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CCP Tallest, any plans on further developing the hybrid changes before patch day so they can actually make an impact come Winter?

Please:

1) increase base web strength to 75% (for t2)

2) Change speed penalty for armor rigs to a penalty to warp speed only

3) Increase sensor damps by 20%

4) remove penalty from all t2 amo

Yes indeed. I was just about to post an update.

* Hybrid turret reload time will be 5 seconds.
* Hybrid ammo will be 50% smaller (and turret capacity reduced to keep same number of charges)
* Blaster damage +5% (except XL turrets)
* Railgun tracking +5% (except XL turrets)

..also, Hail falloff penalty will be 25%, not 0%.

feels like an inch worm but slow and steady we are getting to where we need to be...

any idea when this will be put in sisi?

I'd like to request some more information on why you choose this way of balance. this request is out of pure curiousity. i know it is a really hard task to try touching weapon systems and ships and i know it is the least thankfull of all design tasks. Some more wording on this scary job to get to understand the decisions is what i would like to get.

CCP Tallest, can we still get a tank increase for Hybrid Caldari ships to at least bring them in-line with Amarr tanks, given they are the lowest damage, slowest ships, largest signature ships in the game? It is all they need to balance them.

Pweety please :)

I was hit my head this morning so bear with me here.....

The community has stated clearly that Blasters should not be homogenized into the arena of Acs & pulses regarding range and that they should remain up close (only) weaponry so perhaps instead of buffing the overall stats for all blasters on a flat-rate basis maybe this idea would be viable on Gallente Hulls only:

Regarding Damage:
For each blaster fitted:

• +3% damage--8 turret slot ships potentially receive a 24% damage bonus and so on....
• +2% tracking---the more turrets you have allows the internal Gallente targetting systems to work more effectively blah blah...
• -1% cap usage--same as above reasoning basically....

Regarding speed:
For each blaster fitted:

• +1% base speed
• +3% acceleration when mwd or AB fitted--effectively 24% accell for 8 blaster fit ship to be able to get within blaster range fast.
• +2% cap usage when MWD or AB is on-- effectively prevents perma mwd/ab the more blasters fitted

Regarding a Web bonus( I know, this may embark into the minnie realm a bit but....)
For each blaster fitted:

• +2% web range--an 8 blaster ship effectively has +16% web range...not much but would help enough.
• ----this amounts to a Megathron/w 8 blasters and a faction 15k web having a 17k web range after bonus applied. Not a lot...but may be the difference in a fight.... and sets Gallente apart from Minnie web bonuses

Regarding Drones:
Since Drones are Gallentes' forte maybe give them specific drone bonuses instead of just saying 'MAOR DRONES PLZ!!'

Only in a Gallente hull,I suggest a:
+2% drone range per BC/BS level
+5% effectiveness for combat utility & logistics drones per Gallente BC/BS level


I realize these changes may be overly specific or too abundant, but they DO address the problems Gallente have with:
Damage, tracking, and speed ,and in a slightly different way than just 'OMG buffing/nerfing' across the board.


ty for your time.

There seems to be a general agreement between most pilots on what a blaster boat should do and what the main problems are.

Concerning the first iteration of hybrid changes, I think at least the following should be done:

• Blasters need more damage at point blank. This could be tied into AM and Void instead of the guns.
• Blasters might need more tracking, especially at point blank. Void for example should not have a tracking penalty, give it a bonus.

This is directly tied to the role and usage of blaster boats.
A fast incoming blaster boat needs tracking to compensate for the movement. I know I know, you don't need it if you go in a straight line, but that's not the fastest way to get next to a target because of the deceleration phase; at least that's my understanding of the approach problem. Also if you'd go in a line and bump (by accident) you might get a range and tracking problem again.
Then again you might say that more tracking is unfair against small ships, but think about the role of blaster boats: There is a very limited death zone around those ships and if small (fast) ships go there it's their choice. I'm not sure about the best balance here; Scram and web always mean that an afterburner ship has the mobility advantage inside the death zone and a faster ship with it's own scram and web could leave this zone.


• Blasters range:
A lot of people want more range on blasters. The role of a Gallente blaster boat is / should be a close range damage dealer (with sprint approach, see below). The advantage of more range is also the problem: It works against kiters. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a Minmatar pilot wanting to keep his "I win ship". (I don't want to be forced to fly certain ships just because they are so obviously overpowered, also I like the Gallente way.). By changing blasters range, damage, tracking and ship bonuses the wrong way (depending on the numbers ofc) blasters could make kiting ships useless. But the role of a blaster boat is NOT to deal omg damage in close range AND make kiters useless. -> If you really absolutely want to give a better range option do it with Null (and Iron) and make it weak; damage must be lower than what a good kiting ship would do.

Large Railguns (all hulls):
It's kind of pointless to balance railguns without being sure about their exact role. It seems that railguns, especially large ones, were defined to have an advantage in long range fights. Unfortunately the new scanning mechanics (since the introduction of wormholes) make it not worth bringing a sniper fleet at all. Afaik it's possible (with good players) to land tacklers on a sniper fleet within some seconds (let's say 10 seconds, depending on alignment and the lucky timing of the scanner); now compare this to the align time of battleships and their lock time ...
Has CCP said anything at all since Dominion about the nature of very fast combat scanning? I think their intention was to make scanning less painfull for new players, wormholes and exploration. But COMBAT scanning should need a lot more time to make a whole group of specialized ships useful again - this affects all sizes of fleets.
Making combat scanning harder is also better than only increasing the minimup warp to distance. Eg. a warp distance of 200+ only makes setups up to 200k more useful. But make scanning harder and suddenly all sniper ships, including ultra long range snipers get a chance. Oh yeah, the lock limit of 250k should really be increased.
IF (and only if) CCP keeps the current scan and warp to mechanics Gallente Railgun battleships should be balanced to have an dps advantage up to 150k; above Amarr optimal would be nice if possible and / or just balance it with cap, rof, tracking etc.
But in that case (scan and warp mechanics) those real sniper battleships would still be useless; sure they could be changed to fit in the up to 150k window, but wouldn't it be boring to have all battleships of Eve used in a window of 4 - 150k? After all we're looking at battleships here, they have large guns and are the natural tech 1 choice for long range fights.


Everyone knows that hybrid buffs / fixes, while nice, are pretty useless without fixing the ships in their respective roles.
Therefore I suggest the following changes for Gallente blaster ships (hull bonus):

• 10 - 20 % increase to MWD overload bonus per level of the ship
• 7.5 - 15 % reduction of damage taken on overloaded MWD modules per level of the ship

This is the best change for blaster ships that I can think of so far. If you think about it you'll see that this approach has several advantages:

• solves the main problem of getting in range (again depending on numbers ofc)
• uses in game mechanics and should be easy to implement.
• an obscure ewar bonus would be more likely to be misused. (however there should probably be some kind of penalty so that it would not be used with a shield setup. not sure if that would be a problem on special shield fits, since the overload mechanic limits the use anyway)
• does not invalidate the speed advantage of Minmatar ships
• even if the base agility of Gallente blaster ships is tweaked to be better than that of Minmatar ships, resulting agility with plates would still be worse
• works without changing capacitors or using cap boosters. (however since blasters and mwds in general use much cap, the capacitor of these blaster ships should be balanced with their medium slots and their drones when ccp finally gets to the point of balancing each ship)

There might be more advantages of this mwd concept that I can't think of atm, however I can't see a real disadvantage. Please give me your opinions on this 'cause I think this would be a very important change to make the blaster concept work as intended and I do not think that it can be done without using some kind of hull bonus.

This is an excellent compromise and will go a long way to improving blasters and increasing their use in eve.

You da man, Tallest!

Medium blasters still need at least 10% dps imo. If anything leave small blaster DPS alone, boost medium by 15%, and boost large by 10%. The 20% tracking will be huge for small blasters and down right crazy when combined with better agility on blaster hulls.