Ships & Modules

It's true, I do enjoy disagreeing with Liang Great way to kill some time and there are few people on the forums as anal in their replies as I am ^_^
That said, I should point out that I was referring moreso to the PL reference than the liang quote in it, the quote that it ACTUALLY invalidates is this one:
The oracle is used with more than reasonable success despite being a 3 med ship, meaning your assertion that 4 mids is absolutely mandatory in this ship class is provably false.

Hmmm... this seems like it'd be really hard to work into the overall strategy you tend to see in smaller gangs - afterall the ability to "spread points" and hold more of their fleet down while applying DPS is highly prized. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that I'm skeptical it can work without the ability for 1-2 people to mass tackle a mostly immobile fleet (Basically, without bubbles).

That's why I tend to put such a heavy focus on that web - even with gang bonuses you're looking at 41km overheated point range... which isn't very far when a 10km/s Ares comes roaring in for the tackle. When they sweep in for the scram, its so important to be able to apply that web and drop their transversal.

-Liang

Heh, I guess I'd still have to block the same guy several times anyway.



Hmmmm.... this has all the markings of the old Rokh vs Abaddon debates. I guess the core difference would be the Naga having ~37.5% more DPS (1.25 [dmg bonus] * 1.1 [hybrid buff]) and it actually being feasible to fit the Oracle that way. On the bright side, both ships seem to have their rabid supporters so something was done right.

-Liang

I disagree the Naga is balls useless. When on a POS bash and only the dreads out-DPS your Naga, you know something's a bit...shall we say...lulsy?

I think that Liang's problem is the fact he sits in Amamake all day pew pewing with frigs - which is fine, because I suck at frig v frig shtuff and each to their own. This skews your appreciation of "what must be in a small gang ship" toward needing tackle, webs, blah blah. This is simply not true.

As others have pointed out, you have the option of rolling a tier 3 BC as a long-range DPS platform with tacklers holding everything down. This works well vs, eg, nanodrakes where you want to get to 80km++ to lay DPS on them as they run away from your tackle, and be basically immune to them. You cannot do this with blaster BC's (though Scorch and Barrage are still viable).

Even in a gang of 4 ships, 3 x nanocane 1x sniper (Oracle/Naga/Tornado; Talos sucks) is a very viable gang. The nanocanes provide the pursuit and tackle andyour sniper, if he's a competent pilot, is there just to apply DPS. Unholy amounts thereof.

Second point....how effective is it, really, when everyone is told to "spread points"? In every situation I've seen, there's alays a couple of ships that slip the net in small gang engagements - and you only ever kill everything when your enemy herp-de-derps. Its impossible, eg, in 8 vs 8, for everyone to reliably spread points to all other 8 people all the time (it can randomly happen but the chances are minuscule).

So. Given you won't get 100% points 100% of the time, if someone gives up point/web to double or even triple their DPS and run a pure gunboat....what's the issue? It means you can DPS down the enemy faster, freeing points to lay on the others.

The one place I would not want to take a tier 3 was into an assault through a wormhole. Camping off a wormhole as a sniper, fine, but jumping into balls-touching range with no tank, to a gank-and-tank WH brawl? Suigay.

I only fly the Talos so far (training large projectiles for the Tornado), a bit mixed so far.

My blaster Talos hits like a Megathron but it tanks like a Brutix and is slow like all armor ships. Can gank the **** out anything we would have killed anyway but it always gets primaried first and dies in a fire in any real fight. My 425 hurricane (scram or long point, depending on what we need that night) has almost twice as much EHP and goes a smidge over 2K overheated - using ECM drones to break webs (if there are any) it can still usually get away even if it's tackled close up since hardly anyone in nullsec carries scrams, at least down where I live.

My midrange 425 roaming setup has similar range and alpha to my artycane but twice the DPS. But even at a dead stop it can't track anything smaller than a battlecruiser that's moving at speed, even with a tracking bonus and a tracking enhancer, and it's still slower than the artycane. The people we fight with like to blob us and being highly mobile and able to volley tackle reliably like a 720 'cane can is very important and easily worth the decrease in DPS.

As a super long-range sniper it's OK, but we don't run those fleets very much and I don't like to solo camp in sniper fits.

The t3 BCs were actually pretty well thought out and balanced while still keeping them unique amongst each other.

That said it's definitely a PvP ship and has little place in PvE, 'cept maybe dual boxing missions and stuff.

Also, reading this thread I could see the set-up to bait Liang waaaay before it happened. Shame on you guys, can't you get your jollies in game now you have to bait someone of the forums too There's a difference between Forum PvP and just being petty little female dogs.

4.5/10 for success but fail at making it so obvious.

Ok, now I'm determined to find such a place for them! One of my alts uses a failfit Apoc that seems like it was trying to be an oracle before oracles existed (8x tachs, 4x heat sinks, paper tank). It's mainly useful in missions where everything spawns at 60km-90km so i can still use multifrequency, but have plenty of time to pop things while they have low transversal.

The 200km figure was based on the paper sniper setups PL have been fielding, though tbh it should have occurred to me that most people like to fit some sort of tank to their ships

That said, a naga with 3 MFS does less DPS than an oracle with 3 heat sinks, and the oracle can push its optimal out to 180+ (with nearly 50km falloff) using the PL fit and aurora. The end result is that the oracle ODs the naga out to about 200km (the edge of its lock range) and the only way for the naga to get the same DPS as an oracle with aurora is to use navy lead, bringing its optimal down to about 150+60 (and even then, it's a tiny bit less DPS),

Mind you now that I look at it more closely it seems that there really isn't that much of a difference to begin with, even their speeds and align times are close, maybe THAT's why so few people are complaining about the balance of these ships (aside from the airheads who honestly think a torp naga would be anything other than useless)

For fleet work the Naga is arguably the best of them.

Mixed naga/tornado fleets are pretty wicked to. If you have ever seen what 25 pulse oracles does to a carrier....its pretty impressive.

Talos is meh for a lot of the flying I do, but the WH guys friggin love them.

apart from the high scan resolution tier3 BC's have, i think they're pretty well balanced in terms of dmg/EHP/speed

But i dont like the idea about ships with oversized guns ( makes me think, ccp lost imagination ) but this is my opinion... i for one hope, we wont get any new ship with oversized guns ever

li