Player Features and Ideas Discussion

minamatar is already mix of minmatar (projectiles) and caldari (missiles) so we are not going to see pirate dread that would be same than minmatar dread was before with dual weapons.

They tried, but the best they could do was the Rattlesnake.

My suspicion is that Guristas might be made into pure missile slingers when the DEVs get around to rebalancing the pirate faction ships.

It's a good thought but they used to be that and CCP always wants to try new stuff even when not necessary.

Why not? There's a ship that requires Amarr skills and shield tanks.

That said:
Angel Cartel: Gallente-Minmatar
Blood Raider: Amarr-Minmatar
Guristas: Caldari-Gallente
Sanshas: Amarr-Caldari
Serpentis: Gallente-Minmatar

And now:
SoE: Amarr-Gallente

So, of the 'pirate' factions, four require Gallente, three Amarr, three Minmatar, and two Caldari. The other things that stand out are that now there will be more armour than shield tanking pirate ships, and that of the six faction ship types, one has no damage bonus (Blood Raiders), ones does guns (Angels), one lasers (Sanshas), one hybrids (Serpentis), and two drones (Guristas, SoE). No pirate ship lines does missiles.

Clearly we need a shield-missile line, and clearly it should not involve the Gallente (who are not known for either of these features), and should involve the Caldari. That means Minmatar-Caldari or Amarr (Khanid)-Caldari. The problem is that the Caldari already provide many shield-missile ships, and that it's hard to justify needing Amarr skills (or Minmatar, for that matter) for such a ship.

Perhaps the reason behind what you are talking about is that we have two Gal-Min ship lines but lack Cal-Min one (angels could be one, but it's too late to do anything about that).

If not for that we would have a perfect pattern with central symmetry where every race was linked to 3 pirate lines, depending on your "secondary" race(es).

They should just add the Equilibrium of Mankind (EoM) ships in the game. They fly Amarr hull with shield tank and railguns. This would both balance the amount of pirate factions (currently we have two Gal/Min factions, so adding a second Amarr/Cal would make sense) and allow them to rebalance the Sansha ships into armour tankers (it's pretty weird how every Sansha rat armour tanks, their implant set boosts armour tanking and they have no facton/officer shield tanking mods, yet the player-owned Sansha ships shield tank).

But no DPS or real application bonus, and a low number of launchers. No, that's not a missile boat set up. It's a "let's pretend they have missiles" set up.

Honestly, I really like this. Split weapons, with one being drones, is... Well, a little awkward. Especially because lol drones.

I'd really like to see the Gila remain exceptionally tanky but turn into a really solid multipurpose pure missile ship, same with the Worm and Rattler.

Though then you'd have two Scorpion variants with huge tank and missiles...

You could just have Serpentis or Angels change from Gal-Min to Min-Cal.
Lore explanation would be they have found that they can make their ships easier to operate/cheaper to build/whatever by changing some of the technologies in their ships, so are revamping their fleets. Sponsored by hard liners in Caldari, whatever.

Give a couple of months notice and people have time to train a new BS V if the guns stay similar. And with the new change incoming for gun training a new gun spec wouldn't be that long a train either if the gun types changed.

It'd be a lot more of a dramatic rebalance than most ships, probably more on level with what is currently being done to Marauders, but they could do this without having to introduce a new group to the game. & possibly without even introducing new ships, just some changes to which race gives what skills.