Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This does actually happen, the shorter range the crystal the greater its portion of Thermal damage from 7:5 EM to Thermal ratio using Multifrequency down to straight EM damage with Radio.

-Conflag is a straight 50/50 EM/Thermal split
-Scorch is 9:2
-Gleam is also 50/50
-Aurora is 5:3

So while there is some variation in EM to Thermal ratios the proportion of Thermal damage never exceeds 50% of the total and I can see a case for being able to vary this ratio more dramatically perhaps even going to heavier Thermal than EM damage on some crystals and maybe for not having the Thermal ratio be a straight line downwards as range increases.

As to whether or not lasers should get selectable damage type I agree somewhat with playing with the EM to Thermal ratio on crystals but not to adding Kinetic or Explosive crystals regardless of whether or not such a thing is available in reality. Since the EVE universe is strictly speaking entirely digital with rules that are subject to revision we can simply say that your real world laser doesn't work by the rules of the universe you are attempting to apply it to. (So please everyone stop citing real world stuff as a justification for your posts as real world examples have no bearing on the game being properly balanced). As many others have said in PvP people tend to have fairly uniform resists and so there is rarely a huge disadvantage to using one damage type instead of another which is why blasters/rails rarely suffer from having only two damage types as well. In PvE if you're doing poor damage to rats then switch to another ship with better weapons for the task at hand.

As for whether or not the Oracle has drones, seems an odd thing to bring up I assume this is so you can get explosive damage from warriors because I seriously doubt you're after hornets, in fact I suspect some of you would load up on ECM or Hobgoblins for highest dps (*cough* thermal) given the opportunity. In fact my only real complaint with the rebalance efforts has been the proliferation of drones with many cruisers and frigates gaining significant drone bays and/or bandwidth. Exceptions ought to be made for drone ships (Tristan, Vexor, Arbitrator etc.) as these add flavor to the line ups, but why does a Heron (a Caldari probe ship) need 35m of bay and 15 bandwidth exactly? Non-drone based cruisers and frigates should have minimal to no drones. I see no problem with the best frigate defense for larger ships to be bringing along frigate buddies or set up some cruisers to kill frigates (Rapid Light Missile Caracal for example) though I will grant that battlecruisers should start seeing some drone ability and battleships slightly more again. I'm all for making more ships viable in pvp but I think we can draw the line at things like a Heron being combat effective due to large number of mids for tank/e-war and sufficient drones to make itself a threat even if some drones are lost. Cruicifier is great for TD now but why should it get enough bay for 9 drones? The 15 bandwidth, ok fine, but it should be a 15m bay if your drones die guess what...you're now TDing...you know...filling your role rather than being a drone dps ship with a TD bonus. These are not the only examples but illustrate the point.