EVE General Discussion

"But wait!", you say, "The other guns aren't broken! Just hybrids are!"

Yes...maybe not entirely but you are correct.

What I am going to attempt to do here is to redefine the way that the three turret based weapons of EVE could possibly all be re-tuned to better suit all their existences and balance them out.

Range:

First of all I think all three of the gun types should have similar potential ranges to work with but HOW they work in those ranges can be different. This section is rather simple and is similar to what we know and love today.

• Hybrids: Balanced between optimal and falloff.
• Projectiles: Very little optimal, very high falloff.
• Lasers: Very high optimal, very low falloff.

Tracking

As it pertains to tracking, you have to be careful with how things were built. For instance, speed can counter act low tracking.

• Hybrids:
• -Rails: High Tracking
• -Blasters: Low Tracking
• Projectiles:
• -Artillery: Low Tracking
• -Autocannons: High Tracking
• -Lasers: Mid level tracking for all

Here is my reasoning. Looking at rails and arty I figured that rails should have higher tracking and projectiles low based on their sizes. For instance 425mm rails compared to 1400mm arty. What I thought is that the sheer size of the arty should make their movement very difficult and thus make their tracking very low. While the railguns could be argued to also be very large and requiring lots of equipment for the magnetic firing systems I still think that the size factor of arty wouldn't scale the same as would thus lead to MUCH worse tracking as larger sizes. In this plan for tracking, however, I could also accept lasers and hybrids swapping places based on the arguments that lasers need even less equipment and are thus smaller and easier to move. In terms of blasters it is assumed that most things that are using blasters are built up like a brick and thus will get in the face of their enemies, web the **** out of them and take a shotgun to their face. For this reason I propose that Gallente and Minmatar switch places in regard to their ewar styles as it pertains to points and webs. Besides, the fed navy already have the best webs, having the Gallente specialize in them would just make more sense. The high tracking speed needs to still be on the autocannons for the sake of Minmatar's fast skirmisher style of attacking. Anything otherwise would likely kill off ships like the Vagabond.

Damage and RoF

This should be rather similar to what we have now with only a few tweaks.

• Hybrids:
• -Rails: High RoF, Low volley
• -Blasters: Low RoF, High volley
• Projectiles:
• -Artillery: Low RoF, High volley
• -Autocannons: High RoF, Low volley
• Lasers: Balanced RoF and volley

This combined with the proposed changes above should give each of the turrets a distinct feel. It would give PVPers a blasters and arty for high volley and suicide ships and it would give them rails and ACs for high DPS ships. Lasers could then be used to fill in any other gaps in the middle.

Wrap Up

All of the above styles to turrets would assume that ships are re-balanced to suit them. For instance giving blaster boats tracking, buffer HP, and web range bonuses, giving rails and autocannons damage bonuses, giving arty tracking bonuses, etc. It is also assumed that they are balanced to fit around each other. Lasers and Hybrids should get a slightly higher base damage to compensate for their forced damage types and things like the high tracking of rails and low tracking of arty would be balanced against each other of course so that you don't have rails tracking as much as autocannons and you don't have blasters tracking as slow as arty. The ranges can also be tweaked a bit too. While the trend for projectiles will be "low optimal, high falloff" they can have the "short range" guns be a bit closer to having more falloff and the "long range" guns having a bit more optimal. This should already be something that we're used to in projectiles and I recommend something similar to the other two gun types.

And so finally that's it. Go ahead and throw your crap at it. Good ideas? Bad Ideas? Why?

-Xerc

P.S. +1 to CCP's web team, draft saved this topic from certain doom.

There's a few issues in here:

1) You didn't split pulse and beam lasers
2) Low tracking short range weapons (as you've suggested for blaster) means they won't ever be able to hit anything without heavy manual piloting. A single web would shut down a blaster ship.
3) High tracking long range isn't necessary as distance mitigates transversal velocity
4) Hybrids are balanced for optimal/fallof, should they not also be balanced for tracking and balanced for damage/rof?

This is a discussion that needs to happen (though it should be in the F&I forum, not GD), but not the right conclusions.

These changes only enforce the status quo, they don't fix anything. If anything these hybrid changes will make them even less useful than they are now.

ALL GUNS ARE FINE.

Now fix the ships.

Not quite so bluntly but yes.

Rails would be compared to beams and arty in regard to how fast their RoF would be, what their range should be and what their tracking should be. They will be DPS guns like ACs but they will be far from the same.

Something is wrong with guns?

Nothing needs to be done. Remove the cycle animation from the turret and make it glow like when you activate a cloak. Do it for cosmetic reasons because a one second cycle would be annoying as hell. Then make the volley every second.

Nothing needs to be seriously changed in Damage Calculation. 1 Second Volley and no halting of the Laser Animation till you turn of the guns.

Have you ever actually flown a blaster boat? 'Built up like a brick,' 'get in the face of their enemies,' and 'Blaster' don't belong in the same sentence. It can be fast, it can be tough, or it can melt face; pick 2.

As for giving the shortest range weapon the worst tracking... Yeah, that's gonna work well.

Gallente finally get an edge to put them back in the field as a valid combatant and this guy wants to **** it all up; in the General Discussion no less!

Apart from this outrageous insult, let me explain something (and this was explained to me by other players) which is more likely to happen; bringing Hybrids in line with everything else (which is now has been, thank you CCP) or bringing everything else HIGHER than the Hybrid fix to put Hybrids back in their perpetual state of neglect?

Further more, and let me put this in big letters so everyone can see this:

• You have never flown anything with Hybrids and yet you complain about the other turret types?

Go fly something that is truly broken, like Gallente/Hybrids -before- the fix, then come back here with your opinions.

No this guy has never flown a hybrid ship.

What I've seen flying blaster boats is that armor weighs them down and thus makes it harder to catch anything. So I decided why not take the problem and turn it into an advantage by making them into complete bricks and then giving them web range bonuses to be able to reach their targets. Further more I'd decrease the raw DPS that blasters do and increase their range with the whole "optimal/falloff balance" so that they might start doing damage sooner.

It was also pointed out that I would accept making lasers fit this role instead since Amarr seems more like the "giant slow moving brick of death" than Gallente do.