Since Ascension, pretty much every newbro gets advised to go with Gallente and under no circumstance should pick Amarr. Even Crossing Zebras refused to make an alpha clone fitting guide for Amarr. We’re almost 9 months in now, when will we see a faction rebalance for alpha clones, at least in terms of skills that are available?
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Part of the issue is that while Amarr were granted access to Drones as their second weapon system the only objectively good drone boats available to Alphas for Amarr are the Dragoon and Arbitrator and both have the problem of split high slots. That is unless you count the Gnosis, but everyone can use the Gnosis.
Gallente have much better drone support via Tristan, Algos, and Vexor natively within their racial alpha options. Guess what? Those ships get to load up their high slots with relevant damage and use the drones!
Then we get into the fact that the Gallente cruisers alphas have access to can field full flights of mediums. Meanwhile over on the Amarran side of the fence… Augoror 4 lights or 2 mediums, Maller 3 lights, Omen 5 lights or 4 mediums.
Maybe the Amarr alphas should lose the top off some of the r5 or r4 advanced drone skills and instead get access to something more relevant to what they can actually use? Either some basic access to light missiles so both their drone boats can use their split highs, or perhaps a bone thrown their way in having some additional ranks in Advanced Weapon Upgrades available or something else that is more useful across most of their hulls.
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I think CCP could improve life for Amarr in general, not just Alphas, by giving Dragoon and Arbitrator universal hardpoints - same as Prophecy and Armageddon. That way you could use any or all of them for turrets, launchers or neuts.
As far as a rebalance - don’t hold your breath. This is vacation season in Iceland and the devs have a full plate going into the winter expansion. We may hear something at Vegas.
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oh boy did i heck up pretty bad then
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Do Alphas actually need balancing? they are, after all, just a trial mode.
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If the level of power of all four empire choices for alphas were closer to roughly equivalent it wouldn’t be getting complained about as frequently. Currently Gallente > Caldari / Minmatar > Amarr for alphas seems to be the general consensus.
It doesn’t paint a pretty picture for people looking in from the outside when the advice given by those actually playing it is to not play a certain faction because it is under-powered within the confines of the free play section. It can be a contributing factor in that lousy new player retention rate if they are told that their pick is wrong and they should immediately go re-roll.
Only so many people are willing to give things multiple chances. So yes, it actually is better to give some balancing.
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Are you suggesting that when an alpha account goes omega then they can transfer their SP to a re-rolled character of a new race?
That could work, but at the moment very few Amarrian characters are being created I’d imagine, as the fact they suck in alpha state is too well known now.
We would also face problems with scammers escaping their past
Well, look at the warzone and let me know, if you still think Amarr Alphas suck or if it’s Amarr in general.
Don’t take this too seriously 
If they remain Alpha forever then no matter what race they pick they don’t have access to all the tools and one of them will be ‘superior’ at something.
No one believes they could be perfectly balanced, and they should all be best at some aspect perhaps, but it’s rough on Amarr to be inferior at, basically, everything as they are now.
Exactly. We just need some equivalent balancing. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but they do need to have something as an advantage so they aren’t always the underdog pick.
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Um, dude, the Dragoon and Arbitrator are neut ships, and incredibly potent ones at that. The high slots aren’t split at all. Put neut/nos in them and drain your enemies of capacitor, use drones as exclusive DPS. They are, in fact, a direct counter to Gallente ships, especially those that use active armour tanks. I’ll bet anyone I can teach a newb in a Dragoon to neut and kill anyone in an active-armour Hecate in the same amount of time it takes to get the skills to fly it.
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Amarr get two EWAR as well as some drones and a brick tank. Not very inferior. Gallente get a big hauling advantage with the special cargo holds, perhaps CCP can do something with that to bring them down a peg?
PvP != PvE
NPCs don’t give a flying fig about neuting. And newer players are more likely to be doing a lot more PvE than PvP initially. Yes PvP is a big focus of this game, but as it is a sandbox game it isn’t the only exclusive focus.
And of those two ships only the Dragoon actually has a neut bonus. The Arbitrator has a T2 version the Curse that has a neut bonus, but alphas won’t be using that now will they?
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You’re right, PVE isn’t PVP.
PVE is easy and most of what can be done with the ships, modules, and skills, available to alphas can also be done with a rookie ship. The PVE is not a reason for ‘rebalancing’. This is a PVP game. Balancing revolves entirely around PVP. If your argument for a rebalance involves PVE, you’ve already lost.
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I heard that L3 missions are as high as a solo alpha can go. Once they start teaming up for L4s the individual ships ships start to matter a lot less.
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Gallente can actually handle L4s solo, it takes a while but it is entirely doable.
Can you give an example fit?
Doable != worthwhile.
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Considering that you can knock out at least two L3s in the same time frame as one L4 with Alpha restrictions in play yes that is true. But that said, they can go beyond L3. Its just when you can almost afk the L3s beyond moving between pockets… path of least resistance and all that.
Better to take your nicely fitted ship out to anomalies and hope for a DED expedition to show up.
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