Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Is this a troll or are you a little slow today put in Fury or Faction ammo. Your using the shortest ranged missile in there.

I can't say that I've EVER seen a drake with 4 damage mods in the lows....3 at best....on a PVP drake, only 2...on a PVE drake only 2, sometimes three....but in PVE it's usually 2 shield power relays and in PVP it's a DCU and usually a powergrid or cap relay

I know that in a real situation the actual max range of missiles will be a fair chunk less that than EFT numbers, but the fact remains that at ranges comparable to those of other weapons missiles will often do much higher damage, and combined with the fact that you can't fly 'under the guns' of a missile boat (meaning they are also viable at close range), heavy missiles are the logical go to for a medium sized long range weapon platform - or in other words, over powered.

Like ever.

Yes they do higher damage and longer ranges....but if you get within the close range ammo of guns, you're argument drops big time. If a drake is within, say 10k of any LR gun, you switch to short range ammo and vastly improve your DPS.

Even at longer ranges, simply by fitting a 10 aft to each ship, the DPS of all those gun ships will be about 50 dps higher than that of the drake. Now if you take into account for tracking, therefore that real situation DPS, it should equal out. Now if you drop the drake by 20% damage reduction...then you're looking at 80-90 dps higher...with your weaker, long range ammo....since the Drake is the slowest...you can close the gap and switch to short range ammo and just obliterate the drake. Bottom line is that in solo PVP....the drake's only chance is to warp off.

Cap cap cap.

On a multi-repper myrm you cap boosters are your life, since there is NO turret bonus regardless you use ACs generally. You can easily use electrons, but it gets dicey on weather or not you have the cap duration to survive to kill a drake, you can tank it, but you don't have all day to break his shields.

Either or.

...and there is nothing in this game more fun then an AC mach hotdrop.

This post is wise and mostly true, and definitly worth the time to read it, though I don't think the HML changes are driven by your point 2 ou 3 (player perception or game direction). The drake is not only seen in blobs, but everywhere, from solo pvp to large scale, as is the tengu.

So yes, these changes won't change the HML proficiency to large scale combat and shouldn't, nor they should affect the caldari proficiency to large scale combat in your so called projection-buffer perspective, though there is evidence of HML having a balance issue IMO and some of the numbers shown in this thread are one of them.

There is also the problem of all the rebalance pass in the history of the game and the game mecanics which evolved with expansions. So there clearly is some balance issues.

But indeed, there is also the problem of incentive to fly in small gang, though factional warfare seem pretty good for this.

Not only solo.
Like go with 1 vs 1 picture.
Most Caldari missile boats i flew had to warp off upon having the enemy close in, else die. Otherwise, my dual nano was faster... :)

Then, let's say, 5 vs 5.
I am 110% sure speed still is a big factor.

20 vs 20......
Well, i do not know for sure. I'd take a ham drake and try to be close i guess.

I can only repeat what I have written on the german forums (eveger.de) already:

Switch Explosion Velocity and Explosion Signature for HMs and HAMs and you will automatically buff HAMs slightly while nerfing HMs slightly.

All short-range weapon systems are better at hitting smaller and faster targets than their long-range counterparts. That is also logical, since ships that have a lower combat range, often have to deal with smaller opponents coming close to them while ships with long range weapons can often destroy opponents before they are close or at least force them to withdraw. Just for HMs and HAMs (and CMs / Torps... Hint to the Devs: that is one reason nobody who can do the math uses CMs any more) its quite the opposite: HMs hit at long range and with a crash booster and a rig they hit everything from battleship to frigate quite hard. If you have seen PvP movies of some drake/tengu kiting-gangs, they shred assault frigs and even ceptors in seconds.

Almost noone uses HAM-Drakes atm, because HMs are just better at *everything*, considered the fact that they can keep firing and firing and firing even while burning away, they deal - over time - a LOT more damage than any HAM setup which is only better on paper. Making HAMs the short-range system that has more punch and deals better with tacklers and HMs the long-range system against slower and bigger targets is the way to go. You have gone that way for turret based systems and it works well. Just repeat success instead of trying to doctor around with bandaid solutions.