Ships & Modules

We're comparing T2 vs pirate atm. Pirate ships are supposed to be balanced above T2. Compare the vindi vs the mach in popular mission formats (rail vs AC), and you'll see that the vindi has much better damage projection. Past 30km or so, it's no contest.

People are too afraid to fully committ to battles anymore and attempt to sit at long or medium ranges to be able to GTFO if they have to.

With a hybrid blasterboat you have to committ at 5km and go balls deep to win. Otherwise you can just sell you blasterboats cause they don't work well with "gotta be able to escape too" fits. It all or nothing at knifefight distance. Get close fast and force enemy to stay committed in battle with you.

Unfortunately, since the range is short, it means you take a few punches in the face while still getting close enough to apply your damage.

Are blasters ****? No, just a different tactic which alot of people are afraid to use anymore.

For missions I have been flying both a T2 blaster proteus and a rails vindicator, and sometimes a blaster mega when I was bored.

The shield vindicator for example can do about 750 dps using meta 4 weapons faction antimatter. You can also do almost 1000 dps with T2 weapons if you are fully skills. And add drones for close range ships and frigates.

The proteus can really eat up everything at close range with blasters. And its fast enough to avoid almost every damage put against it.

So hybrids are mostly fine from my own experience.

I'd like to add to this, since it sort of chime in with what i spoke about on the last page but didn't explain properly.

It's not really just small boats, i'd rather turn the argument and say that the problem today is largely isolated to medium turrets. Large rails are not super-awesome, but neither are small rails. They do however have a fair balance now between advantages and adaption. You can slap rails on most bonused frigate or battleship hulls now with some desired effect, while those with specificly trendy bonuses have adapted extra well.

That's why the Rokh make a good example. It has always been alright at sniping but the damage nudge, fitting and upkeep improvements made it useful at midrange between it's weapons system and tank bonus. The Rokh can still push well into sniping ranges, but now also meddle in the 50-100km range and offer alternatives to HML, Pulse and Artillery platforms. It's not outstanding, but so were none of the other before so it offer up yet another player in that specific setting; a player that can adapt it's range-game as well (push the Drakes, outflank the Baddons and reach-type the Alpha), while at the same time also be beaten by the same contenders (Drakes are still cheap, Baddons are still em-th heavy have more buffer and better DPS within it's range, and Alpha still scale up better against the BS sig). That make them viable and balanced in theory at least, and provide a good example of how "hybrids" as a collective term have improved toward gameplay trends.

On top of that you have rising trends fuelled by recent changes that create additional appeal (more snipers introduce a larger target pool in your specific niche; dreads, dread-support, blapping etc), while other aspects of hybrids are dually punished in the same sense, or buffed and then nerfed at once . That's why you see less medium hybrids.

Closing with the usual broad perspective critique:
At the same time it's a continued profileration toward these things, streamlining them, as the environment they are set to play in become more and more staple alternative ways of playing the game is becomming more and more scarce. It's similar to how the Tier 3 BC can be well balanced ship-ship within it's class while at the same time being completely imbalanced class-class. It's different environments or 'scales' and also completely inline with the ongoing trend of dividing the sandbox rather than attempting to balance the entire sandbox as one. The thing i keep sperging about from thread to thread since i don't want instanced gameplay with cliques that hardly ever interact. The notion that someone is a typical "empire", "lowsec" or "nullsec" player assigned sweeping attributes is like poison to a true sandbox MMO, especially when you begin to cater to the people who wish to polarize that divide. They don't want a sandbox, and not an MMO. Redesigning ships for a specific setting or scale is apart of that so i will keep pointing that out here in ships & modules.

I dislike the fact that this game is beginning to tell me more and more how i should play and where i should be depending on what i enjoy to do.

You shouldn't design the game around trend or social construct, that's a house of cards.

Hybrids are very viable after the buff. Railguns have their niche on small ships for extreme long range kiting (Corm and Harpy reach 100 km), blasters are as good as they were for solo work or small gangs- Talos anyone?

I am finding myself flying mostly hybrid ships actually, even though I use all weapon systems equally well.

I think railguns are still lacking a bit of punch. Their dps is only marginaly better than arty and worst than beams until you reach 80km where they start to become not worst than the others.

I think a 3 or 5% rof boost would do wonders : they would then have a place outside of super long range sniping. Arty would have the alpha ; beam would be the best up to 60-70km, but cap intensive ; railgun would have rate of fire and have the best dps at 70km and beyond but would still have a poor alpha.

The difference is that kiting ships can generally escape the local-spiking dogpile whereas dishonor drones only really work well when only one dude is pointing you.