Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Indeed, but some people here started a crusade for their right to have a pve ship cap stable with tachyon and an armor repper. So I'm trying to explain to them that 1) cap stability is useless ; and 2) with the proposed changes they will have a good tachyon option ON TOP of the already existing and performant option of pulse.

And about the balance of PVP, I already talked about it : the problem is that tachyon and 425mm railguns overlaps. Make one useful, and the other isn't useful anymore unless the difference between shield and armor are enough in favor of the loser. From a balance perspective, buffing beams is dangerous.

Railguns are still going to be viable for a few reasons:

• The Rokh is still capable of a really good tank. With fleet boosts (Damnation for Apoc, Vulture for Rokh) and the best tank I could come up with on the Tachyon Apoc without sacrificing DPS, the Rokh still comes out 30k EHP ahead.
• Being a shield ship, the Rokh is set up to complement alpha Maelstrom fleets. Tachyon ships really can't do this. And buffed beam lasers will definitely not pose any threat to the artillery's massive alpha, nor its entirely capless design.

The Apoc needs two powergrid mods in order to fit a rack of T2 tachyons, a meta 4 MWD, a meta 4 HCB, and a meta 4 1600mm armor plate.
And even then it needs at least one CPU mod in order to fit two T2 heat sinks, a T2 DC, another meta 4 1600mm plate, a T2 EANM, a SB, and a TC.
Even then it's pretty much impossible to hit 90k EHP.

The Rokh can fit everything it needs and hit ~125k EHP without needing a single fitting mod.

This is a comparison of the lasers and railguns. As you can see from this the Tachyon doesn't equate to anything on the list.
I am all for balancing lasers so it would appear one of two things needs to happen first.
Either get rid of the tachyon and balance lasers or add the equivalent tachyon sized gun to all the laser class beams.
People have been blowing smoke about balance and how unfair it would be to reduce power costs of lasers.
This is the current balance on Live servers.


Small

Small Focused Beam Laser I
10 km range
4 km falloff
7.22 activation GJ
4.00 rate of fire
3.0 damage modifier
0.1 rad/sec tracking

150mm Railgun I
12 km range
6 km falloff
2.34 activation GJ
4.25 rate of fire
3.025 damage modifier
0.0735 rad/sec tracking

Medium

Heavy Beam I
20 km range
8 falloff
21.67 activation GJ
6.00 rate of fire
3.0 damage modifier
0.033 rad/sec tracking

250mm Railgun I
24 km range
12 falloff
7.0 activation GJ
6.375 rate of fire
3.025 damage modifier
0.02415 rad/sec tracking

Large

Mega Beam Laser I
40 km range
16 falloff
65 activation GJ
9.00 rate of fire
3.0 damage modifier
0.0153125 rad/sec tracking

425mm Railgun I
48 km range
24 km falloff
21 activation GJ
9.56 rate of fire
3.025 damage modifier
0.01010625 rad/sec tracking


Tachyon Beam Laser I
44 km range
20 km falloff
95 activation GJ
12.5 rate of fire
4.5 damage modifier
0.01392 rad/sec tracking

TLDR: Until you get to battleship sized turrets there is parity between Beams and Railguns except for the abusive power costs.

No need to point out a known problem, but when you look at them on the ships that can fit them without sacrificing fitting space there's a huge difference.

I can't help that feeling changes like these are gradually making beam lasers and railguns more and more similar. There seems to be very little setting them apart other than their damage type, and that seems wrong.

Can't Amarr ships just be given more powergrid to fit the turrets they're supposed to fit? The Oracle already fits these just fine, it's the Armageddon, Apocalypse, and Abaddon that have trouble.

And to address the capacitor cost--I think the cost should remain high and if anything, Amarr ships should be given a smaller capacitor that regenerates faster to compensate (like a built in capacitor flux coil). It should be an even exchange and their overall capacitor strength should be similar to other battleships. It's not unfair if lasers hit harder than other weapons. Pulse lasers already hit like autocannons even though they have considerably higher range - a little higher dps might still be in order just because autocannons are sort of a low-damage weapon anyway. Beam lasers should hit significantly harder than railguns, like 25% harder. You give an Amarr ship a capacitor cost reduction, it should be the equivalent of giving another ship a damage boost. But if you give the Amarr ship a damage boost without capacitor cost reduction, then it's a powerful long-range attack ship that can't fire for long periods of time. Those have plenty of use too.

Consider these bonuses:
Abaddon
* 4% Armor Resists per level
* -10% Laser Capacitor Cost per level

Apocalypse - 20% reduced max capacitor and 25% increased capacitor recharge
* +10% Laser Optimal Range per level
* +5% Laser Damage per level

Armageddon
* +10% Drone Damage and Hit Points per level
* +10% Energy Transfer Range per level <--- cause why not? (boost to range of neuts, vamps, and energy logi)

Oracle
* +10% Laser Tracking per level
* -10% Laser Capacitor Cost per level

So here the Abaddon with pulse lasers will have similar damage output and tank to a Maelstrom with autocannons. It will have substantially greater range at the cost of tracking and damage type choice. If they are on-board tanking, the Abaddon's laser cost will make up for the cheaper armor repairer-while the Maelstrom pays more per-HP for its inefficient shield booster. If they are buffer-tanking, their capacitor will be fine.

The Apocalypse will have the highest DPS of all Amarr ships, and at extreme range. It'll come at the cost of tanking ability. This ship won't really be a brawler and even so it still might need capacitor modules just to keep the weapons firing non-stop.

The Oracle with beam lasers will have damage like a Naga with rail guns. It'll have less range and faster tracking. This will help split the Naga and Oracle, which are too similar.

My current biggest gripe is that our weapon systems have huge penalties (fitting for tachs; cap use for everything else) and aren't much better, or are on essentially equal footing with other weapon systems. If I'm going to have big penalties, then I want them to be kick-ass guns. if not, then bring the penalties to be manageable and not a non-starter for the race.

These changes are good but there are other difficulties with lasers that remain to exists. With upcoming changes every amarr BS turn into pure laser ship. This means that our ability to cause different damage types than em / thermal is almost completely taken away (I do not include geddon, and yes drones still exists). This will cause that amarr ships are easy to predict in paper-scissor-rock PVP which makes lasers not good favorite when it comes to PVP, eve PVP is about picking up right fights for you and amarr ships are way too easy to predict what damage we can inflict and what damage you should deal to us. This hinders us also in PVE, lasers are bullshit if you are not shooting amarr faction or their pirates or drones.

I considered this issue and I believe that there might be possible solve to this issue without breakign anything that exist yet making lasers not OP but more unique weapon system by modifying how the heat sinks work.

Right now Heat Sink II gives 10% damage increase and 5% rate of fire bonus. Boosting raw DPS by 15% including increase of cap consumption by 5%. This boost is to RAW damage. Which is far from the real damage applied to target. Usually its possible that big chunk of this RAW damage gets killed by tank resistances. T1 armor has about 65%-45% EM/thermal resistance depending on your skills making in most cases 50%~ of your damage sink straight to damage resistance. So only 50% of the true DPS is applied. This may confuse many people that does not consider damage types and resistances!

I consider current heat sink design bad why?

• It forces CCP to buff laser damage beyond other weapon systems to balance the applied damage to target. This is very bad for several aspects because simple minded people do not understand why lasers have higher raw damage just to keep up against the resistances!
• Every heat sink actually increase the nightmare cap use of lasers that is already enough

My suggestion how to improve and make laser system more unique and more balanced to other omni damage weapon systems (drones, missiles, projectiles) without screwing the damage type of lasers. Is that instead of buffing raw damage of lasers damage and RoF, heat sink should actually give lasers ability to penetrate through tank resistance. Making it so that it would give lets say 15% damage pierce to heat sink ii (stripping old bonuses away giving it equal 15% damage increase its now). So say your opponent has 50% damage resistance with piercing laser effective resistance would be calculated 50%*(1-(1*15%))= 42.5%.

Why laser resistance piercing is good idea in my opinion?

1. It brings lasers more in line with other weapon system, laser raw damage could be more easily to be balanced with other weapon system.
2. It would make lasers more viable weapon system in PVP. Without changing resistance balances of ships.
3. It would improve lasers in use of PVE. That lasers ship could be more easier to be flown against mob types with HIGH em/thermal resistance
4. It should be rather easy to implement
5. It would make laser system yet more in line with existing weapon systems but still more unique compared to other weapon systems in eve. Respecting the fact that Amarr is laser ship race.

Real values and formulas should be still be considered. This is simply an idea that should be still reformed and checked it would not overpower lasers!

when i first thought heard of the heatsink mod i thought it would be some sort of cooling device a la RL...
so with that in mind i would suggest that heatsink
- bonus to OH duration of lasers and reduces OH damage to guns
- cap reduction usage of lasers
-slightly higher damage bonus than normal to comp for losing ROF bonus

This way you're not forced to use extra cap with ROF increase .... makes the name make sense and helps with cap usage.

Well my intention was to rework Heat sink modules that already exists. Because I believe that pure RAW EM/thermal damage increase is not the way to go. It simply makes lasers to stand out from other weapon systems so people think its OP weapon system when most of our damage sinks into native resistances. It would be major changes and needs more thought for sure but I think that piercing / ignoring damage resistance is only way to go to balance lasers.

What comes to the RoF, current heat sinks should already compensate this cap use that the bonus RoF causes. I also consider it silly that medium slots are commonly used for cap modules, so when you fit AB, MWD, EW, whatever active module to your mid. You lose 1 med (possible 20% cap recharge, injector, battery..). And included to that you gain activation cost of the active item. So in reality we lose way more cap than just the inclusion that these active mods add to the fit. That makes it Amarr very difficult to fit any med (activated) modules due to cap use. Since you lose the possible 20% regen and gain cap consumption.