Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This post takes a look at the roles for each race's fleets, in an effort to give ships a clearly defined role and the capabilities to carry out that role. I also propose a solution to the hybrid weapon problems.

* Modified to remove the need for an additional weapon system to be added - the retraining would be prohibitive for players.

For the purposes of this discussion, we can consider Minmatar ships to be pretty much spot on; they're fast, speed-tanking ships with reasonable shields and excellent (the best) weapons. Minmatar have a specific role in battle, and they do it just fine. The only thing I'd consider changing would be to change the slots on the dedicated armour platforms like the Nidhoggur, Typhoon, Rupture and the like to make them more conducive to shield skills (instead of splitting skill training between shield and armour as they do now).

The Amarr fleet is basically fulfilling their role too, although I think there are some fitting issues with pg restrictions that should be addressed. Otherwise, they're heavily armoured, slow ships with good weapons that can be very nasty in a fight.

Now to the main thrust of this post; Gallente and Caldari. An extensive discussion about fixing hybrids (and Gallente ships use of them) seemed to clash quite often with how changes would affect Caldari hybrid platforms. It occured to me that we should seriously consider uncoupling the two races by separating the weapon systems for the two races, thus allowing Hybrids to be tuned for Gallente ships, and Caldari focusing more on missiles as their primary weapon.

So let's clarify the roles they should have. The four main factions each have an ally: Gallente and Minmatar, Amarr and Caldari. One slow and armour based, one fast and shield based, and when they work with their ally's fleet, they cover all the bases (speed+tank).

Minmatar: (Don't consider them overpowered; consider other races underpowered.)
* Shield based ships, with some adjustments made on slots to promote these setups, though with more flexibility to go armour-configuration than Caldari ships.
* Fastest ships, good for kiting.
* Weapons that support this style of fighting.

Caldari:
* Shield based with little flexibility on slots to do armour configurations.
* Speed should be increased to make them the second fastest fleet, after the Minmatar, as their weapons should promote this style of fighting at range. Their better shields make up for the reduced speed of their Minmatar counterparts.
* Remove hybrid bonuses and dedicated hybrid ships, making Missiles the main weapon of the Caldari. For example, Caracal would have gank bonuses, Moa would keep its shield resist bonus but gain a missile ROF bonus.
* Buff missile baseline speeds by at least 25% (coupled with a decrease in flight time to maintain range) so they close on targets faster.
* Cruise missiles should have reduced firing rate and greatly increased damage so they can do very high alpha to increase their usability.
* Better drone capabilities as secondary weapons, and perhaps even drone damage bonuses on one or two ships for weapon variation.

Gallente:
* Armour based ships, with some adjustments made on slots to promote these setups, though with more flexibility to go shield-configuration than Amarran ships.
* Second slowest vessels of the four races, as armour based ships should be. Still quicker than Amarr though.
* Blasters should be similar in range characteristics to pulse lasers - overall range would be less so damage would be higher as a result.
* Railguns would be changed to deal alpha slightly less than artillery, but with more overall dps because of limits on damage type.

Amarr: (Don't need a whole lot of work to bring them up to scratch, and at least they currently have a clear role).
* Armour based ships, with little flexibility to use shield configurations.
* Slowest ships, relying on armour for survivability.
* Weapons that provide range to make up for their lack of mobility.

With these changes, the purpose of each ship should be much clearer, and the diversity of useful ships will increase. It's all a theory of course - I'm adjusting this main OP as the discussion progresses.

The retraining of a new weapon system for the Gallente would be an issue for players, and I like the idea of ditching guns altogether for the Caldari to get around this. Perhaps they could get better drone capabilities to provide them with some variation as a secondary weapon.

I don't think drones as a primary weapon for Gallente ships (to the extent of removing hybrids) would be great either. You were right the first time with missiles for caldari and hybrids for gallente

The fact that they work for drakes/tengus indicates that heavy missiles work fine, but obviously standard and cruise missiles could use some work (this is not news).

That's more about the awesomeness of drakes and tengu's than anything else. Caracals can't mount heavy missiles and have a decent tank in their present form either. Whats' proposed is changing Caldari ships over to missiles, so that say, a Rokh would become a cruise missile specialist with bonuses to speed and explosion velocity etc (just an example). And all the t1 ships are getting adjusted soon anyway so don't think about how limited they are at the present time, as such. Caldari could get better missile bonuses to make them more viable platforms, and Gallente would get decent hybrid guns, as per the OP above.

Aye, sorry, I should have been more clear on that. When I say fleet fit I mean a fit commonly used in large fleets, the only ones currently used are drakes and tengus. With the upcoming drake nerf leaving the fate of the drake uncertain, reducing all Caldari ships to missile boats leaves Caldari pilots with only tengus for fleets.


That's kind of the point though, the Rokh is currently used in some fleet doctrines. With cruise missiles it wouldn't be, ever. If you can find me a single fleet doctrine of any major alliance that uses missiles, outside of tengus and drakes, I will eat my words.

The only two battleships used in fleet for Caldari at the moment are Scorpions and Rokhs, and scorpions aren't there to do any DPS. Quite a few fleet fit scorps even have smartbombs/RR modules instead of missiles. Making the Rokh a missile boat means no Caldari battleships will ever be used in fleets.

Plus, if you remove hybrids from Caldari ships, what happens to the pure Caldari pilots that have hybrid skills maxed out?