Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is very true the drake is so ubiquitous as it's only real option for caldari kill mails other than the tengu which is very expensive how many raven kill mails do you see?

Again, when dealing with long range fights which happen at 60+ km, drones are a non factor, but at close range you definately have a point and the rebalance of HAMs should reflect this information.

Also, the fact that the raven may be a bit underpowered isnt a reason to allow the drake to be overpowered.



Look at the changes to the Caracal and the Kestral, theyre both ROF bonuses.


Matari long range weapons are just as locked to explosive-kinetic damage as you are to kinetic missiles.
In fact the matari guns lose a bit more than 25% of their damage if they switch off of tremor at long range


I completely agree, if the fight starts at 0, the brutix will make you cry, but then again the brutix is worse than useless if the fight doesnt start at 0. Youre absolutely correct that the brutix is king of its domain. Its just too bad that nobody ever enters its domain, because nobody ever has to.

It reminds me of Jack Sparrow and Will Turner's conversation in Pirates 1
"in a fair fight i'd beat you"
"that isnt much incentive for me to fight fair is it?"

The brutix says, "at 0 km ill kill you"
everyone else says "ok, then we'll just never get that close"



That is not relevant. The fact that it is totally balanced in some situations does not change the fact that it is totally unbalanced in other situations.

That's like saying that supercarriers before the nerf were totally ok because they were fine solo, its only when they got in huge groups that they got unbalanced (which is true)
but guess how everyone used them?

Transversal is a useless measurement. Transversal is just linear velocity * angular velocity, and the linear velocity component is irrelevant to your tracking. Do yourself a favor and replace transversal with angular velocity in your overview.

Angular velocity is the unit which your guns' tracking is measured in to begin with. If you see 0.05 rad/sec angular in your overview, and you know your tracking is 0.06, you know they are within your tracking, regardless of how fast they're moving or in what direction.

This doesn't account for signature radius and resolution of course, but even so it's still a more useful stat.

You can develop rules of thumb to take care of those cases where you're sitting at a ship class smaller than your guns, such as "if they're using a MWD, your tracking numbers are accurate and if not, divide by 5.

I think the main thing people expect out of the BC is to be nerfed again, even after the Heavy Missile triple-nerf.

CCP rarely hits lightly once with the nerfbat and puts it down, and your proposal is no different.

So I guess not being nerfed again on the Drake hull would be a good start as far as "what exactly are you guys hoping you'd see from a BC balance pass that would change your opinion of this missile proposal". A slight buff maybe even to slightly counteract some of the missile nerf maybe even. Let us keep at least close to our barely adequate DPS (yes, yes drake haters -- I know that at many ranges it is fairly superior, but that is the balance of the weapon system). Also agree that the other missile based hulls need a look at. Nighthawk is actually a good ship, but needs help on the PG/CPU side. Its not true that its dead, just enfeebled by bad balance. People still make good use of them anyway. Caracal, sure.

Honest to god, I really don't remember any sizable commentary about the OPed heavy missile before this proposal. They were mostly known as the only missile system that didn't suck. What little I did hear was solely focused on the maximum range (and true, that damage was still useful there). Missiles were so much the second fiddle to the winmatar artillery, but with better range flexibility. So this proposal was quite the shock to myself and I think many others. News to us Caldari that we had been the elite all this time while thinking it was the Minnies.

You are quite right that the other Missile systems needed some work. I like what is proposed for the other systems. I can only presume we are holding off on the Cruise and Torps until we get into the BS range.

I guess maybe we, myself definitely, had begun to believe that CCP had developed the philosophy of fixing the broken things and leaving the working things more or less alone. But I guess that may have been wishful thinking.

The rest of the rebalancing has been truly superior work, with very few exceptions. Some tweaks needed here and there perhaps, but very happy with it. Which makes it harder to come to grips with the seemingly vindictive and incomprehensible heavy handed nerf proposed here. I do hope you keep your commitment to stay open minded and look at the feedback (threadnaughts of unhappy campers and schadenfreude) and hopefully we'll get some good data from future tests.

Please do stay open to dialing this back, before this becomes your Waterloo (or perhaps a better analogy would be Unified Inventory to your CCP Arrow).

The forums are crying out in warning, will you blindly walk off the cliff like many of your CCP brethen before you?

Sorry if my prose gets a little purple. I am trying to stay calm and constructive, avoiding rants. This all just seems so wrong and it is frustrating, and even depressing, to see it drag on without a positive resolution. I know it has cast a pall over gameplay to the missile slinging native squids in Caldari space.

So I'll try to close on a positive note: Cheers to you CCP Fozzie for at least continuing to read this monstrous thread, and even keep posting from time to time. I respect that. I do know you have a good head on your shoulders and I usually agree with you, or at least see good value and insight to your point of view. I do hope you can pick out the several gems of posts in here to help you make EVE an even better game.

o/

See the reason I avoided using any TEs or TCs is because I dont know how CCP is going to have them affect missiles, so for an apples to apples comparison, im not using them on the gun ships either.

This is operating under the assumption that it helps explosion radius/velocity as much as it helps tracking and thus 2 TEs on the harb = 2 TEs on the drake

so to get my numbers, i was using a tracking of .01031

I can see with faction microwave your chance to hit is far better however i was of course not using TEs / TCs to be fair for not being able to use TEs TCs on missiles, but i believe my point still stands, guns can do less damage against a really good opponent, but with missiles, the best pilot in the world cant mitigate any extra damage.

Rokh fleet whomps all over Drakes, you don't even need long range ammo, antimatter does fine. Tengus require mid/long range ammo, but Rokhs still do well there.

HAM Drake wins 1vs1 against 425mm Cane if you stay as far as you can. Remember that Cane only does that 700+ dps at AC optimal range (which is whopping 3 km). Force Cane pilot to use Barrage and you are safe.

You'd be surprised. Equally-skilled Drake should beat both Brutix and Myrm in shield gank configurations even if the fight starts at Void optimal.

Active-rigged dual MAR fits are much harder to model, but the Myrm can certainly win and the Brutix can very likely win too. But these aren't particularly common fits these days.

Isn't a cane significantly quicker?


Also - who was right in the harby vs dramiel argument?

Saying a long range fit Drake will lose if it begins within close range of a close range fit BC is hardly staggering. The fact that it even has a chance shows there is a problem.


The numbers have been posted and end the debate. The HML is overpowered.