EVE General Discussion

Screw it, I've cross trained winmatar, if you only want one viable race so be it, but you might warn new players before they bother traning any other race.

Take the Drake and ECM out of the picture and try to find a ship class that Winmatar don't have the best of

Exactly, the shield skills may still be useful on some winmatar ships but missiles aren't very useful. Missile skills are still good for stealth bombers I guess but that sure isn't worth the 7 million skill points I have invested in missile skills

I don't know what you people are smoking, but Caldari have plenty of viable and good combat ships beyond the Drake. If fleets don't allow them, then you're hanging out with the wrong people.

It would make sense if it would be true. The Hurricane and drake both have the same amount of cap and the same time to recharge. The cane has 5m3 more dronespace, i dont think that makes a great difference.



Exactly like the drake. So whats the point?



Maybe thats because the Myrmidon with a shieldtank has big resistholes or because it cant be skilled in 1 month, cant shoot 100km with no damage loss without mods, cant ignore tracking, isnt that cheap. And btw. the damage of 10 myrmidons can be killed by 1 large smartbomb in seconds. You dont see any differences here?



Thats a downside, right... but it doesnt matter if you almost have the same ehp, damage, better damage projection, lower price and so on.

Yah and the above fit could kill what again?

Although I don't view the drake proposal as a nerf and I hold on to the hope that some of the lacking cal ships will get love in the rebalance to come...

It never ceases to amuse me how obvious minmatar, amarr, or gallente pilots stand up each thread and go on about how good the odd caldari ship is. I've read pages upon pages about how ships like the moa, ferox, cerb, and other marginally useful caldari ships are simply diamonds in the rough that we ignorant caldari have yet to discover.

That's simply not true. I hate the drake and i've always hated it. My favorite ship when I first joined the calmil was the merlin. My second love was the moa. My bc of choice was the ferox and after that I grudgingly began to fly mostly caracals and drakes.

I have actually flown most of the cal ships everyone whines about and from my experience they're not as god-awful as the worst complainers will say, but they certainly aren't under-estimated and competitive platforms. My stomping grounds are usually full to the brim with minmatar ships, gallente ships, angel ships, and drakes. Even among most caldari vets i'm familiar with the other caldari ships are something you fly simply to show off. You get kills in a moa and you brag about it because the opponent had an advantage from the get-go.

Again, I don't think this is a permanent state of fail and I have every confidence in this new iteration/balance theme from CCP, but can we please stop pretending that there are not woefully problematic ships all over the caldari lineup?

This is my main, and you're just talking out your ***, best I can tell. Where did you get Caracal from; and how exactly should it output DPS like a Drake? Are you thinking maybe a 50% RoF increase for it? ..because I'm pretty sure it's 2 launchers shy of what the Drake has. Caracal and other T1 Cruisers should put out about 4-500 DPS tops; where Battle Cruisers should be in at about 5-600 DPS average, before considering Gyros, BCUs, and High DPS Tech 2 Ammo.

Kind of random numbers there, but it makes sense considering it's a T1 Cruiser. Before you argue Command Ships and HACs with your silly little backwards logic; consider the training time and skill requirements to get in a HAC as compared to a CS. And then compare that to BCs and Cruisers.

Cruiser is a very short trainer, and one of the first ships Newbs fly and have access to; so the comparison between it and Battle Cruisers, as compared to HACs and CS, is not the same at all. BC and Cruiser are more like big and little brother; same family, but ones 12 years old, and the others 16. Wierd analogy I know, but it has perspective.

That doesn't mean Cruisers should'nt be faster and more agile than a HAC or BC.

edit: How many people do you know, that spend a more than a Billion ISK setting up a Corp and Alliance for a throwaway alt anyway? It's not like it isn't visible right under my avatar for all to see if they look.

I thought the DPS boost with RoF was a little odd myself. Might as well just make it 10% Missile Damage for one bonus.

Another thing I've considered, is the fact that Cruisers and Frigates of the T1 variety; are just not often fielded because of a cost scenario. And, I don't mean what you probably are thinking at this point; which would be totally absurd and wrong, and anybody knows it. Actually, what I am referring to, is the negligible cost of a cheap T1 Hull, compared to the huge cost of fitting and rigging it.

Who wants to put 20 million ISK in modules and ammunition, in a hull worth less than 300K ISK? Every time I build a T1 Frigate or Cruiser, I measure it's survivability vs. the cost of its fitting. If there is no way to make that thing survive the average fight in a gang; it becomes a T1 mod only ship, which means it dies in a fire in the first 30s unless ignored, which it probably will be.

Who's going to shoot something that's throwing pebbles in their general direction, when they've got somebody else trying to steamroll them with a massive DPS fit? Almost nobody, unless that fool also happens to have a Warp Disruptor on them.

So, really, it's a measure of potential loss and survivability. A Rifter is mostly survivable, yet costs next to nothing, but you can fit it with 5-10 million ISK in modules without breaking a sweat. You wouldn't do the same with a lot of other T1 Frigs or Cruisers in most cases; because you can almost guarantee you won't survive even in a gang, or being seperated from one. You know you're going to lose all those modules, and all that ISK, and your insurance only covers the Hull.

It's much more practical to buy and fit a survivable 30-40 million ISK Hull and drop all those modules into it; because then you at least know the investment is mostly worth it. Insurance either recovers 2% of your investment, or it recovers 30-50% of your investment.

Doesn't really matter if you GCC and lose it though.

tl;dr: nobody should reasonably want to fit a fragile one-shot-pop little ship with a guaranteed loss of any significant amount of ISK.

- Drake argument aside, it seems like too large of a nerf against ECM will just vanilla the game. Sure they are out there and ECM drones are good, but not the end all be all. I mean getting rid of good variety options just drives everyone then into DPS or tackle. Kind of boring. Its also a great way for younger players to have a highly effective and quick entry into PVP. And frankly, I just don't see overwhelming numbers of them used. (except by us that is.)

Take ecm drones away and really drone boats don't have a lot of other things to bring to the table as heavy's are slow and sentries don't have a much of a role with all these fast kiting fleets out there. If someone wants to fly ECM or Damps or whatever, it should be a force multiplier. Good fleets that want to keep hold of a target will bring frigs or destroyers to deal with those drones and have good success. ECM drones are easily dealt with and should be left alone. This will only further cripple Gallente ships, while everyone can use them, ecm drones with HP points boosted are very fun. And frankly they only frustrate those fleets that don't use combined arms. As far as ECM boats go, sure they are strong but variety and having to deal with them, and/or having them along adds spice to fights, and plenty of ways to counter them, especially if Sensor Damps get a boost. Just target range damp the next falcon you see and done. What could use a boost is the power of ECCM. If you commit a mid slot to this mod it should have a much stronger effect than it currently seems to have. That would also push some more people toward armor as so much is shield these days, as speed has become king.

- Really I think CCP needs to take a hard look at making some boats much better at "heavy tackle." And tackle that can actually survive for more than a few seconds. Currently even with a perfect warp in or punt as you land on the targets (ie nano drake, cane, tier 3 bc, etc etc) they are so fast that by the time you lock and scram/web they are out of range, even with perfect interdiction maneuvers boost/and sensor boost. Sure you'll get the long point, but not really worth much as their MWD is still on. There just aren't many good counter kiting options on the table. All the small ships that should be able to deal with this get blown up on approach, even when spiraling in or get nueted/insta popped (because they get webbed) once they achieve scram range. There needs to be some BC's dedicated to this ability. The Mrym would be perfect to get a bonus to Web range. Give the Brutix a big bonus to scram (and scram only) and together they could be used to get heavy tackles on kiters with good warp in's/punts. Or perhaps the Ferox and give it a purpose as it will be faster if shield tanked and finally be useful for something other FC-ing from. Other than some specialty scenarios, drone boats just don't have much going for them, particularly with the lack of mods to their damage (except sentry's), and again, in most mobile fights sentry's are a pain. At the end of the day, its just normally way easier to fly a gun/missle ship, and so that's what everyone does. Watching heavy drones, even when boosted by a nav link, is painful, and then, primary goes pop and you've been no help at all.