Ships & Modules

I'm not sure if they are bad or not since I haven't used them in ages. I do know though, that when I did use them, if you set your ship up correctly, they would kick butt. I loved my rail fitted Eagle. Could do some nice solo PvP with that thing under the right circumstances. Used it in Faction Warfare when it first came out and got a few solo kills.

Nope, wrong. I've been playing for around a year, and they haven't changed at all while I've been here, and everyone thought they sucked.

And yes, they still suck compared to the others, they haven't changed yet. But they will in the winter expansion (at least, that's what CCP says), and they will probably be the best weapon system again (they used to be at some point, right?)

They wont get seen to untill after winter

The only time I can think of that rails were actually "nerfed" was the introduction of stacking penalties... and that could only be thought of as a "nerf" because stacking damage mods for particularly lasers wasn't so much "faster kills" as it was "more overkill" (and even back then for cruiser/frigate fits it was already popular to tack lasers or arty on gallente/caldari hulls because they'd still out-perform the equivalent hybrid).

There are stupidly huge gaps in when I've played but every time I come back rails (hybrids in general) are always the same "ho-hum" weapons that aren't terrible looked at in a vacuum, but which never stack up to anythig else once you look at other guns, and especially once you look at gun+ship combinations. Really, the question I have is, "are rails really the same?"

Range of rails was designed for sniping, but Apoc does better damage at that range (another ship with bonuses that makes it perform better than rails). Sniping sucks, see: combat scanners (you want to be within 150 km of enemy fleet, otherwise they will warp to you and **** you with (moderately) close range weapons (blasters are still **** for this) under your guns). 10 second reload time on rails. Rails use cap. Rails have poor alpha. Only slightly more dps than artillery, which does not use cap and, on top of that, it takes a good amount of time for rails to have done more damage consistently (see alpha and the duration in which artillery has done more damage because they did the damage first). Terribad fitting in comparison to Minmitar (wtf is the Maelstrom, a shield tanker, doing with the powergrid of an Abbadon, an armor ship designed to use lasers, which actually have high pg usage, anyway?)

Lasers: have higher damage AND no forced reload (ammo) AND instant-selectable lenses (range, limited damage type) AND a superior short-range performance AND are easier to fit on their respective ships.

Projectiles: have higer alpha WHILE maintaining comparable damage at breakpoint ranges AND selectable damage types, AND no cap usage (not as important on LR setups, with the infrequency of neuts, still...) AND purpose-built ammo AND a better short-range performance AND are easier to fit on their respective ships.


Hybrids (Rails): have less demand on cap (possibly ammo, can't remember) but suffer both immidiate drawbacks at once; being shut down by lack of capacitor or lack of ammunition in many tactical scenarios (not necessarily being neuted indefinately or running out of ammo, but by overextending your mwd or timing reloads poorly).

They have a longer range, but few ships can capitalize on it, since between competing with the other systems around the longest automated warp-to distance of 100km and the probe-warpable distance of 150km their engagement envelope has become exceedingly small (eg., they are almost as good around 100-120km but suffer far more in the 0-100km [0-120] distance than they gain in the 120-150km [120-250] distance).

They also suffer other inherent drawbacks on many ships, such as lacking slots to capitalize on their potential range-advantage while maintaining peak performance, in part, because fitting issues eat into additional slots (ie., in order to fit a sensor booster to extend lockrange to a range where they can potentially switch out an [at breakpoint] high-damage ammo type to a longer ranged one, they are forced to give up on other mods [damage, tracking] that ensure their competition at the breakpoint).

See the edit link for further reading.

Gallente too but cross trained Minmatar.

I often use autos in my gallente setups for lols and it's always ridiculous how autos perform much better than blasters because of small but important differences: range and dmg application.

The one I can get out of my head right now that works better than autos in said niche is the Proteus with +Op+dmg and drones but even then it can cap out just by shooting it's ammo, it's ridiculous.

My Harpy loves railguns

I would crosstrain to Minmatar if I were you. The Machariel is a ridiculously good ship. I crosstrained from Gallente to Amarr first and I don't regret it, but Minmatar opens up the Angel ships.

When I first started eve, my friends that didn't know much threw me into a rokh, I hate them for every moment of it. I spent a lot of time trying to get it good, so I trained hybrids. Later to find out they suck on caldari, so i changed to gel since they had a damage mod, and later to find out again, they are not as good as others. So here we go again, minmatar don't fail me!