Ships & Modules

Maybe you should stop trying to be cap stable.

Because the Apocalypse is intended for long range extended seiges. The Nightmare and Abaddon are both intended to be shorter range higher DPS where your guns don't have to run continuously for a longer period of time.

It's erroneous to compare 650s with heavy beams. A more appropriate comparison would be 650s with focused beams or 720s with heavy beams.

*******

I just spent 6 hours on sisi running deep null anomalies in a Nightmare. I've managed to clear a blood haven only after I downgraded to Standard L crystals. I tried many things. X-L booster with safeguard rigs, large booster, full CCC rack, semiconductors everywhere, mix of this and that. I most certainly run out of cap and cap charges sooner or later. Usually much sooner than later. I felt I could never rely on this boat to chain one anom after another unless I dump so much ISKies I might as well undock a thanny. I figured I must have been doing something terribly wrong but then I tried the same with a Machariel. 550m/s perma-running a large booster and 3 invulns all day like a total baller and never afraid of anything. Not even a single Tech 2 rigs either, unlike nightmare which was quite decked out. Remind me again why it's OK for a Nightmare to have an insufficient capacitor? Because it's "designed" for it?

Because the apoc used to get a bonus to cap amount, meaning it had 6000 base cap, less than the abaddon or the nightmare. When CCP was buffing amarr, they changed the bonus from 5%cap/level to the range bonus it gets now, and decided to move the cap bonus into its base cap, rather than simply leaving it (so it effectively has 3 bonuses, when compared to the old apoc)

Basically you only THINK you're complaining about the NM/abaddon having low cap, when in reality it's the oddly HIGH cap of the APOC that's out of whack. What's more is that comparing such an arbitrary stat and making the claim "it seems odd we have this abberation of a tier 2 ship having significantly better stats to a tier 3 or pirate faction ship." It's one stat, and one that's far less important than ehp/dps/any one of another hundred stats on ships that pretty much all require cap injectors anyway.

Lasers are SUPPOSED to be cap hungry, you got one ship whose specific set of bonuses/buffs makes it the exception and you act like the entire race needs a buff. You're like the guy in the other thread who thinks torps need their own version of tracking enhancers.

The nightmare ***** all over the regular Amarr BS so hard I can't (with a straight face) argue for buffing it.

Problem is not the ships. It's the cap use of lasers.

#1) Its a Pirate BS, it should crap all over the regular T1 BS's.
Consider the Machariel, it is vastly superior to any regular Minmatar BS.
The vindi is vastly superior to any Gallente BS
Same with the Bhaal (which as the cap of an Apoc, and awesome webbing and energy neut/Nos range)
The Rattlesnake.... well its tank is certainly superior, as is its drone capabilities.
Pirate BS's should be more powerful than the regular T1 ships, the question is how the nightmare stacks up to other pirate BS's, and if its as much of an improvement over the regular hulls as the other pirate BSs are

#2) Does it really?
At PvP, its far too expensive and likely to be primaried. Its certainly not got the PvP chops of a Bhaal, Vindi, or Mach.
At incursions, sure, ok, its pretty good, but so is any pirate BS (except the Rattler)
At lvl4s/PvE.... well its a shield tanker, doing EM/Thermal damge, and its most vulnerable to ... EM and Thermal

Amarr BS's have highest EM/Thermal resists natively, and in PvE in Amarr space go up against rats that deal EM and Therm - so an armor tank is natively better against laser using enemies.
Ratsare often weakest against the same damage type they deal, so with this in mind, a shield tank is not what you want on a laser boat for PvE - the Bhaal would beat the NM at PvE.

Better cap, higher base EM/Th resists, and the webbing bonus is much better than the tracking bonus for hitting small stuff that gets in close.

The NM doesn't stack up well against the Bhaal for pretty much any purpose, nor the Machariel.

Pretty good at incursions? It's arguably the best at incursions, with the Machariel being the only ship that provides any real competition for that title. And as far as the Bhaal being better at PVE... I can't tell if you're serious or just trolling at this point. In any event, the Nightmare is a fantastic PVE ship - rather, I suspect you're just doing it wrong. Actually, I'll confirm you're doing it wrong, because you already admitted to buffer tanking your PVE nightmare and relying on a rattler to tank for you. Get a decent fit for your NM, replace the rattler with something that does DPS, and blitz missions properly.

If you're in a good incursion fleet, the enemy frigates die before they get into web range, making the Bhaal/Vindi web bonuses a bit superfluous. For missions, you're welcome to play however you like on your laptop, but that doesn't mean that ships should be balanced around your laptop playstyle. The Nightmare is already one of the finest ships around for PVE (both incursions and missions) and does not need any buffs.

I wasn't saying it needs a buff because of my playstyle - I'm just saying I don't think buffer tanking a Nightmare is "doing it wrong"

Its how you do it in incursions, its how people fit their ships in PvP (although I don't know what PvP nightmare fits are like, because I doubt its used often in PvP), and it works for lvl 4s.
The harder types of PvE, I'd never take a ship as expensive as the NM in the first place.

I've also said I'd be open to nerfing the cap on the Apoc.

The Bhaal has uses beyond webbing frigs. In OTA competitions where the other fleet has vindis, or any situation where you think you have a range advantage, webbing the deltoles/Augas at a distance where your fleet can hit it for near full damage (such as with scorch) but ships of the other fleet can't, is good.

I don't think you'll argue that the Bhaal doesn't have more small group PvP potential - the nightmare on the other hand will be neuted out in short order, and it won't do too well at all.

Aside from PvE where the NM is just dealing damage, I think I'd rather have the Bhaal because its got a better cap, the armor tank is better against EM/Th PvE enemies, the web bonus is better than a tracking bonus in most cases, and the neut bonus is again very useful (can also help with NOSing in PvE).

I don't see why the Bhaal needs to have a better cap than the NM, and I certainly don't see why the Apoc needs to have a better cap.
I suppose they could nerf the Bhaal and the Apoc cap, but I'd rather bring other BSs up to the Mach level, rather than making the other BS's even more pale in comparison to the Mach.

In incursions: NM and mach are equals.
In PvP, mach is much better than NM
In PvE, mach is much better than the NM


*Note: I also have a Mach, I want to get a Bhaal, but my income has dropped precipitously lately