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Instead of blindly nerfing heavy missiles, the drake or other simple but mindless nerf approaches, maybe its time to realize that a more productive countermeasure would be to put in counter agents to these factors.

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Instead of blindly nerfing heavy missiles, the drake or other simple but mindless nerf approaches, maybe its time to realize that a more productive countermeasure would be to put in counter agents to these factors.

CCP already put in the defender missiles (and even upgraded them a bit this last year). but isntead of such a silly defense system which requires the same launchers to defend against it, and then ONLY for the ships carrying them..... why not put in a true fleet support ship with a dedicated role to counter such threats. A T2 gallente ship could be introduced which provides point defense for fleet assets within a certain range, against incoming missiles launched at further distances. i.e. if a heavy missile has to travel more than 50km, it can be picked off by the fleet defense ship. This would force heavy missile boats to a closer range, at which point HAMs would start to become a viable substitute.

Other defense ships could also be introduced to counter other weapons types then too down the road, and even slipped into a few of the PVE events to spice things up at times.

The other option I could see would be putting a minimum arming range onto the heavy missiles, say 10KM which could be pushed down with skill to about 5km.

There are better solutions which would grow the game available than simply nerfing things into oblivion, please realize that role based focused is not the same as everybody is exactly the same and things just look different. Please dont try to dumb down EVE in a poor attempt to broaden your market.

I'm actually hoping this never happens. Blindly cascading through the T1 bonuses to the T2 hulls, allowing T2 hulls to keep their improved resists and fittings, and adding a role bonus on top will end with the same outcome we have now. T2 hulls will continue to be the ships of choice because they can do everything the T1 variant can do, do it better than the T1 can do, and have additional capabilities for their intended niche.

I would rather see the T2 hulls have to suffer some kind of drawback in trade for their specialization similar to how most T2 modules, while generally being more effective than the T1 version, are also generally more difficult to fit.

Since you've mentioned Cov Ops frigates let's examine them. The rebalanced Exploration Frigates are getting bonuses to scan probe strength as well as reduced cycle times for analyzers, codebreakers, and salvagers. Cascade those bonuses to the Covert Ops and add the Cov Ops additional scan probe strength and flight time bonus, plus cloaking device fitting bonus and you get ships that preform all exploration activity as well as their T1 counterparts, can scan down those sites faster then their T1 counterparts, and can warp to those sites while cloaked. Given those advantages why would anyone chose the T1 hull over the T2, except for lack of in game skills?

If the purpose of T1 rebalancing is to make T1 ships a viable option to T2 ships, then T2 ships will need some kind of penalty for their specialization that make T1 ships seem attractive. If the rebalancing is just to make T1 ships suck less until you have the skills to fly T2 it will certainly do that, but very little else will change.