Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I can't speak to complexes or other situations, but in a fleet, the Destroyer class of ships is principally an anti-recon or anti-frigate machine. This seems problematic, though. Some half of the time, you'll be camping a gate or the enemy won't have a significant number of frigates, and the recon are likely to be the principal target for the whole fleet.

If you fit autocannons, then you're probably going to be out of range of the enemy when they jump through a gate camp and you're going to be too slow getting to any recons or primary targets to be useful. If you fit artillery, then you're going to have a harder time against other frigates and suddenly you have to fly in a straight line in a ship with very little defense. This means the choices are between being largely irrelevant or dead.

I think this ship class would be well served by giving it bonuses and penalties to adjust its working zone, while keeping it balanced. I.e. giving it a significant range bonus (with matching targeting distance) and an equivalent tracking speed penalty, so that it is either a mid-range vessel with autocannons or a sniper with artillery. By significant, I think that you would need to be able to get a straight hit at least 45% of the time at 15km with autocannons. At the moment, even with all the range modules you can stick on, I think you'll barely hit 8-9km.

Possibly true. I could have sworn that I put All Vs into pyfa and the optimal range increased only by something like 20% not 300%, but maybe I did forget. I will double-check when I get home.