Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Currently Faction weapons are a bit of a joke. They offer very little in the way of benefits over T2 for a very large price tag. A heavy neutron blaster is about 65 mill on contracts (approx 30mill each via LP store with 1lp=1000isk) vs a T2 which is about 1.6 mill.

I find this a real shame and think a review of faction weapons and their abilities could be beneficial to EvE. A very simple solution would be to give faction weapons the ability to use T2 ammo and to have the weapon specialisation skill apply to them without increasing the weapon to T2 skill requirements in order to use it.

What do you think?

T2 guns out damage faction guns as you need spec skills to use them which increase their damage output.

examples of issues:
Fed navy Light Ion blasters are actually more difficult to fit than T2 ion blasters.
Fed navy heavy blasters are only fractionally better than meta 4 guns and are more difficult to fit and only fractionally easier to fit than T2
etc etc.

Have you ever really considered fitting them to a PvP ship?

I haven't even considered using them on a PvE ship!

I haven't for the simple fact that they don't perform well enough for their cost. Even when people are flying around in 2 bill ships they fit T2 guns not faction

If faction weapons spat out an extra 10% damage (spec skill influence) I'm pretty sure you would start seeing plenty of them on PvP ships. People are more than happy to fit faction webs/damage mods/points/tank etc because they perform well with respect to their cost.

actually most T2 weapons with faction ammo and level 4 spec will outdps all the faction weapons i can think about.

after checking fast on EFT, yup, all the T2 weapons will out dps pretty much all the faction weapons with just using faction ammo, and with T2 ammo will often outperform on very high levels the faction weapons.

(long range weapons get nice tracking bonuses, while short range ones get to hit with high dps at rather long ranges)

also training for T2 weapons is way easy and fast, so i dont think that is a reason at all to fit faction weapons.

true, price MUST NOT mean stuff is almighty, but for 60 mill ISK for a navy railgun... i would expect AT LEAST! 10% more dps than a T2 gun using same ammo, same for all the other faction weapons.






if this happens i would love to see those guys with faction guns go boom so i can loot their guns :D

The whole point of the faction weapons being on-par with T2 weapons is that you DON'T NEED AN ADDITIONAL 6 WEEKS OF TRAINING TO USE THEM. Faction guns cost a LOT of ISK, which is the price you pay for not training T2 guns.

You don't need additional skills to use faction guns, just ISK. Therefore, you can train other skills to improve your tank, speed, a new ship, etc. while being able to have the same or at least similar damage output as T2 guns, which take a long time to train.

They don't need a buff, people just need to realize that their damage benefit is not their ONLY benefit. Consider the reduced training time and then re-think the need to buff these guns.

No. Just No.

Other then it being terrible idea and promoting instant gratification? If you don't want to pay for them, don't.

Faction guns already have the advantage of being useable at the relative skill being trained to level II or III, and you want them to perform on a level that currently belonds to players that took not only the time to train that initial skill to V but also a secondary skill to IV/V. No, just no.

People should see a return for their dedication to seeing a skill through, and these are not even long skills to train, so the entire basis of your argument is to promote laziness and indecision, so sorry to disagree with you; but not only no, HELL NO. Enabling players with fractions of the skillpoints other players have to play the game on the same level entirely defeats the purpose and mechanics behind the skill training system, and being as this is how CCP continues to get paid (i.e. their source of revenue since they nerfed ghost training) it won't change.

The skill argument only applies to large guns.

Small guns take what, 5 days to train to get T2?

In many cases, the Faction guns are worse than meta 4 in some ways (look at faction blaster optimal vs meta4 blaster optimal).

Also, letting them use T2 crystals does not mean you can use T2 crystals without T2 skills.

As with missiles, if you don't have FOF or defender skills, you cant fit those missiles in your lanucher even though that launcher accepts those missile types.
So if faction guns accepted T2 crystals, it should still require the spec skills to fit those crystals.

Those who spend the ISK get their bonus.
Those with T2 skills can still spend ISK and get a bonus.

Aside from fixing some of the faction stats which are worse than meta 4 stats, I think the best solution is to let them fit T2 crystals if the player has the skills.

If you can't make the spec skills apply to them (for the 2% damage boost per level) and still have them accessible to noobs, then I'd up their damage to be 10% higher than the base T2 gun (such that they are equal at spec 5) - essentially giving you a T2 gun that uses less cap than a meta 4 gun (for projectiles... I dunno, lower fitting reqs or a bigger magazine? I think its BS that T2 guns use more cap anyway, the cap usage increase should be a property of the T2 crystal/ammo - otherwise its a BS penalty that T2 hybrids and lasers get, but projectiles don't - or I could see reducing T2 projectile magazine size and having faction projectiles be basically a T2 gun with a larger magazine)

Agreed. They either need an LP store rebalance to make them much cheaper or a stat boost, not sure about making them T2 as I feel the T2 ammo should be left for those guns alone. They Should have better Damage with Navy faction ammo than T2 though.