Player Features and Ideas Discussion

A falcon CAN have higher survivability in that if flown in a certain way it will have a higher chance of surviving a fight. but when flown that way it has a far weaker effect on a fight.


it has near 100k ehp on a cheap tank to fall back on the one we fly gets over 125kehp it also has more than 2x the dps and that is assuming you decided to fit a falcon with dps.

THERE SHOULD ALWAYS BE A CHANCE TO MISS!!!! that is not a point the rook is lacking in that is where ECM is balanced. and as it stands even against T2 cruisers there is hardly ever a fight where I don't land a single jam in small gangs or god forbid solo a 20s jam can win even the most lopsided of fights. I could not imagine an average of even 1-2 more jams per fight. Because trust me even against ships with high streanth you still have those fights where the target is jammed almost 100% of the time

you're still missing the point a ship used less /= the ship is bad

then you simply demonstrate your lack of understanding as to how these ships work and are used. the Falcon gives up its range bonus for a stronger jam chance. both per jammer and in the addition of an extra mid. this makes the Falcon far more suited for harass and dash. The black bird has a huge effective range for its jamming letting it continue to be effective without being in range of hostiles. with proper piloting and co-ordination a black bird never has to leave the flied unless the opposing force risks spreading out their fleet to a dangerous degree. The Rook has DPS and Tank over both of them. its tank alows it to fill a similar role to the Black Bird with never having to leave the field. It shins like a star in small gangs with 1-2 logistics. it has a lower jam rate than the Black bird however but does not require the loss of DPS within the fleet. In fact the Rook is very well suited for large gang fights the only reason it is not is because Damps are more effective in those engagements not because it is a bad ship.


every hull variant has strong individual uses that make each one a viable choice based on fight and play-style. THIS is what balance looks like. Balance is not each one seeing as much use as the rest. because one has a smaller niche does not make it a worse ship at all. this is what i mean by you taking statistics to reach the wrong conclusion. they tell you a ship is used less you then decide that means the ship is some how worse.


wait what? part one you say it is just not flown well enough. but then you say the problem is it needs TLC. or was the will not meant to be well and was in fact not supposed to be there at all? i will assume the latter but correct me if that is wrong. so i am assuming it was meant to be "..simply is not flown enough"

okay WHY do you think it needs to be flown more WHY does it need a more prevalent niche if it is filling a niche of any size and no other ship is able to fill that particular niche?

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"You assert that it simply has a small niche and that the numbers indicate its niche is small (correct?)."

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No im am asserting that the ONLY thing the numbers indicate is that the ship is flown less. I make a separate assertion that the ship is flown less because it has a smaller niche.

Having a smaller niche not only means fewer opportunities for it to be the best ship for the current situation but also that fewer pilots will keep one on hand should a favorable situation arise. Rather than keeping one stocked for this reason most will opt to use a more common falcon, black bird or for go ECM and simply alter the strategy. This is also double edged as the few pilots who do keep them around or are near a location that they can be bought now have a tool FCs are not used to fighting and tend to react to poorly.

So firstly, while your "tank" Rook fit is certainly tanky, it has a jam strength of 9 with heat. 9. Against even a T1 cruiser, that's less than a 50% chance to jam a single ship. It is also about as fast as a brick. Without heat (aka any sustained engagement) it has a whopping 7.5 jam strength, which means it's only able to jam a frigate with reliability. You're probably better off throwing EC-300s on your dps ships and flying something different altogether.

The disconnect between our disagreement seems to be the differences between small scale engagements vs medium/large scale engagements.

I will agree that in a small-scale engagement, where you feel their niche resides, the Rook is fine. It has plenty of tank, enough dps, and even with the jam chance sitting between 30-50%, landing a jam has significant tactical value because it neutralizes an appreciable portion of their fleet.

Within a medium or large scale engagement, it should still be a useful ship in my opinion, and it's just not. As you've said, and as I've agreed, the Lachesis, Curse, and Huginn are all more valuable ships in a large engagement.

I believe that its niche should include medium/large engagements for the sake of dynamic content. The fewer ships that are viable to bring to such an engagement, the more static the content becomes. The more different variables you add (in this case, additional viable hulls) the less static the content becomes.

Feel free to disagree with my opinions on the expansion of the Rook's niche, it is pure opinion.


Regarding the 25% thing, that isn't entirely true. By making the Rooks have a higher representation, the Huginn would see a natural reduction from some Huginn pilots flying Rooks instead. Nobody complains about the Huginn being OP. It quite honestly doesn't need a buff - none of the other combat recons do, because as you have said they're all in a very useful place.

Anecdotally, I have never seen a Rook. Ever. We have doctrines which include the Lachesis, and I always try fly a Curse when intel says a Cynabal or similar is coming down the pipe in our home pocket (nothing like a heavy neut curse to say **** you to kite-cancer). I've been on killmails for all of them, except the Rook.

You want a black bird or a griffen for that

The rook could use a balance pass. Another low slot would be pretty useful, as it would be nice to be able to field a jam ship in an armor or 100mn gang that wasn't a tengu.

I probably use something like this in the modern game for solo or small gang stuff with a huginn

[Rook, Rook fit]

Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Signal Distortion Amplifier II

50MN Cold-Gas Enduring Microwarpdrive
Large Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
EM Ward Field II
J5b Enduring Warp Scrambler
Multispectral ECM II
Multispectral ECM II

Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Assault Missile

Medium Particle Dispersion Augmentor II
Medium Dynamic Fuel Valve II

Focus just on grabbing something and tanking a bit of damage while messing with his ability to fight back

You haven't killed anyone, nor been killed by anyone in almost a year. So why are you weighing in?

once again the cov ops cloak doesn't help a falcon do what a rook does better. If you ate just hoping to catch reps in an armor fleet the rook can already do that.


Now dose anyone have an actual problem with the rook other than x ship does something better than it.

It's not used because it sucks. It sucks because the falcon does the same thing, only with a a module that can put it in a state of 100% safety that lets you decide when your opponent gets to see it. Jamgus do the same thing but can do it so much better, that the increased cost of a 100mn or an armor jamgu doesn't mean squat. So we find that the the 'advantages' that the rook holds over the falcon, like a few hundred more native HP, better lock range, sensor strength and a bigger drone bay, aren't considered to be valuable, so much so, that it's barely used. That's an actual bonafide reason to consider rebalancing a ship.

The only reason I would ever use a rook over a falcon is as a traplord solo pvp fit to juke frigate pilots into committing sodoku while they're jamboned for the half hour it takes for rapid lights to reload. If you think it's great, be my guest and keep thinking that.

On the contrary, I believe the only place ECM is currently viable is in small engagements. In smaller engagements, the incoming damage is enough to pop your ship, but not enough to melt it into slag before you can react. Even if you haven't got logistics.

You've got time for a jam to miss, cycle, and try again.

In a larger engagement, when you get called primary, you're gonna pop very fast unless your logistics is able to rep through the damage (hence why pilots should always broadcast for reps on yellowbox).

If your logistics can't keep up, you won't have time for your module to cycle.

In any engagement, landing ECM on enemy logistics can be an incredible force multiplier. BUT, imagine a Lachesis with RSD scripted for scan res on the enemy logistics... they broadcast for reps, and 10 seconds later after they're all but dead, the logistics can finally start delivering reps. The same goes for the Curse neuting out logistics (except Basis, but if you're lucky and have enough numbers you could break their chain).

This is the biggest reason why I've said a lowslot would be beneficial to the Rook; more tank, or more lowslot utility, or more damage. They could fit their BCS/SDA and a DCU without as much of a sacrifice. Logistics could keep them up easier, allowing them to cycle their ECM a few more times.

So a couple of things, first I want to clarify that when I say mid size engagement I am referring to approximately ten ships per side with two or three being logi. In these battles cap chain logi is very powerful and breaking the chain will generally result in victory. I don't think we disagree on that, just wanted to clarify. In these engagements all of the recon ships are very good at the task of breaking cap chain, except the hugginn, but the hugginn is still extremely useful anyway.

The thing about the rook is that it is a caldari ship so one of its
lows is a mid instead because they are meant to be shield tanked.
This is the real reason why they are not used so much because mid size PvP meta favors armor brawling. That is just the way it is, a room can easily get a shield tank similar to the other recon ships armor tank and still retain its viability as ewar. The other ewar ships not so much. This is also the reason the jamgu is preferred to the room for ecm, the jamgu can also get a survivable armor tank.
Just because it isn't used much does not mean it's bad, it has a great niche that other ships can't fill, being ewar for shield doctrines, the fact that shield doctrines are not used as much is no fault of the rook.