Ships & Modules

Prophecy and Ferox deserve a look, but Ferox can be a great brawler and has the tools to fight in scram range. The fitting is tight, but many ships are tight fits for them to perform well.

FYI, prepare to see more Ferox's!

Liang, I'm not going to lie I am a fan of yours, but Ocirk definitely has a point. Especially about the music.

First of all get your facts straight before verbally attack people.

Drake was labeled from the beginning as overpowered like the Myrmidon. The former because of the insane tank that could fit, and the latter for the fact that was able to field 5 heavy drones with a very good tank.

Myrmidon got the nerfbat quite well and is pretty much in line now.
Drake got a minor nerf (decreased the shield recharge rate IIRC) but is still able to field an insane tank with minor sacrifices. But it can still field 7 launchers, which use no capacitor.

And yes I remember from day 1 these BCs appeared in EVE, Drakes being used for PvP because it was the one ship that Caldari players were screaming for.

So do the world a favour and think before you post, and try to be polite.

As for the person who said that cruisers should get more speed and damage. Can you please explain us what will happen to frigates if cruisers get a higher base speed?

CCP should think of ship classes as player retention anchors for players of different in-game ages.
3 month player retention anchor: T1 cruisers - can do level 2 missions, cannot PVP ok - action: buff, which is being done.
6 month player retention anchor: BCs - can do level 3 missions, can PVP ok - action: WORKING WELL SO KEEP THIS, DON'T MESS WITH IT.
8 month player retention anchor: BS - can do level 4 missions, can PVP ok in big fleet - action: working well, so keep this, don't mess with it.

1-year+ player retention anchors:
T2 HAC/CS/Recon - very poor in cost/performance. 130-400mil POOR INSURANCE, are you kidding?? THIS IS THE WEAK POINT.
T3 - good stuff. Yes they are very very expensive but worth it in unique abilities to do wormholes, exploration, bubble immunity. They look cool and people can fiddle with many different subsystems.
Capitals - this is very niche, only relevant for a small number of the player base.

Summary:
Sure, buff T1 cruisers slightly, just don't mess with BCs in performance or insurance (balancing within BC class is fine) as they are THE crucial 6 month player retention anchor. At stake is that thing called subscriptions.
Boost 1-year plus subscriptions through improving insurance for T2 HAC/CS/Recon. This is the number one weak point in longer-term player retention EVE is lacking. T3 is not enough as a longer term retention anchor because they are way too expensive to use in PVP regularly.

Hi, i'm revisiting this thread because the discussion has gotten worse again. I'm paraphrasing these two arguments on each side of the discussion, while trying to point out where both of these popular conceptions go wrong. Wether you are pro-BC or anti-BC both of these are, needless to say, wrong.





First off, "Drakes are overpowered", "tier 2 BC stats are overpowered", "Cruisers and tier 1 BC need buffs" etc.
All those arguments relative to Mithrantir's post.

Buffers:
Your classic HAM-buffer or roaming-HML Drake (assuming you need some utility mods, and not just use them to blob) have about an 80-90k buffer, whereas a similarily "buffered" Cane, Myrm or Harb sports a 70-80k buffer. This is not much different than any other difference that appear in the game when it comes to ships bonused to have a slight buffer advantage (Rokhs and Baddons, Vengeances, Feroxes, Arbitrators). These are racial traits, Caldari and Amarr are meant to have a slight buffer advantage on certain ships - and it's no different to trait or to balance/value on the tier 2 BC.

Racial traits:
Drakes have an easier time fitting HML than HAM. This is also a racial trait. It's easier fitting Cruise than Torps as well. Fitting requirements on SR-to-LR weapon systems on larger missiles are reversed. It's a trait that comes with advantages and drawbacks, not necessarily imbalances in itself. Wether you choose to SR or LR fit and plate, active or shield buffer your Canes, Myrms and Harbs is completely up to you - but that is dictated by trend, not by option. That some of these trends appear is just a sign that things work as intended from a sheer design-balance perspective.

Trends:
Plating your ships may not be trendy, and there are choices with any ship that involve mods with speed drawbacks and short-range weapon systems. Another trait that pile-on is the balance between shield fits usually able to squeeze on another damage mod due to how shield and armor tank differently. Mark these words well though, despite all this, all of the other tier 2 BC have better utility, raw damage output and similar speed; plated. It comes at the cost of projection, which makes the Drake popular as you scale up (reliable, projectible damage with performance-insensitive application).

This is also why most of the issues with the Drake don't appear until your gangs starts pushing above sizes of 50-man gangs. With some moderation, the only people in this game who run gangs larger than 50-people are multi-alliance coalitions playing the political sov-game where scale overall is a problem - not just with Drakes, tier 2 BC or subcaps. It's an imbalance completely related to "blob".

Scale:
When you hit scales where Drakes are not required to micro modules (such as tackle) or move around as much, they can play entirely to their strengths (buffer, projection) and largely avoid their drawbacks (lack of utility, mobility etc.). Once again, it's a problem with trend and it's a problem with scale - not design or "balance". You can easily see this in individual setups, when points are dropped in favour of plugging the EM-hole.

Cost-efficiency:
A cruiser cost in the vicinity of 5m, a tier 1 BC cost in the vicinity of 20m and a tier 2 BC cost in the vicinity of 30m (once again, rough examples, it's not a detailed account of current market values). In itself, that's a perfectly acceptible balance. The problem is that insurance assure that all these ships cost essentially the same and that's why some of you belive their performance need to be equalized. That's a fallacy. A tier 1 BC cost 10m or 33% less and it's performance is perfectly in line with that. You can discuss the logic of bonuses on individual ships, but an overall class-class comparison means that there are no larger issues looking at Cruiser, to tier 1 to tier 2 balance. Nore do the tiered stat-scaling differ that much from differences among tiers of Cruisers or Battleships.


Finally, to adress Lyrrashae's comment, related to "HTFU", "trends" and "adapt or die".

Scale counter trend and design:
There is a problem with the scale and cost of BC, and while your example brings up a counter-argument you inadvertedly point to the issue even if you don't see that it exist. The problem with BC (or "Drakes") is that there have been numerous counters to them, and there still are. I've mentioned it many times. All of the other popular trends or "doctrines" counter Drake more or less perfectly.

Trends in recent fleet scale:
AHACs were designed as a Drake (or BC) counter. Scale/cost was the reason Gallente AHACs were abandoned in favour of less detail-demanding Amarr AHACs. Scale/cost was the reason Tier III "AHACs" were abadoned in favour of Gankbaddons. Gankbaddons became popular because they countered Drakes and AHACs. Alphamaels became popular because they countered Gankbaddons and Drakes.

Titans are popular because they counter "more numbers" by applying them in "some numbers". Rokhs and Tier 3 BC are beginning to see more use because they too counter Drakes, Alphamaels and Gankbaddons to some degree. Tengus became popular because they countered Drakes, Gankbaddons and Alphamaels, though if you watched Michael Boltons Youtube clip you can see a very smug Mittens talking about how they counter even Tengus with Alphamaels and Drakes in numbers. Do you see the culprit? Is it the "Drake" or is it "numbers"?

In tired, repetetive, closing: the two best ways to "nerf the Drake" is to look over the real imbalances: cost-efficiency and the blob-encouraging sov- and structure systems. Nerf scale, nerf blob.

The OP is obviously a troll. Less than one week old char saying something stupid to cause a reaction. Nothing to see - please move along.

Agreed. One slot on harby, drake, cane should do the trick.
An even better trick would be to give BC's the same mass increase as Dessies have compared to frigs.

Think about this:
Level 2 missions are designed to be done by T1 Cruisers
Level 3 missions are designed to be done by BCs
Therefore, by PVE DESIGN, it is compulsory to have a fixed power difference between T1 Cruisers and BCs that reflects the jump in difficulty between level 2 and level 3 missions!
Expecting T1 Cruisers and BCs to be close in power is expecting Level 2 and Level 3 missions to be almost the same difficulty, which they shouldn't be..

Expecting a Level 2 PVE boat to be as strong as a Level 3 PVE boat does not make sense at all.
Whatever is wrong with T1 cruisers being a stepping stone?
Level 2 missions are a stepping stone, nothing more than a quick transition to level 3 and level 4s.
And T1 cruisers are their assigned ship and therefore it is completely to be expected that they are transitory ships, not destination ships.

Is it just me or does it make sense for a larger, more expensive ship to be able to defeat smaller, cheaper ships?

On the side issue of seeing less battleships fleets, that's not because of titan tracking but because of stealth bombers. Time Dilation makes it very easy these days to kill entire fleets of slow moving maelstroms.

Current flavor is perm-mwd drakes which ar a lot hard to get a good bombrun on.

Nefring the drake will seriously upset 0.0 combat, yes it's a bit overpowered but everyone can fly it so there is balance.