Ships & Modules

Earlier this week (like after/during the US holiday memorial day) I noticed that TDs had a bonus to 'explosion velocity' now they do not? Am I crazy, or did CCP change it with one of the recent smaller patches?

Well this was on Tranquility. Should have screen shot it. Only way to tell was to look at the bonus, the tracking distruption matched the bonus to explosion velocity.

How about some game balance where you can hamper missile effectiveness just like you can with turrets?

And you can use angular velocity and range to affect turret damage, doesn't mean tracking disruptors shouldn't exist. So you're just very much whining about a change that might affect your playstyle.

You mean the game balance where they would also introduce missile accuracy modifiers akin to tracking enhancers and computers, effectively rendering all missile platforms able to throw the curve and raise their damage application on smaller ships - enabling things like Torp Ravens and scaling their damage up on anything from frigs to BC? That sounds like a brilliant plan to a mechanic that relies on linear application rather than chance.

Yes, that is definately a 'balance' we'd all love to see... cough.


No, of course, this is a completely onesided interference with a dumbfire system. Like placing a fat kid alone on an empty swingboard.

This ridiculous approach is just another completely backward attempt at trying to deal with a problem that doesn't exist.

The HML (Drake) is only considered overpowered in an element or paradigm that the developers themselves continue to feed and nurture; the blob.

It's a reliable damage projection on a low-cost, immobile and high-buffer platform, that completely rely on other ships to: maintain hostiles on grid, maintain hostiles in range, stay alive and pin down to apply accuracy. It's only powerful when piling numbers exceed intricate execution of all ship roles (or active modules), and/or exceeding the invididual or collective ability to afford extending numbers. Essentially, when you have more numbers than the other side have buttons to push.

"Big awesome fights" is the problem, no self-deceptive notion of 'balance'.

They can continue to introduce these self-deceptive changes that will only serve to removing balance where it exist, yet not do anything to deal with the percieved imbalance.

This was the case with ECM, still is, and will be the same with HML.
They do not yet understand the concept of scale impact.

In short, this change will never be effective on a large scale - only on a small scale - or more importantly (applying the scale-perspective of Malcanis' Law) only to the benefit of a large group when dealing with a small group (more Drakes, more numbers; feeding the blob, consolidation of forces in the game and AFK empires).

You're not crazy and it's a bad solution to the HML problem.

you're talking about dumbing down the game, and you defend missile use?

Right.


I'll say again, the fact that you don't have tracking issues up close, lost dps due to ammo/range/falloff issues makes up for any and all downsides there may be to missiles. Are they useful in fleets that mostly consist of turret users? no but that is the only downside they really have.

Once again, i don't think you understand the mechanics.

Any reliable mechanic also have reliable counters, counters you can only do so much to deal with. Missiles never have perfect transversal mitigation but they also never have non-existant mitigation. You don't commonly see Leviathan, Phoenix or Raven blapping, do you? Any relative movement will mitigate the damage of a missile (here lie the strength of sig-speed, which for example make 100mn setups popular or made the budding AHAC trend popular; something else that i bet someone like you would like to 'nerf' because you don't understand it's concept or how to deal with it); whereas on turrets you can adapt relative movement to make larger guns score hits on smaller things: things you are not 'meant' to hit (ie., you are meant to hit it, but i'm applying a dumbed down logic here to illustrate the point for you).

You're keen to consider all such things exploits or overpowered.

These are components that have popularized with the "blapping" trend. Though they have always been around and good groups have always explored them. It's what made the Vaga so powerful in the nano- and post-nano eras. It's what make the Talos powerful in small-scale settings now. The Talos have no larger issues dealing even with frigates, two magnitude below their turret resolution. It comes from the fact that a good Talos pilot will understand the "tracking issues" much better than your random Frigate pilot. He knows that they come with the upside of always having a chance to score hits - and when they do targets will feel the full brunt.

It's essentially the same chance-based function some people complain about when it comes to ECM.

I keep comming back to the same examples in various context because they all relate; missiles, turrets, EW.

How about tracking enhancers and computers making my explosion velocity better and my range greater? There is no balance when there is no opposing mod, for damps we have sebos and Sig amps, for ecm we have sensor arrays and eccm, for tds we have tracking comps and enhancers but those DO NOT do anything for explosion velocity, the only way balance can be had is if ccp implements the Td buff, my bomber better be able to fit tracking enhancers and target painters and alpha frigs....do we really want that?

P.s. yes, I also believe we need modules that reduce Sig radius to counter target painters too.

- Show me where I stated that missiles have no drawbacks.

- apply 2 TD's with tracking script on any turret ship and see how well it does against a same size target in a short-medium range scenario when there's a decent amount of angular going on. Result, it won't hit for any useful amount at all. Would you try to shoot a smaller target you're left with a 1% wrecking chance
- apply 2 TD's with range script to turrets and it loses all dps in a ranged scenario. A Naga with spike loaded and a TC will have issues getting to 80km if hit by 2 unbonused TDs instead of doing 250+ optimal without being TDed

That's pretty much "shut down" don't you think?

You don't want TDs affecting missiles because "missiles already have so many issues". They don't, they're fine (bar some slight rebalancing for some types).

Your Crow vs Vaga doesn't help your case, it helps MY case. Missiles are easy to use, generally have OP range (not counting unguided) and are not easy to counter outside being fast which also applies to turrets so that point is mostly moot (avoiding the angular vs radial issue).

All you have done is use lots of words going "waaah, don't touch missiles". I'll fully concede that turrets have range enhancing mods that missiles don't have, and I'd fully support TC/TE affecting missile range (if guided missile range gets a good nerf as that's WAY too high, even now) and THEN allow TD's to affect range expl. radius. You just want it easy and will go to any length and "logic" to keep that status quo.