Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Target painters are epically good! The problem is that unless you trawl through your own client logs you can't see what an incredible effect they have on damage application of all weapon systems - particularly when using large weapons on a smaller target.

An extreme example of this is easily* observed when running escalated c5 and c6 sites with dreads etc. 3 webs on a BS allows you to hit it (some of the time). 3 webs and 2 target painters means you hit it for full devastating effect.

* ignoring the very not-easy process of getting your POS and fleet set up in the WH, and the even more difficult process of getting enough willing, capable people into the right ships at the right time... sigh

Actually, not to disagree with you - but you get more bang with rigors than target painters. Let's use a Caracal for example. Using 3 rig slots for two medium core defense field extenders and a medium anti-EM screen reinforce you get a +30% bonus to your shields (+639) at the cost of a +15% signature hit (18.75m); you then lose an additional medium slot for a target painter. Now if you instead went with three rigors, this improves your explosion radius by 45% - and works automatically on all targets (with target painters you only gain the damage application to those targets). Take the medium slot you would've used for a target painter and instead substitute a large shield extender. That gives you a +223% shield increase (+2625) for a token penalty of a +20% signature hit (+20m).

Another thing is with Target painters, they reduced the optimal range and increased the falloff range. In effect this means that the usefullness for LONG range missiles is pretty sketchy at best.

At all Lvl 5, you have an optimal of 45 km with target painters. HML, the first long range missiles that truelly benefit from painters, have a range of 63km on an unbonused ranged hull, at that range, the effect, similar to a gun shooting in falloff is already reduced significantly. Not to mention, at this range it also suffers from missing.

45km Range optimal is medium range at best, a few cruisers, can reach that far already with short range guns, it definatly puts you in range of drones and all of the "long range" guns.

In order to make the Target painter usefull for long range guns, youd have to use range rigs, wich uses up your rig slots, wich as stated previously can be put to much more effect with rigors.

So in order to get the desired effect out of Target painters youd need a ship with a bonus to optimal range, currently only 2 exist the Vigil, and the Hyena.

The Hyena is a wonderfull ship, but, because the unbalance of Webs, and the more practical uses of those, most Hyena pilots, and fleet commanders for that matter will insist it brings webs. So we effectively have the Vigil left. Finding a competent Vigil pilot that also has max targetpainting skills is pretty rare to say the least. To Make the Vigil work in fleets designed with missiles it needs to have 2 signal amplifiers, 2 target painters a mwd, and 3 partical dispersion projectors. That leaves you with 2 midslots, on wich one you want to put a cap recharger to make it stable, and you have one mid left for a small shield extender. you have 2 highs left, but not the power to fit in 2 light missile launchers, wich btw only have a max range of 42 km, so your stuck with either defensive rocket launcher systems, or fit it with drone link augmenters to get your drone control range up.

But the endresult is that you have a paperthin Vigil going 3.5 km/s with a lock range of 133km, and 2 targetpainters with an optimal of 106 km with a 51% increase in sig radius. (Give him a web drone for crying out loud!)

In anycase such pilot is often better off in other ships like Rapier or Huginn, wich automaticly fall back to webs

Did i mention that the dps increase of a maxed out HML cerberus is only 20 paired with this thing vs frigates? (both ab and mwd)
(but an impressive 150 vs cruisers, bringing it to its max dps)
Intresting note though, the Typhoon, with both precision and Faction cruise missiles is out dpsing the cerb, has twice the effective hp, only 200m/s less speed, and 2.5x its alpha value (and is only 4 off its maximum dps vs cruisers)

so were getting a TP nerf now how will that change to our evil plan of creating the op missles system ?

seems CCP is doing whatever possible to increase the importance of webs on every possible ship type by nerfing eerything else - no love for kite warfare

Oh interesting! Thanks for bringing this to my attention. The omnidirectional tracking link change is effectively a nerf for ishtars and dominix for long range work (probably a reasonable change). It's also therefore an indirect buff for cruise missile ships (or at least tips the balance of choice in the direction of their selection).

They still need to stop 1 person from controlling all the sentries in a fleet though...

nothing rly changes to my beloved cruise golem besides that not the 3rd painter now has some uses
but sudenly my 2 tp hml cerb got somehow worse - thats a strange feeling when you know its allready bad and the second moment it gets even worse CCP never stops to amaze me

So... did you miss the part that target painters can OH now giving an additional 20% bonus? And please tell me how you intend to hold a target at the original range of tp? I welcome the tp change. An extra 20% sig bump in exchange for module management is agood trade, especially for missile boats. Your normal longpoint ham caracal hits out to 30km approx. Optimal on tp is 45km, whats to be sad about? 1.1 is sort of a phantom buff to missile boats, least if you use a tp.

So.. did you miss the part about the 20% buff to tp when OH? How does that not help damage application? If you mention because it lost range, then i will repeat... how do you intend to point and hold a target at 45+ km with a t2 point caracal or bellicose?

Your second statement... no. We don't need a 45km web/point on unbonused hulls just so you can solo with heavies. Heavies need a buff/tweak, that's it. We don't need a new module or crazy theory to hold targets at ridiculous ranges.

Requiring a T2 ship to hold targets at long range is a challenge for all fleets. Not just missile fleets.

Stop whining.