EVE General Discussion

I never did, I rarely fly blasters solo above the frigate class, mainly for all of the reasons I listed above.

425s Rails are going to be pretty crappy because the optimal on 425s is something like what 48km? Bases tracking is 0.009! x2.5 damage modifier. So plus 45% tracking for the "boost" and hull bonus and you have a whopping 0.013 tracking before pilot skills, I'll tell you from experience that you won't be able to hit a nano-drake at 35km that has ANY transversal going


To get ANY real damage out of it you have to basically forget any tank (remember Tornado has more tank) fit a SeBo and two TC's if you can get away with it plus MWD, three magstabs and suitecase in the lows.

....so great, you have accomplished a Vexor with a hell of a long range. Talk about drake bait.

Fit blasters and you have largely the same issue, you have to tank and you have to armor tank, because now you need MWD scram a TC because changing scripts is a HELL of a lot faster than changing ammo and a cap booster unless I miss my guess.

Oh yeah, and 1600mm plate, EANM and suite case are mandatory, so a pair of mag-stabs and you are done....all for less DPS than nano-cane as well as less tank.

I guess swarming caps is one thing, but you can use a BS for that without being a one trick pony.

So these new ships are to be niche ships to be used in whelp fleets in null against the evil the super caps floating out there. I guess I won't be having one in my hanger then.

So.. there we go....
supercaps can not kill subcaps...
Bs/bc can not kill frigs ??

So according to the latest SISI data dump, all the tier 3 BATTLE CRUISERS lost some speed, HP and had some of their bonuses turned down...

Most notable of all was the Talos... Losing it's web bonus AND drones...

Either CCP Tallest is preparing one hell of a hybrids boost iteration or gallente specced pilots are in for a long cold hard winter...

In case of the Talos, the initial web strength bonus was unfortunately contradictory with the previous goals, because when combined with its dronebay and blasters, it gave this ship the unique capability to dispatch smaller ship hulls significantly more easily than it should have been able to. It also lead to other issues, like acting as a cheap, effective tackle, put it in a dangerous spot to compete with Serpentis faction ships, or limiting this ship weapon systems to blasters only.

For being EVE players ourselves we know the concept of pinning anything in web range to a dead halt with 90% webs before melting faces down with 8 Neutron Blaster Cannons II to be incredibly fun (had a lot of joy with tier 3 battlecruiser first stats myself during the internal play tests ).

However, as designers, we cannot in good conscience release a ship whose bonuses obviously go against the role goals it is supposed to follow. We understand that in this case it unfortunately created a lot of disappointment, but sadly these things are bound to happen when taking first pass data as granted.

With these stats, why should I even bother to use the Talos or the Naga, when the Tornado and the Oracle are simply the only ones that really work. The Tornado and Oracle work in that they use Range and speed to compensate for their low tank along with great mid to long range weapons. The Talos and Naga are stuck with Rails, which are still crap to use even with the 10% buff, Beams and Artillery is still simply better. What do rails offer me that make them worth using over Beams and Artillery? The answer is simply none.

The Talos with the loss of its drones and web bonus along with hitpoint and speed nerf effectively gives it little use in comparison to the tornado and Oracle? Your 1300 blaster dps will not help when your hitpoints are barely greater than a thorax, especially with the close range engagements that you will be fighting in. If you are fighting Battleships, you are dead, battlecruisers, still dead, cruisers, good luck hitting them, frigates, don't bother. Using rails are a joke, their range advantage have little meaning when you have Pulse lasers with scorch and Autocannons with barrage that reach pretty damn far and do far more damage.

The Naga will just be another inferior Raven/Rokh. Ever see many people use those in pvp? Yeah Right. Cruise missiles are pretty much crap. Rails are crap for the reasons stated. Torpedoes are too short ranged and require a web and painter to be of any use to Battleship and battlecruisers. The Naga don't really have any use from what I can see, unless you like pos bashing.

With little surprise it is all about Amarr Victor and Winmatar. Gallente and caldari are a joke.

For some reason, this thread appears to be full of people pissed off that I haven't waited till december before providing feedback. Yep. How silly of me, I should have waited till point in time were the developers had already poored hundreds of man hours testing and number crunching these ship concepts, the point many weeks before initial ideas had been locked in, design paradigms fixed and the production plan committed, I should have waited till the point were these guys were in knee deep in the final sprint AKA "UberCrunch" with perhaps a dozen other really important none ship balancing things to do. Yep, I shouldn't have made a comment at the point were the biggest course corrections could be made, or at the point alternative idea's could be entertained with enough time for Q&A before launch.

Silly me.




@CCP Ytterbium
I like the underlying concept, however.
Eve, as you well aware suffers from underlying "existential" problems - some of which are tolerated by most of us without even realising. Others, like the "Gallente" problem are not.

1) You have designed ships with the survivability of T1 cruisers - Which is OK in the context of "Tornado picking off frigs and kiting most things at +50km away" with autocannons that have 2-3x more the effective tracking of Blasters at optimal+falloff BEFORE tracking enhancers are even considered.

But it's not ok in the context of a ship that, if fitted with blasters, will be doing the vast majority of it's dirty work within 30km. Why? T1 cruisers are just too slow, for the EHP they have. Survivability is the major driver of ship purchases, with Speed and EHP being the primary factors in player perception. Signature is important, but the ability to enter and leave a targets area of influence as well as damage mitigation trumps it in every real world scenario.

Compile raw data into charts and plot the global usage of interceptors since the nano nerf, ask the question "why are nano canes faster than some nano destroyers?".

The problem? The only cruisers readily flown are the ones which achieve near frig speed, or able of +BC EHP. I don't fear for the Oracle or Tornado in this regard because there weapons systems have enough in their tank to overcome this issue through shear force of will. Talos and Naga? Not so much and that leads on to...

2) Gallente... They never fitted in with the traditional class roles - to work they had to dominate all ship classes - by extension providing them with an equivalent survival factor to ships that could run away. This has been continuously eroded by direct nerfs, and what was most striking about the Talos change was that this concept was not apparent. It seems we're still back to pre 2009 thinking, the one in which ships could be a few 2% away from each other either behaving nearly exactly the same way (but not close enough to mean that players didn't cry imbalanced over the last few percent). You've demonstrated first with the Moros change (staggeringly after all that was debated about the naglfar) and now your doing it with the Talos.


Enough!

Races can only work if they feel and behave differently. The more quirks you can provide, the more differences not just in stats, but in tactics, the better. And with the Talos, and Gallente in general, it doesn't seem like your anywhere near close to breaking free from the war of percentages that drives every major balance cycle - fact, your probably fuelling it.


But yeah, thanks for engaging - like I said, the concept of T3 BC's is good, however I strongly suggest you take the above in to suggestion.



I'm going to ride this expansion like a roller-coaster, so expect vigorous debate at every stage.

I really don't understand this thought process. Eve is a sandbox game and i feel that it isn't CCPs place to tell us the roles of the ships they give us