the disadvantage of a pitiful tank to make up for it.

This would also avoid the Hawk being too similar to the Harpy as well as leaving the Hookbill as a viable option as the '5 mid rocket ship' (something that is ~slightly~ more forgiveable in the case of the hookbill due to the weaker dps/tank).

Just bouncing ideas tho, as with anything, this would obviously need play testing to balance the numbers/concept.


Honestly, the extra slots are generally fairly balanced. They bring the bottom tier AFs that were unusable before up to the standards of the better ones without overpowering the currently stronger AFs (above issues with the Hawk aside).

The fact that the Enyo is a little too strong is already known, mostly due to the tank/gank being a bit better than the other ships. A gank focussed blaster AF is a great idea (and as a blaster ship, it kind of needs the web to do this). The issue arises from the increase in armour at the same time.


You should come on SiSi and test all the new ships out for yourself, other than some slight numbers tweaking being needed (enyo strong, jag weak, retri weak) the extra slots don't really unbalance anything (and if anything, bring the ships closer in line as a class) with, again, the obvious exception of the Hawk.

This isn't meant as a 'well have you played them?' challenge in the slightest (ok, a little in that it's an invitation to try them to see what I mean), but mostly it'd just be really good to have more frigate specialists on SiSi running these things through their paces to work out what needs balancing before they go live.

SiSi Launcher can be downloaded from; http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Sisi_Launcher

Once you're installed and on, there's an ingame channel called 'moveme' which in theory you can join to get yourself and your current ship automatically moved to the staging system. However, the bot has been somewhat intermittent for the last few days, so if it isn't working the staging system is 6-CZ49 in Syndicate. You should be ok to just autopilot there if you need to since the rest of the universe is somewhat empty (and even if it weren't, non-consensual pvp outside the staging system is banned). However, if you do autopilot then you may want to set destination to a station 1 or 2 jumps out, this being eve and all...

Only thing you really need to bring is faction ammo since everything else you'd possibly need for testing is seeded on the market in the staging system.

Seriously, come help test these things :)

I look forward to seeing you there ava!

Unrelated post for those of you who are getting posts eaten by the forums.
After you've hit reply, if it doesnt show up, hit back and your text should be back in the dialog box on reload.

It should be pretty obvious why which slots were chosen. They are miniature HACs, and their bonuses reflect that notion (as well as the slots) when appropriate.

I for one am thrilled that the Hawk has another midslot. Now it can fit a tank to match its bonuses, AND actually do its dps to small targets (rockets with no web, lol). It doesn't take much to imagine what certain ships would be like with slots in other locations. IE: A Wolf with 3 mids would be insanely similar to the Jaguar, except outperform it in every way barring speed.


In regards to the complaints about the extra slots becoming overpowered, I invite those people to hop on the test server with a Cruiser or Destroyer. You'll find that you're still very much able to kill AFs if you've got a decent fit and/or understanding of EVE.

AFs were not very good against a very wide majority of ships.

On TQ they are not very good because they offer very minimal amounts of flexibility.
AB fits are too slow unless you have means to land on your target, and MWD fits are suicidal.
The extra slots can be looked at as something that balances the AFs within their own circle.
On TQ some AFs are absolutely awful without support, and others are significantly better (ie: Ishkur vs Retribution).

The bonuses benefit the ships intended weapons platforms/slot layouts.
Compared to the turret boats, missile platforms were comparatively weak against larger targets. So they got a ROF bonus. Ships with 2 mid slots get a tracking bonus & range bonus to make up for their lack of range control.

The Hawk got a 5th mid because it's the only ship that uses its mids to propel, tank, tackle, and apply damage.
Its currently impossible to do that without dropping a critical function. IE: Rockets suck against frigates/drones without a web.

And to answer the inevitable question of why not just copy HACs;
Making pure 1/4th scale HACs doesn't really work because the bonuses don't always translate well to the frigate level.
Smaller scale PVP is quite different from that of the larger ships.

There are some standouts, but my understanding is that faction ships are supposed to offer some aspects of T2 frigs, but with some drawbacks of T1. AFs on TQ are (typically) dwarfed by faction ships.

Wolf is OP by far. CCP, this is not Minmatar Wins Online. Seriously, wtf are you guys doing. STOP MAKING MINMATAR SO DAMN OP

I dont see many people fly cerberusses either but that could be me.

Dual prop hawk:






Perhaps navy rockets to lower the sig radius.
Still sucks because it's slow even with the mwd.

Yes I know the booster is expensive.

Sure it is. The Cerberus, a ship which is notorious for being difficult to fit (CCP doesn't believe that Caldari cruisers need a MWD), can fit a good T2 setup easily. Despite the fact that both of them are T2 Caldari missile ships, the Hawk has MUCH worse fitting problems and needs to make huge sacrifices just to get all of its slots filled.



Err, no. Every ship I fly has a full T2 fit (with the exception of named stuff that's better than T2), and I very rarely have to use fitting mods or make difficult sacrifices. And I've also made EFT fits for any ship I might fly, and all of them are full T2 as well. Maybe there are some bad ships which are difficult to fit, but I don't care about ships that suck so badly that nobody even attempts to fit them.

---

That's because, like most HACs, the comparable tier-2 BC makes it obsolete in a lot of roles. But that has nothing to do with fitting issues.



Which means it's a failfit. It doesn't matter if you can fit a 60 million ISK shield booster on a 15 million ISK frigate and have enough CPU, because very few people are ever going to do that. And despite using that expensive booster, you STILL have to fit low-quality named modules.