Ships & Modules

This tbqh.

dude, the problem is not sig radius the way you've suggested.

The problem is that tracking gets better over range because of your formula. There is no penalty for a ship being further away and thus appearing smaller in reality.

So while I can always choose a smaller ship to counter sig, I cannot choose a smaller ship to counter tracking. There's only 2 ways to counter tracking, get closer, or get faster.


The issue is this. If I pull out my gun and try to hit a pumpkin from 2 feet away, I'm probably going to hit it because it's very large in my view. But if that same pumpkin is 100 yards away, it should appear a hell of a lot smaller. This does not happen in eve. The sig size always stays consistent. So there is no penalty for sig according to range, and tracking gets progressively better at range.

For a huge ship like a titan, this means that if you have 10+ on the field, their shear size (30km+ across each) is going to spread them and the enemy fleet out more... meaning more range and greater tracking. Sig matters a hell of a lot less in this case. And in addition, you can add webs to targets in addition to that range factor benefiting the titans and you get very high results.

The solution is to inflate weapon signiture over range for all ships. You should not decrease damage directly like falloff... that's a horrible solution. If you just inflate the signiture according to range for the weapons, this means that smaller targets get progressively harder to hit.

My solution in another thread a while back is to give every gun a base range for their signiture to apply at. So a 425 railgun might have a 50km signiture range where it's signiture is 400 like current. But for every % further from that 50km base, the signiture of the gun should increase.... IE at 100 km range, the sig of the gun is 800. This means it's harder for the gun to hit smaller ships as range increases. This would not hurt titan v capital, but would likely affect titan vs anything else and reduce the effects of that 60-100km zone of combat where webs can't reach, and titans still struggle to track.

In particular, it would hurt the close range high tracking titans because if their base sig range was low... (IE 15-20km for Giga Pulse as an example), at 60km range, they would have 3x the sig or 3000 sig compared to the BS they are trying to hit....

This makes sense because distant objects are supposed to be harder to hit. So please implement a mechanic that makes sense not just for titans, but for all ship class warfare. Because quite honestly, frigates should have a lot better survival rate vs bs according to their sig/speed advantage...and you just don't see it currently. I mean, smaller ships are already penalized enough for small defense and smaller offense and range.


***** As a side note, the above suggestion adds a huge new feature for gun balance where you can make proper mid range weapons, close range weapons, and long range weapon. This means that every solution to the artillery vs rail vs beam or the blaster vs auto vs pulse doesn't have to come down to direct damage and tracking... you actually have a mechanic to make each range and gun type specialize with it's signature in a certain zone.... So rails might have 3x further range than pulse for their signiture to remain normal, thus boosting their efficiency with mid range ammos and not forcing you to apply a **** patch where damage is boosted like the last one. Artilleries might have huge alpha, but a pretty small window for sig (30-40km), meaning more struggles hitting moving ships due to the sig inflation of the guns(which they need btw).

Seeing a lot of '+1's' for the first page suggestion but; Why expend effort on a 'XL turret only' fix?

The tracking formula as a whole doesn't take into account 'signature' too well - I've been banging on about it for years - why is 'sig radius' a constant? It should be a variable that decreases with increasing gun-target distance ("Really far away = really small"), and conversely increases as you get to point blank rages ("km long Battleship blotting out the sun = really big).

So the question would be; why limit any fix to a 'special case' for XL turrets? If you're going to expend the effort, why not fix the job lot?...

sig damage falloff is horrible, make it based on sig vs range ffs... see above

Agreed. The tracking formula is a big culprit in a lot of fleet doctrines, including the CFC's own Alpha Fleet, being so successful. I'm not saying that it'd completely nerf Turret ships but it'd certainly balance them better compared to missiles.


Also, I'm Down, thank you for that wall of text since you're, once again, completely spot on.

If you don't understand what he linked... it's the dilated effect of an object relative to distance.... IE why a penny can cover the sun in the sky if you hold it close to your eye. I think or hope we all know a penny is not actually larger than the sun, but range has an affect on size in all places but eve.

Yeah he did post some good ideas. This idea though is far less arbitrary than a flat tracking nerf, and goes part of the way to re-ballance titans

yes, make every ship in game a missile boat... that's really interesting. Stop with this lazy bullshit type suggestions and fix the game right.

First of all, learn sarcasm.

Second, it's not titan guns that are the problem, it's the formula and mechanic. You can't put a bandaid on a broken dam and hope it gets fixed.

Third, there is no nerf possible to dreads. Dreads have 1 intended role, hit huge slow/stationary objects. The suggested changes cannot nerf that... it's just not possible.

Forth, the suggested fix to sig over range properly adds back roles to ship classes beyond the dominant mechanic today of BS/BC > virtually any smaller ship classes 9/10 times. Just like titan fleet > all.

Frigs have virtually no role in game today compared to 8 years ago. Destoryers gain a role because if they're a ranged frigate damage platform with high range projected damage for a small ship, then the small sig at range is a buff to them. Cruisers are sort of the middle ground as almost none of the tech ones have range, and HACs have **** dps beyond 50km, which would also get impacted by the sig penalties. Not to mention sniper HACs have a new natural counter in game with dual prop assault frig platforms.

Once you get to BC/BS levels, the sig is so high, it's hard to suggest that BCs or BS get a huge advantage over each other. Plus no Cruiser weapon BC in game does any good damage projection over 90km well, and the BS weapon BC platforms would have the same weaknesses as their BS counterparts as range progressed.

So to me, it not only sounds like a viable solution to fix titans, but to fix a huge issue in Eve combat that's gotten worse every patch throughout the years where almost all 0.0 combat has been BS or BC and at that mid range 50-110 km range.

It's stale, and boring, and needs to be looked at. Fix the guns, and fix probing and this cookie cutter bullshit we have seen the past 8 years might go away and much more diverse fleet warfare might come about.

Until thе devs realize that their fоrmula іs **** аnd that all turrets need to be balanсed based on a gun signature to range comparison‚ combat in еve will cоntіnue to be broken. It just mаkes 0 sense that the frigate that is 100km distanсe away looks exactly the same size to my guns as he does at 1km range, while my tracking is literally 100x better at 100km range.


Literally, if you didn't know this, tracking is a linear relationship where I gain 100% of my base tracking every km..... so I literally track 100x better at 100km range than I do at 1km range, or 10x better when I compare 10km base range to 100km range.

This is the equivalent to a 10,000% tracking boost from 1km to 100km range

This is the equivalent to a 1,000% tracking boost from 10km range to 100km range

MEANWHILE MY SIG HAS NOT REDUCED 1 POINT.

Do you see the problem yet?

50% of my formula has not changed one bit, and the other 50% has just improved an obsurd amount.

DEVELOPERS, DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM YET?

IT'S NOT TITANS, IT'S THE TURRET TRACKING FORMULA

Oh BTW, do you see why blaster boats get screwed on approach to enemy ships with far superior range... they're a frickin balloon out there easy to hit. Auto cannons and Pulse have so much more range and hardly any penalty for keeping that range as long as possible. What happens if their sig multiplier meant they had a harder time hitting the Mega on approach from 70km out while the Mega can't even hit at all.