Ships & Modules

I know perfectly well how a 100mn ab fit works (a proper one in a proper ship), but you dont migate a lot of damage, due to the way transversal works if you are able to hit them they can hit you, you also are to slow to really nano with it. The only damage you migate is that of a webless drake but you still arent fast/agile enough to hold it down (i.e if it swtcihes directions and heats you have pretty much no chance of holding it down).


Yes the 100mn ships can work but you dont get a similar performance out of them when you fly them without links/implants and even then they are worse at pretty much everything besides killing off frigates, webless drakes (which you can pretty much do in a void mwd talos anyways) and stationary battleships (which you pretty much never encounter). You also get the ability to fly at full speed at a 90% angle to a blob where you will tank quite a lot but you also wont track a thing.

What you lose and what imo is fatal to the ship is that it now loses to most cruisers, armor crusiers are now as fast as you with way more ehp and better agility (so they can click aproach web you and sit at 0, straight up winning the dps/ehp race) where a normal talso can kill them while they are aproaching as due to its agility they are a lot harder to catch (if you land 20km of a crusier in a ab talos you need forever to get to sufficient speed while a mwd talos can almost instanly speed up) and whats even worse, you loose to most shiled kiting cruisers in a straight dps/ehp race, a omen will win if it manages to start the fight under 30km!

And a cyna/vaga will now win vs you pretty comfortably.

Also from what i have seen in your videos (yes now i watched some of them) you simply blob people all day long.

And i have yet to see proove of you flying outbumbered/outshipped (and no ganking noobs in frigates is neither), and to say it again you cant kill competent 100mn tengus in your talos

And leave my corp out of this, it has nothing to do with my opinions.

Liang why do you always have to ruin every discussion thread with your irrelevant epeen bullcrap? This is going nowhere.

Yes please stop with the i tanked this i did that nonsense, its quite annoying. I once took a 10mn hookbill (with a 10mn slicer) and fought a 40man fleet and won and the next time they brought 3 rapiers a falcon and 4 blackbirds to kill me. Does it prove anything or does it provide anything usefull to the discussion or does it indicate that 10mn hookbils are awesome and are a better way of fitting them compared to a mwd or a normal ab? No of course not.

And neither does you i killed this and i tanked that!

Actually you did contend it was a bad fit and you've consistently misunderstood the amount of damage mitigation the fit has. You keep saying that medium turrets track it fine, but the truth is that they don't. I even cited a specific example of be getting literally primaried at 20km by an entire enemy BC fleet. I've got a lot of practical experience in this fit and you've done nothing but make completely wrong assertions about how it flies and how it works. For instance, that it doesn't mitigate damage vs medium guns. You don't understand it - and that's fine. But do try not to tell me about how it works, eh?

-Liang

I obviously have to explain it to you because you're a terrible baddie that keeps making consistently wrong statements. "If you can hit them, they can hit you". "Medium guns track it just fine". "It takes forever to get up to speed". Look, I get that you really want to refocus the conversation around 100mn Talos fits because you feel they're weaker than your garbage 10mn fit, but that really only works if they are weaker.

And the funny thing is that sometimes a 100mn Talos fit is weaker than a 10mn fit. You're right - it makes trade offs. It trades raw EFT damage for applied in game damage. It trades raw EFT tank and agility for actual in game damage mitigation, scram immunity, and range control. But there's a few times when you're actually able to bring raw EFT damage to bear - and in those cases the 10mn EFT damage EFT tank fit works better. But those aren't the kinds of situations that would typically have ever involved Vagabonds.



I'm not sure that your redefinition of the term nano holds much water. The Vaga has always been the flagship "nano ship", and it never "speed tanked" as you are using the term. It's always used speed to stay at range and kite tanked. Maybe this is where you're going wrong, because there's very few actual nano ships by your definition - maybe a few frigs, the Ishtar, and 100mn Tengus?



The reason that the Talos (and Tier 3s in general) don't obsolete the Vaga is because you aren't using it like a Vaga was ever used or meant to be used. The bar you've set for "obsoleting the Vaga" is so low that Battleships easily cross it, for crying out loud. Maybe you mean to say that the role the Vaga fulfills has gotten less important over time - and to a point that's certainly true.

But really, I think the primary culprit there isn't the Talos or Tier 3s, but rampant 50% mobility bonuses given out by gang boosters. The ability to easily get up into the 2.5-3km/s range would be a lot more valuable if pretty much every ship in the game couldn't be pushed there.

-Liang

Hmmm... "X outperforms Y, nerf it!" Kinda like: "His stuff is better than my stuff, take it away so I can feel good about myself again."

Love these threads. So Juvenile.

One problem with your kiting MWD Talos fit is exactly the same one you were describing earlier. Even armor tanked cruisers are faster than it is now, and some of them actually have the tank to take it and damage projection to punch back. Once they land a scram or web on you, it's over for you. The Talos in question is in the "nano" battleship speed range and has absolutely no way to control range. You can say that this is mitigated by links and implants, but that street goes both ways.

Really, the Vaga has always been a conservative kiting ship - a Vaga pilot always tended to make sure of his own safety first and then pick off the stragglers. What made it so frustrating to fight was that it was so hard to catch and kill - a feature that's shared by the 100mn Talos but not by the 10mn Talos. I suppose that's why a large part of this conversation has revolved around your misunderstandings of the way 100mn fits work - because they potentially impinge upon the role of the Vaga. I don't think it's really true, but I can see the argument for it.



I guess that this is a perfect summarization - in your own words - of why we should never trust your word about how the Talos obsoletes the Vagabond.

-Liang

Is that not what any technology advancement does? Make the former obsolete, and often for less cost? Perhaps the real issue is the cost of manufacturing the Vaga/Cyna to begin with or, likewise with tech advancements, the Vaga et al are improved.

Maybe it is time for CCP to introduce retrofitting, where an existing ship can be improved - at a cost, mind you, to keep up with the improvements of technology.

A few comments:
- You seem to have neglected the web. Yes, it's possible for something to get within web range but generally they're counter webbed and it isn't but a second or two before you're speeding out of reach (again).
- It doesn't take 18 seconds to reach top speed. It takes just over half that.
- Yes, you have "overwhelming DPS", but plated and trimarked armor cruisers are faster than the stated Talos fit. Everything that you're saying makes your fit work works for mine as well, except I'm not crippled the first time someone closes to within 15km of me.

-Liang

Ed: Also, if Vagas are extremely easy to catch and kill... then so is your Talos. Because your "overwhelming DPS" isn't really going to save you.

Finally!

That comment helped so much.

It's even easier to catch and kill the Talos, and that's when you hit my side of the discussion again.

That is the problem.


Scope: The ships

The problem with the Talos isn't that it's "super OP and nothing can kill it" (no such ships exist in EVE imho). The problem with the Talos is that it is too offensively allround competent for it's "position" in the game. It breaks a fundamental part of overall ship balance and game design in EVE centered around rock-paper-scissor-lizard-spock.

It's problem is that it has malbalanced features which ultimately make people up-engage less and thus shoot each other less on scenes of relevance; because EVE is not built around equal numbers.

The Talos die even easier than the Vaga to what can be described as the "bottom" of cost-effect in the game. The Talos itself is part of that "bottom" and it creates a situation where more Talos is overblown better than fewer Talos. More Talos is overblown better than fewer Vagas. More Talos against most things in the game is much better than Vagas are at down-engaging. It's worse at up-engaging but better at down-engaging, which is the problem with it. That's horrible design.

Do you get what my sulky rants were all about now Liang?

It is counter-emergent design. It's easier to "gank" but more difficult to "goodfight" with, so we impose stupid limitations on ourselves such as limiting our regional attention ("lowsec-for-lowsec-players"), target pools ("everyone is a blob") and module interaction (ECM-hate etc.). We get more risk-adverse. Larger groups will blap your support and then control you with theirs. You will have to pick fights with larger caution (risk-adversity) because repairing an ill-advised engagement (disengage, regroup) is more difficult. Simply being in the same system put you at more risk, risk of being camped in etc.


Scope: All ships

It's just a terrible design-idea to have powerful glass cannons of such immense offensive prowess that eradicate counters-to-trends by enacting counters-to-counters-and-trends, while they cost next to nothing (tech I fit, yet still maintain such powerful features) or still maintain a tier 2 BC-level cost-effect performance (when tech II fit) and outperform more expensive ships in similar roles by a wide margin because they are twice as good at the "role" but worse at the "peripherals" that enabled functionality.

The same goes for recent changes to Logi-cruisers etc. It's just too powerful tools at no expense and while they will be fun these first few months they will ultimately stagnate the game over the comming year(s), because they can not contend with the "bottom" same as the Talos. Just like the Talos is worse than the Vaga in it's peripheral features, so is the Scythe worse than the Scimi at similar features. So they inexpense with the "bottom" but they have worse performance and will remain in some play-at-war level that create stagnance by obscuring the more expensive options, and tear the rift between different player groups (there is less incentive for players in Amamake to do something else).


Scope: Player reception

You may personally enjoy or be content with staying in one specific area and interacting with one specific subset of content in an isolated pocket of peers. However, it is detrimental for the game at large to have a polarisation of it's gameplay. It's a sandbox, we're all meant to share the sandbox and interact. Talos #uck interaction, so i hate them.

Hating them doesn't stop me from owning them or using them though, that would be shooting myself in the foot. It's similar to large coalitions arms-racing (bi-literally, as the limb) despite today gradually realizing the implications of it.

CCP are reproducing everything that was wrong with the Drake (while nerfing the perfectly acceptable sides of the Drake and not dealing with the true problem that hull and class was facing). I know it sounds very doom-prophetic, but essentially: They're turning everything into the "Drake" (not the Drake, but the "Drake", the roots of all issues and complaints regarding it's popularity). Take a score of Thorax with Execs and you will contend with any Deimos-Oneiros gang out there (they don't wanna fight you, because the risk-reward of doing so is completely up-ended). You will scare the risk-encouragement out of the smaller-ganged Proteus pilots out there creating content and so forth - but you will not contend with the proverbial "Drake" or "bottom". Wether that bottom is a sizable fleet of Drakes, Talos or Baddon/Rokh/Mael, or blap Dreads/Carriers. You do nothing to shake up the hegemony of buffer-projection, in fact, you obscure the few options that had potential to interact with it out-of-box - same as the tier 3 BC did.

Tier 3 BC also had a couple of months of shaking up the game before everyone caught on and incorporated it. Now, small gangs in those ships limit their target pools more than they did before: because they "die more easily", as you said.

Do see the larger implications now?