Player Features and Ideas Discussion

To start off with, yes I know other ships need rebalance. There are more pressing matters currently. But i just wanted to put this out there.

I've been using the Navy Caracal recently and attempted to find a decent role for it. I think, it might have been aimed at more of a fleet setup for heavy missiles. But heavy missiles are still terrible, and I think the ship is lacking in the tank department to make this viable.

So, the Navy Caracal or Naracal (Narwal) has the same mid/low setup as T1 Caracal, but has an extra launcher. It also has no drones. It does remove the range bonus in favor of an application bonus (which is fantastic imo), which favors HAMs/HML over RLML.

I think the general idea of what they have is good, but it needs tweaking to actually make it viable, for consideration in things like fleets or even just solo/general roaming.

This is what i would consider in terms of buffing it, without changing the nature of the ship itself:

Remain with 6 launchers, but make it the king of application by bumping application from 5% per level, to 10% per level.

No other caldari ship that i'm aware of has a 10% bonus per level to application. For a ship that has limited mids, and no drones, it really should have awesome application so 1 web will help apply a decent amount of damage to most targets. Or more ideally, 1 web, 1 rigor.

From there, to help address tank issues, it needs 2 things. Increase fitting, as it struggles to fit 2 LSE and MWD with 6 HAMs. I would also recommend shifting armor or hull into shield HP, to give it a better shield HP pool.

Currently its a 3750 @ 5 skills, for base shield. Taking some hull/armor away and increasing that to 4250-4500 would go a long way to giving it a solid buffer for either brawling, or in fleet settings. It has decent speed and great agility, so i don't see a need to tweak those stats.

Just make it a dps/application powerhouse. It doesn't have utility high's and doesn't have a good mid layout for any kind of active tank, and lacks the shield resist bonus. So, giving it a high base shield HP and buffing application would give it a better role in fleet usage, or even solo/general roaming. At least from what i've experienced so far by flying it.

So, would you think what i proposed would buff it too much, or enough to make it useful? Its one of the least used ships in the game last time i checked.

TL;DR: Buff Navy Caracal by bumping application bonus from 5% per level to 10% per level. Shift armor/hull into shield to increase shield buffer.

i don't fully agree with it needing more tank or dps but the application change alone would certanly be enough to see this used more

with a cheap fleet fit i could get 60kehp and 130hp/s 557 dps (655heat)


and considering the caracal is generally not a tanky hull thats not bad

For long range missiles the dps value is mostly irrelevant since you will be grouping your launchers and fire salvos that have to go on a journey first.

But I agree with Stich that the Navy Caracal needs a little love and more base targetting range.

The reason I brought up the dps was as a comparison to his earlier example