Man, RLML is not the issue. It is excellent at shredding frigs and dessies. How about tackling caracals with vaga/stabber/omen/others ?
The problem is that for most other med weapons you can’t fit t2 variant + 40K ehp tank while being cap stable (or very close to it) and going past 400dps with over 40km range. It is hulls excelling at the use of rlml that are the issue. Lets be honest here - caracals do punch way above their weight. Just the other day I have done low sec ded 4 with one… using meta mods outside of rlml just to see if I can do it. Didn’t even dip below 50% shield. THAT is the problem with caracals, osprey navy and cerb. Especially cerb - it gets over 80km range with rapid lights. By comparison arbitrator, bellicose and scythe navy (?) are not even close to being problematic.
Golem, Scorpion Navy Issue, Caracal, Nosprey, Caracal NI, Raven (i’ll touch on this in a moment), claymore, cerberus, nighthawk, breacher, jaguar, the list could go on. Hopefully you get my point. There are a lot more missile ships than 400mm plated corax and MJD armor ravens.
I wouldn’t say that is “most”. There is a relatively small percentage of armor missile ships, but that small % ends up being the more popular ships (especially in the battleship line-up).
Those are very niche fits made for a singular purpose, which is fighting on citadel grids. You can’t lump all ravens into that category as “armor” ships just because of a single doctrine. Nearly every RHML raven is shield fit (normally dual XLASB). There are also cruise/torpedo ravens that are shield fit.
You pretty much confirmed through this statement that their fitting is too easy (They get to fit t2 weapons, 40k EHP tank, cap stable, 400 dps, over 40km range etc)
And every hull that is bonused for RLML’s has the same problem, they all punch above their weight class because they fit max tank, max dps, get range bonused to light missiles and sacrifice almost nothing. The hulls were designed around HML/HAM fitting, when you put RLML on them, which uses significantly less PG, it opens up the fittings to put almost whatever you want without any sacrifices. That is the reason why people would like to see more fitting on RLML. If you nerf the hull themselves, then you’re nerfing every HAM/HML fit, which aren’t causing any concerns, its just RLML fits.
Well, not exactly. They do sacrifice dps - HAMs have higher dps than rapid lights. Especially once you include reload times. What RLML loses is alpha, projection (compared vs heavy) and sustained dps. Can’t really fight much when for every ~50s of shooting you spend 35s reloading. It does shred anything subcruiser though.
A few misconceptions need addressing, the winmatar days were before we had t2 dessie buff, t3 dessies and massive faction cruiser buff. All these things make minny t1 ships look like snails. (As well as all t1 bc’s and most cruisers).
Also damage projection has become a huge factor, look at the application and range on most of these ships, winmatar was before we even had talwars,dragoons, corax and algos (all ships with great range and application). Then add in 2 assualt frig buffs (theyre sig bonus helps negate applicatiin as well).
These are a lot of fast, low sig ships with mostly great application and range. Minny fell way behind in the meta because of many factors of power creep, the TE nerf was just more pain for them.
I think just giving medium autos a small tracking and falloff buff (just 5 to 8%) and see how it plays out.
In general battlecruisers and most T1 cruisers need some speed. There are to many things that literally leave them in space dust and they can hardly fight back, they can’t catch or apply unless the faster pilot does something stupid. Thats why mast small gang has devolved into ‘catch and blob’. A tanky frig scram webs and a blob lands on you. The old fleet vs fleet chess matches are sorely missed.
We need ships that can stay on the field and peel tackle well at mid to close range. We keep getting ships that murder tackle at 60km, and move more like a frigate than a cruiser.
Ships need to not be snails these days. Minmatar ships like canes and ruptures filled this role of takcle peel at 30km well 8 years ago. But they have fallen way behind and dont really have a role now that other ships wont do much better. You’re better off with a vni or oni than a hurricane, they hit further, apply better and go twice as fast. You’re better off with a caracal or any AF/T3d/T2D than a rupture. They hit better, move much better, and most are much harder to hit.
The people balancing dont understand, why unbonessed pulse lasers on a hurricane out performing medium autos on a hurricane makes them look incompetent. Not understanding what speed creep and projection creep are makes them look blind.
Arrogance and ignorance go hand and hand I suppose. Eve is full of both.
When I started in 2011, I felt like there was no other choice to do PvE with nothing more than Autocannons because you always had a cookiecutter ammo type for a specific npc faction. Then I switch to energy weapons, and by then ACs always felt like driving a car on automatic, a single ammo type that flexibly adjusts to any range, you had to juggle between phased plasma, emp and fusion, that is it, very little complexity whatsoever, with Pulses if had to hit something with ACs at 100% falloff I’d probably have to use Standard crystals for long range and Gamma or multifrequency for something close range, its engagingly complex having toconstantly juggle between crystals for both range and cap efficiency in the middle of a fight, but with autocannons that complexity is non-existent, I’d rather them not touch Autocannons at all unless they plan on making it more interactive and have a more interesting reload mechanic, not just a one trick pony that gets all ranges it desires with just one ammo type. Easy to use = shouldn’t be powerful.
Also it has always bothered me that ammo like emp felt like it make lasers obsolete, so much em damage why not switch its damage component to 50% em, 35% explosive, 15% kinetic? And phased plasma 60% thermal/40% explosive. I think every projectile ammo should have an explosive component to it to stay faithful to the faction that dominates in explosive damage.
Minnies ships are about flexibility and using your speed to gain an damage application adventage in combat.
They need more fallof to be usable. Let me put some explanation and examples.
Small autos: you can use their stats to win an 1 vs 1 againtst any race. You must know exactly how to engage you opponent. Example the rifter, with his amazing fallof bonus, you are able to fight at range blaster ships, missile boats just aproaching them, and close orbiting any amar frigs. Your counter the mighty tristan.
The problem with medium autos is that such dmg projection is not competive against blasters in any range, due webbers and scrams range does not scalate with the size of the autos. In other words shoting an thorax with your rupture at 8km it’s not an option, and it should be. MA needs a 15% dmg bonus, and 30% 50% fallof bonus.
An exception to this, is the new stabber with his 12.5% buff in damage and its fallof bonus it’s a good ship for small gangs. 500dps with 3 gyros, and nice application.
Same for Large autos, look the tempest, CCP buffed his dmg binus to 7.5, and hey it gave a new live to the ship.
ARTIS: Summing it up, better tracking ( meds are terrible ) and better fiting in some ships. You almost cant tank a wolf with 280. Rupies with 720 are terrible not enought optimal or alpha to break the tank of an active tank thorax. And the same happens to large artis.
Amno: would be more usable with a 5sec recharge. 4 damage types on short range.
med range and T2 amno should be EMP-TERM and another with KYN-EXP. It is supposed you must be able to adapt your dmg to the oponent.
Sure man. Keep dreaming. Missile boats can have over 70km range while having comparable dps… rage rockets alone can go past 20km. Sacrifice tank to be able to catch them and you will be dead befor you do catch them.
I would say that large problem of small autocannons - at least on frigs - is that they don’t have much dps. In fact they have so little of it that frigs with light missiles will do comparable dps
I for one don’t mind a bit of Autocannon boosting, so as long as they boost Torpedoes at the same time. Of all the 4 short range weapon classes, Torps and Autocannons are the most unbalanced, especially Torps. Blasters and Pulse Lasers are fine and don’t really need touching.
And I think the long range weapons are well-enough-balanced at the moment too, so they don’t need touching.
Autocannons are fine the way they are. M blasters max range of around 7km with damage ammo, ac around 25km? And blasters are somehow “so much better”. What a stupid thread.
no.
I made a post before that shows the values of 80% application range with (among others) T1 short range ammo.
AM neutron blasters are ±11 km range, projectile are ±16km.
He’s right though. With careful piloting you can stay in a sweet spot against blasters where they barely tickle you and you’re applying most of your damage.
The sweet spot has a band of like 500m-1k and you have to be mwding with point holding that range against a ship constantly sling shotting you, its extremely niche and only viable vs really bad pilot’s clicking approach.
In a real battle you will be swaying way more than that tiny little band, unless your an AI that has 0 delay and can calculate accurately which no human can do.
