Ships & Modules

EVE-Kill's top 20 most popular ships, as determined by their presence on a KM.



One can bring a Huginn or Rapier to virtually any scale of PvP within EVE, with very few changes in fit, and still be relevant/useful. Take a single Falcon into a medium-gang brawl and it's going to get nuked off the field. Or ignored, since ECM scales like ****.

The answer is pretty self-explanatory though, isn't it?

I've given multiple examples in the past of how popularity and trend is not the same thing as potential or possibility.

I also hinted about it in one point of the summary i gave on page three of this thread, let me paraphrase:



No matter how you tweak or balance the concept blasters, railguns and drones will always end up in extremes. You may be able to deal with it to make things tolerable (which is what balance is all about afterall) but they will always remain highly delicate, and thus very susceptible to trends. The question you need to ask yourself is how do you feel about things as they are? Is it necessarily a problem? What are the implications of forcing through a change against the stream of trend? Is the game for better or worse if you do?

As much as there are issues with drone performance in high-demand situations, with timing and reaction on grids filled with people or with good opportunities for area-of-effect mechanics (bombs, smartbombs etc.) in large scale environments. As much as there are issues with Blasters undershooting breakpoints, being difficult to instantly apply to spread targets or multiple targets and with Railguns overshooting breakpoints in many situations. As much as those issues exist, there are also situations where what's commonly defined as "Gallente" have advantages available for exploitation.

I've given several such examples in the past, referencing past groups and times when they have been used, even in times of different trend. Many of those examples still apply today. Perhaps not in every situation or the most extreme situation against their logic (ie., the largest fleet battles); but they are also more than capable in much wider spread of settings that most people on these forums give them credit.

Drones may have a cut-off point when the way that the game handle drone-mechanics become irreliable. That breakpoint is not 5-10 ships though, rather 50-100 yet for some to be content they demand it be 500-1000, just to oversimplify the example. There have been recent, or not-so-recent, examples involving Dominix, Ishtars, Deimos, Thanatos, Moros, Nyx, Erebus, Proteus, Megathrons, Navy Megathrons and Vindicators; all of them used in compositions that require teamwork adapted to a larger strategy far beyond active-tanking solo- to small-gang concepts that most people identify as typical Gallente.

Many of those applications exist today, have been documented and outlined in movies that you can still review today and are still used by groups who enjoy those aspects of the gameplay (those who were good at Gallente-heavy concepts during the proto nano-era, in the post-nano era or in the proto alpha-era of BC profileration - they are likely still good at it today, even if propulsion upgrades, webs and dampeners have diminished effects). They even saw a balanced and reasonable upswing with Crucible, it's just a damned shame that some balanced changes are being overshadowed by other, poor, "awesome" game-design that came with it. Similarily those who were good at SHACs are likely good at S3BC comps.

Original, Ishtar-based, AHACs would still do reasonable against new trends such as Tornado sniping-gangs, or new-old trends such as sniping Drake-gangs, despite being a 2-3 year old concept by now. They will still have scaling-to-performance issues if you bring them to a coalition warzone, but on the other hand, such engagements are still very capital-dominant and it's not like Gallente have poor capital ships by any stretch. Would uprooting large portions of related balance (as was done with the introduction of the tier 3 BC) be worth it, just to shoehorn stereotypical "Gallente" features into big sov warfare? For me, that's a pretty obvious no. In most situations the damage-to-reach balance of a Sentry Ishtar together with offensive-to-defensive is well enough to warrant a weakness to splash, firing on fly and behaving oddly at times. It doesn't need to be "twice as good" by dumbed down tier 3 BC logic to be worthwhile or have strategy formed around it.

The best way to deal with scaling issues and their impact on ship-balance remain to deal with the stagnance of 0.0 life and frames in the sandbox mechanics. Would Gallente subcapitals not scaling well to extremely sized fleet engagements be a problem if there were alternate means of engagement that could have similar, or relative impact, to scaling? While i understand the selling-points and PR of a "fleet profileration" for our developers as well as the excitement for some players to take part in something "huge", the idea of 50-50 or 100-100 players is hardly not to the scale of small in any other game or experience. Even in EVE as a game, the differentiation is not that abundant. If you engage in a 50-50 grid, the sense and feel of scale can still largely be "epic". Gallente can be epic.

The problem is the timezone that I fly in strongly encourages 3-6 man gangs - and even 6 man is actually a bit on the high side. By the time you hit a 10 man gang you're the biggest gang in 20+ jumps and should rightly be considered blobbers. Even the solo PVP that the forums will tell you is flat impossible is completely viable (and commonplace) in this timezone. So when the average gang size is 4 people for 6-8 hours/day, and you have a single ship that can totally disable all of them... it becomes more than a little problematic.

-Liang

Sounds like a problem with the FC, not a ship or EW.

Not that I agree with him, but he's implying you're bad because you don't fit or comp your fleet to counter what you describe as a major problem.

top belt for great honoure?

I'll be sure to bring my falcon to Amamake Liang. Then collect your tears as you run in terror.

prepare to be blobbed down , these awesome lowsec pewpew noobs cant do anything else:P
comeon who the hell needs 3 ppl to solo a slasher??

We're terrible terrible. Everyone should come farm killmails off of us.

-Liang

Eagle is the most obvious one that really, really needs a boost.