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CCP,

You haven't fixed rails because:

Sniping beyond 150 km is still irrelevant because of instant probing and warping,
Artillery and Tachyons are still far superior closer in,
Large rails still offer no advantage over tachyons on optimal-bonused Apocalypse,
The Eagle still does less damage than an Aurora Zealot at 100 km, despite being fatter, much slower, and far harder to fit.

You haven't fixed blasters because:

Blasters still offer no significant applied damage advantage over Pulse and especially ACs at blaster optimal, despite suffering massive range disadvantages,
Blaster hulls are slower than AC hulls, despite also using the shortest-ragne weapons (seriously you must be on ether if you think it's sensible to put the shortest-range weapons on the slow hull).

You will not solve these problems by fiddling about with 20% tracking, 10% fitting requirements or 10% damage. The sad truth is that your previous episodes of ill-thought out power creep have enable projectiles and lasers to usurp hybrids from hybrids' niches. If lasers and projectiles are also effective in hybrids' niches, then, given the severe range limitations of hybrids, there is no reason to use hybrids. To fix hybrids, you need to fix that problem - intrusion of lasers and projectiles into hybrids' home territory.

Good luck.

Oh small hybrids were basically fine and do not need a boost! Boosting them will damage frigate diversity as everyone switches to Daredevils, Taranises and Comets.

Not really. I mean, it does make sense from an EFT perspective, but if you ever tried blasters in a real combat (PVP) situation, you'd find out that tracking is much more of an issue on those short ranges, even accounting for the scrambler. The webber would help, but many (probably most) blaster ships aren't able to fit a webber as well as a MWD and a scrambler (and possibly tank). Especially if you consider frigates, where fitting an AB is quite a good idea, if the ship lets you do that.

I'd say this is a bad idea. Balance in eve depends also on relative sizes. Smaller ships can maneuver better and can thus get "under the guns" of bigger ships. Bigger ships have either to specialize in hunting smaller ships or rely on a support fleet.

If you make a weapon able to deal equally well with targets of different sizes, you're basically screwing with balance... And so you can now bring a 200 man fleet which can deal with BSs and support fleets better than a 100 man bs fleet + 100 man support fleet.

There's also another thing, which isn't obvious... While in RL a ship circling around a (static) target would have guns fixed on the target with no adjustment needed (as long as the route the ship is keeping is on the surface of a sphere centered on the target), in EVE even your speed matters, and in fact the speed which is used in calculations, IIRC, is the difference vector between your ship's speed and your target's speed. Two ships orbiting reciprocally at close range will often cause spikes in the difference vector, thus easily overwhelming the tracking of your guns.

The idea isn't bad, but I'd keep it to a propulsion only module, perhaps even just a script for the mwd, which allows it to pulse up for a couple of cycles for great speed, while having to stay shut for some time after activating... Something like

+ 200% cycle time
+ x speed (50%?)
+ acceleration (though with the speed boost, if it keeps the same acceleration as the normal mwd it's probably enough)
+ y seconds cooldown period (perhaps a minute? something long enough to avoid making it a full propulsion module, but short enough to be viable to actually catch something with it).

While this is a good idea and may solve some problems (and may be worth suggesting separately), I still think that hybrids and the focus of hybrid caldari/gallente ships should be revised on its own, mostly because it seems to me that we're trying to fit a square peg in a circle hole.

I was actually talking about something like this in private chat the other day. Basically, introduce something like Aerotech bracketing to Eve gun systems. This would result in grouped guns to get a modifier on their to-hit probability on small craft by modifying their minimum signature radius and at the same time divide the damage per salvo by number of guns. A formula:

SigN = SigO / ( [ √nG] * nG / nM)

SigN = new signature radius
SigO = old signature radius (400 nm for 425mm railguns)

nG = number of guns grouped
nM = minimum number of guns needed for it to work (usually 4, since dreadnoughts with this ability == bad idea)

This would, for a ship mounting 4 425mm rails, result in 200 nm of signature radius modifier by dividing their damage by 4 if they hit. An 8-gun ship with the same guns would get around 70 nm sig modifier, dividing its damage by 8.

Also, since this doesn't touch turret tracking, it'd still be possible for small ships to get under bigger ships' guns. It'd be just a bit harder.


Another possibility would be adding some kind of spaceburst ability to hybrid and projectile ammunition. Enough shrapnel will kill anything, basically. Of course, there is no such thing as photonic shrapnel, so beams wouldn't get a bonus like this. OTOH, since they have next to no travel time, they could receive an added modifier to reflect higher accuracy in the above equation.


if either of these were to be introduced, it'd probably be via new skills.


I'm aware most of you will just say "Meh, bad idea" and shrug, but if you do, please tell me why you think it's a bad idea and if you think it's the concept that's flawed or just my attempt at fleshing it out.


Reading over this I realize I kind of missed the topic of "How To Improve Hybrids", but meh.


Also, I hate the forums for eating my first two attempts to post this.

Yeah like I said it would help in some cases, hybrids should be fixed on their own. Though for minmatar a normal MWD is probably still they way to go.

I wouldn't dare suggesting a specific % of damage, but I'd say that 50% is more likely to be accurate given the situation than 10%. pulse lasers and autocannons do roughly 90% of blaster damage right now. But they have other, quite more important, advantages. Like tracking, range and overall better platforms to mount them on. Pulse lasers can outrange blasters by up to 300% IIRC, autocannons roughly have 50% to 150% more range, much better tracking and almost always have the speed advantage. Plus, they can change damage types. Lasers can change ammo type trading dps for range instantly. Autocannons don't use cap.

So Blasters have to: get in range, while getting damaged by their counterparts, fire, and hope to have enough spare HP to win the fight. Right now this means that blasters are only useful if you manage to start the fight already inside your optimal range. Which isn't exactly easy. If that's not the case, minmatar ships will simply kite you forever, outranging, outrunning and outtracking you. Amarr ships will do a lot of damage to you from extreme ranges and even if you manage to get them, they will probably kill you anyway. Hell, even close range missiles are probably better than blasters.

Might be completely off the wall, but if tracking is that much of an issue for blasters, why not give all Gallente boats a hull bonus to hybrid turret tracking speed on top of the existing tracking boost, much as Amarr get a hull bonus to laser cap use? It would keep blasters individually from being overpowered, but might encourage pilots to fit them on Gallente boats.

Rails could become viable in long-range snipe fleets, but only if (1) it takes more than 10 seconds for a decent prober to get an on-grid warp-in point, and (2) if rail-based boats are able to deal sufficient dps or alpha at range to kill something in the time it would take for a decent prober to get a warp-in point. A possible "solution" to rails' low dps might be to get rid of longer-range ammo entirely except for Iron (T1) and Spike (T2), and boost their damage output so that they have dps higher than artillery but lower than tachyons, and alpha higher than tachyons but lower than artillery. Or vice versa, although I think that artillery should remain the king of alpha and beams the king of dps. But either way rails would retain their damage-dealing ability all the way to maximum targeting range, unlike artillery and beams.

Then again, as far as fleet viability is concerned, from what I've seen, beam lasers and autocannons aren't very common in fleets nowadays either, but that does not make them broken.

Most long-range fleets nowadays focus on alpha, and not just because of lag. Forty Maelstroms or their equivalent in 1400mm artillery turrets can usually one-shot an Abaddon, making logistics and buffer tank essentially irrelevant, and don't depend on cap. It might take twice as many ships to burn through enemy logistics if tachyons or rails are used. So long-range fleets tend to use artillery, even on Abaddons and Rokhs. Tachyons may offer higher dps at the same range, but have significantly smaller alpha. Ditto for rails, which will always be the case unless rail alpha is buffed to artillery levels, and that won't be a good thing.

Pulses are still viable at short-range (50km or less) engagements because of Scorch, which allows them to deliver good dps at their maximum range. I haven't seen too many autocannon fleets, outside of some specialty fleets based around Vagabonds or Machariels or somesuch, probably because autocannons' higher dps and cap-independence doesn't compensate for their shorter range. Blasters will be in the same boat unless their range is buffed to Scorch levels, but then we're once again looking at homogenization of weapons and that is not a desirable outcome.

So maybe some factions simply shouldn't be the FOTM in fleet warfare. Ditto for being successful solo boats. Near as I understand it, being able to get into range shouldn't be an issue if you're working with fast tackle that can hold the target down.

hybrids are still pretty much utterly worthless for anything larger than a frigate with these changes. if it is not readily apparent why, then you deserve to be fired.

there is another thread going about hybrid balance and active armor balance in case this threadnaught doesn't have enough.