Ships & Modules

The Moa, Eagle and Ferox do definitely they just don't have the Dmg to be effective. They are still mostly basterdized as Blaster Boats.

The Naga and the Rokh are overshadowed by Alpha Maelstrom's and Nado's but they are effective Fleet ships in their own right. They see some use. Rails were effective as a kiting Frig Weapon to a point before and they are better now.

For PvE Rails are still overshadowed by Missiles, Autocannons and Scorch. Medium Rails don't have a good PvE platform really and for Caldari are still overshadowed by the Drake while the Raven has Selectable Dmg, Greater Range and Accuracy. They do ok against Kin, Therm opponents.

Things are better especially for large and small Rails while Medium Rails it is more of a no viable Platform issue.

problem with the hybrids for large fleets is that it requires the pilot to fly their ships. you still need to get into optimal ect. it comes in very well against fleets with logi support. the ammount of raw dps will break any logi reps easily.

• Overview:

The patch was a give and take. There have been both positive and negative sides to the changes for Caldari. Large Hybrids always hit various breakpoint ranges quite alright and their ships had no major fitting issues. They were the ones able to best capitalize on the changes.

Medium Hybrids always had issues with both fitting and maintaining breakpoint distances, as well as general issues with mobility in relation to those fitting issues. Some of those issues were alleviated with the Crucible changes, others were not while they overall got overshadowed by other changes in the patch.

Small Hybrids had their niches where they were quite interesting, they still retain those and have had them reinforced. Overall the changes did well for the classes, but the classes themselves have never been baseline. Nore are they now.

Couple this with a general counter-orientation to missiles (HML), where not only the Drake (as intended) ended up taking some pricks but also several other HML-platforms that got countered or obscured.

• Ship examples:

Large: Rokh, Naga
Long before Crucible Rokhs have been able to outreach with Spike, hit 100km breakpoints with Thorium and move in with Antimatter (or Javelin). Since you buffer with resistance/LSE you have no split PG problems with tank. With Blasters it used to be able to hit tackle-ranges with Null and now Tech II ammo have been buffed which this ship benefit from quite well overall. Couple that with the general damage buff and this ship has an adaptable baseline appeal (similar to the Drake) in it's ability to adapt and counter. It's a jack rather than an ace, but it can deal with many popular concepts by adapting to their weakness (tank-spank ratio, outranging etc).

The Naga benefit from the breakpoint ranges of large turrets but suffer from the mobility issues of cruisers in the mobile-sniping concept plane. The Naga is comparatively a much better ship among it's peers, but it suffers the same problems only to a lesser degree. You can easily see it in how the other Tier 3 BC are essentially as quick as their old SHAC counterparts, the Naga is quicker than the Eagle - and unlike it has an appeal in having the best raw DPS of it's class at breakpoint ranges - yet it's still behind in the mobility game giving it issues to adapt the tactics. It can not reliably control range against other BC and Cruisers, turning it into a middle-ground ship that take on characteristics from both it's own class and the quicker BS. That middle-ground performance isn't bad but it's somewhat underwhelming and niched, and you are likely to see it be countered in several ways, resulting in people phasing over into BS.


Medium: Eagle, Ferox
The changing in regard to both the Eagle and Ferox didn't manage to break the status quo, while both of them are vastly overshadowed in their role as potential snipers by the new Tier 3 BC, and while their offside use as shield-tanky blaster platforms still remain nothing but an offside in relation to both armor and shield-tanky missile platforms - even if those roles probably could get something out of the fitting improvements. I highly doubt they got enough to fill up those utility slots though, and even if they did it's a niche at best. The Ferox is still probably equally good with any weapon system and i guess you could run entertaining "shield AHAC" Eagles using null, but next to Tengus they quickly go bleak. Not that it has much impact, considering that these were marginalized ships and classes prior to Crucible so there's little point in complaining over them getting comparatively worse.

Light: Overall
I'm not going to delve too deep into it, but Harpies used to have an appeal both as buffered blaster ships and lol-range frigate class projectors. They are better at it now, but it's still mostly changes that affect a very limited portion of gameplay (solo, pair, very small gang, lowsec, duelling etc). Next to that Destroyers got buffed and all the other hybrid platforms also drew some strength from these changes. The Enyo got an interesting niche, the already quite decent Ishkur became better (coupled with the class-buff to AF) and the odd Taranis pilot is probably not unhappy either.

Caldari missile platforms:
We know the Drake was a bit of a target with these changes. That's all well and good. Not that they did too much to the Drake either way, but it's a few more potential counters in misguided hope of effect. Drakes were already countered by all of the staple concepts out there, from AHAC to Gankbaddon to Alphamaels to Tengus; it continued to see the light of day thanks to scaling, ease of use and cost-efficiency. Now we have more BS-size Alpha, we have BS-size Rails with both tank, damage and reach edges and other forms of kiting-outranging. My dislike for the changes have nothing to do with the Drake overall, as i said, it is largely unaffected.

The problem reside in the marginalization of other Drake-counters and other HML-platforms. One quite ample way to deal with Drake-gangs on the small-medium scale was to simply out-range them and isolate their support with Rooks. The Rook both jam and lob missiles from 100km, in today's profileration of inexpensive mobile sniping exceeding former expensive mobile sniping no one in their right mind is going to bring Rooks unless they provide an additional pile-on for the blobbing side. Bombers are not Caldari-only by any stretch, but they're another example of missile ships taking indirect damage from poorly constructed attempts at discouraging Drakes while maintaining cost-efficiency blobbing (a paradox right there). Instead, Bombers got their purist bomber-role reinforced, so they are streamlined as well.

Ships like the Raven, Cerberus and Nighthawk had issues before, they do not fare better post-Crucible in any way.

What the person above me said ^^ in a slightly smaller version.

-Makes frigates insane, doesnt affect medium gunned ships too much(except proteus maybe), and makes large platforms better.

Wut?

Tornado makes a much better suicide ganking ship (of 5300 losses in Jan 2012, 1850 were to CONCORD). It makes a better Alpha ship, for those who want to alpha stuff. In a alpha fleet vs alpha fleet fight, people will lose tornados.

Better to dump Nagas at 200km, align to a celestial or a rolling ceptor safe, and deal with on-grid probing.

But for squishing the ubiquitous Goon frigate roam, if you use a Tornado you will get one ship due to your ass cycle on the guns. Use a Naga and by the time they realise you killed two of them and they aren't going to get you in scram range, you've killed another. By the time their 7s warp completes, you've killed a 4th.

The Naga is a beast. You are just ignorant of that fact.

I am not. I said they are overshadowed not better. Artillery is in much more widespread use then Rail Guns. Alpha Maelstroms still see more use then the Naga and Rokh combined let alone the Nado.

Any weapon is better then Artillery once your fleet has enough numbers to kill something before the next Cycle. Artillery tends to fit is best in smaller blobs then larger ones. I never once said a bad thing about the Naga or the Rokh just that they are not as common as Artillery Fleets in the current Meta Game.

Its base Spike Range alone is 194km without TC's on it.

0 tank mods all gank mods you should be able to hit at about 250km without boosters/implants/fleet bonus, at this distance you'll obvilously use long range ammo and your dps will be...ridiculous?

Me loves my 240Km 1400 T2 Arty Nado.

Ah, thank you for the continued responses to the thread. This all arose after I saw a youtube comment about how the Naga would be a failure because it was turned into a gunboat instead of a missile ship.

In a RANGE bonused ship using guns that were already fine before the bosst and that just became insane.

C'mon 500dps in a T2 fitted Enyo is the dps you get out of a cookie cutter shield autos/neut cane, it's just ridiculous.
Faction officer fit it for lols and you get over 700DPS.

I don't call this balance.