Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The biggest issue I have with the sansha ships is the lack of speed/agility, or atleast the lack of a slot layout to for speed modules without significantly decreasing the effectiveness of the ship. The cap and damage is an annoyance but is manageable at this point. It's frustrating since these ships are so close to being a viable alternative in PvP.

Laser ships only really need the speed/agility to keep range, or to keep transversal low. The Phantasm would never hit anything if it were to orbit at 20 km going 2 km/s. However, if it and an autocannon ship, both dealing 700 DPS "on paper" (EFT) were to shoot each other from 7 km away, the Phantasm would win out in damage due to its much higher optimal range. This is where the Harbinger excels, and if a Harbinger manages to get its double webs on any nano Hurricane, the Hurricane is guaranteed to die in a fire. The Phantasm can play a similar role, and can catch a Hurricane even more easily, as it moves 500-600 m/s faster than a plated Harbinger, and has better shield resists against the Hurricane's Barrage.

And can't tank worth a crap, and has no frigate countermeasure, and poorer tracking at that. The Zealot and Phantasm don't serve the same role at all.

The Hurricane problem will hopefully be solved, as the just released CSM Summit Minutes hint at fast battlecruisers getting the nerfbat pointed at their speed and agility so battlecruisers "are generally slower than cruisers". Just that part of the minutes made my day.

Because Guristas ships don't get missile damage bonuses, and ships in general can only field a max of 5 drones. There's not much in the way of drone damage you can do to the Rattlesnake to make it have the damage of other pirate faction ships. However, outfitted with sentry drones and cruise missiles, the Rattlesnake can have a passive tank of somewhere in the vicinity of 1400 DPS and a buffer of 150k EHP without even using any faction/deadspace mods. Rattlesnake as is is not viable in PvP because of the limitations of drones, but it is the ultimate PvE ship.

In that way, it is balanced. So far as its price, I have no idea why it is so low at how popular it is. Maybe people run a lot of Gurista missions?

Edit: Also yes, Guristas are balanced. The Worm is an amazingly tanky frigate (more than most AFs) with amazing speed/agility, plus a bit of missile DPS. Its DPS is not spectacular, but it can take on a lot of things because of the versatility that the combination of missiles/speed/drones give it. It's like a super-Ishkur with a bit less damage. The Gila is a cruiser with a mega-Drake tank, faster and more agile than a Drake, and fielding a ton more damage because it can use a whole flight of heavy drones. It also has a bigger drone bay than a Dominix does. Completely worth the price.

However, this is not a thread about Guristas, but about Sansha ships. Get your own thread to talk about the 'Snake, and I might even reply to it!

..but they're still lasers.

Nightmare will function in a C6 wormhole just fine; provided it is not somewhere it will not suffer penalties to Capacitor and/or shields. Neuting is easily handled by having either very good Cap regen or allies with logistics. Mostly, it's good Cap, and you have to fit for it; which means compromising some dps.

I think laser cap use and fitting is a more general problem than Sansha ships alone.

Edit: saw the updated original post
supporting with a +1

sorry for the post

Bump for the glory of Master Kuvakei's ships.

Yeah, but it comes at a price. While Vindicator can spit more that 1500 hate per second, it does within this so called "zone of commitment" - is itself being webbed, scrambled and possibly neuted. What you propose amounts to giving Nightmare best subcap dps ever AND ability to dictate range. Talk about "I WIN" button.

(Feel free to flame me - I don't know crap about PvP.)