Amarr has a weird progression, it used to be very focused on lasers and then more lasers, and CCP has since shoehorned drones and missiles into various spots. At first it was mainly the t2 khanid ships getting missiles, but now there is a line of neut and drone boats in the t1 line, with some overlap with the ewar line.
the armageddon (5/5) and prophecy (4/4) both have the universal slots, and I suppose you could argue the dragoon already has universal slots as it has 3 of each hardpoints so you could fit launchers or guns and then that leaves the 3 other slots for neuts/nos.
Which still leaves the arbitrator in a weird place. the 2/2 layout with no bonuses to weapons or neuts is just kinda wasted, Itâs highslots are just going to be gimped whatever you do. Itâs a very similar ship to the vexor, yet I feel like I almost never see arbitrators and vexors are pretty much everywhere. Vexor has more EHP and fitting room which matters for pvp, but for alpha level pve the differences arenât too big.
split weapons have long been considered a bad thing, itâs why CCP rebalanced the typhoon (guns, launchers, and drones), the dominix (drones and guns), nightmare (guns & launchers), merlin (guns, launchers), tristan (guns & launchers), and probably a few more to focus on one weapon system. Sure they might be able to use a second, but their main bonuses and slots are to one kind.
As for the SoCT ships, We mainly have the gnosis which is a limited edition ship and the supply is CCP controlled. Itâs way more expensive than a t1 cruiser. Sure it has universal slots, but it also has universal bonuses and players typically fit it up to max a specific bonus of their choice. sunesis is also a thing but expensive and doesnât seem widely used.
and concord ships are way out of the reach of alpha characters.
Why should the Arbi be split weapon slots.
Why should the Dragoon.
I can accept an argument that they donât âneedâ to be both turret & launcher options. But itâs consistent with the progression into the prophecy & the Geddon to do that, and at the very least they should be made capable of fitting a rack of a single weapon class. The half & half they currently are has been very clearly acknowledged by CCP as terrible design multiple times.
Well, if we are still on about Amarr Alphas, they cant use missiles so the missile hardpoints are wasted and there are other laser boats with full turret hardpoints.
The Sunesis canât hold its own in the dessie category, the only âbenefitâ is really the hold size. Sure it has damage bonuses for a lot of things, but it lacks actual specialization. Thus application isnât as good as racial options (Not to mention the best build for said Sunesis involves missiles and drones together where the alphas with good drone bonuses donât get missiles and those with missiles get really crappy drones!) and your only real option for tank on that ship is a SAAR which basically brings you up to near 30 mil before you even get the weapons fitted. There is a reason why almost nobody flies that darn ship. You can fit three throwaway gank Catalysts for the price of one fitted Sunesis. And the Catalysts will do better damage, by like double.
The Gnosis is favored a lot more by Alphas because it gives them access to another tier of ship. If you had access to your racial T1 battlecruisers the Gnosis would be a lot less popular because things like the Myrmidon can be passive tanked to the tune of ~450 shields per second of recovery for PvE and ones like the Ferox are a lot more useful to fleets.
And donât bring up those newer Concord ships, the ones Iâve seen have T2 locks and are unusable by alphas anyways.
Amarr Alphas can have a single point in Missile Operations and a single point in Defender Missiles (and I donât think those are missile systems anymore IIRC). Thatâs it - Zero points in Rockets or Light Missiles.
CCP would have to re-balance the T1 ships AND the weapon systems for each race, so that instead of the âbest in classâ ships being distributed across the 4 races, the T1 ships + weapons are âequalâ, and leave the âbest in classâ stuff for when it comes to T2 / T3 ships.
My personal preference would be to change all range, damage, and tracking ship bonuses to apply to âgunsâ, rather than lasers, hybrids, or projectiles. Give each ship full racks of turrets or missiles, vs. turrets or drones. AND, give a Role bonus to each race of ships that allows slightly easier fitting (powergrid, CPU, or energy consumption) of the racial weapons. This way, fitting lasers on Amarr ships becomes optional, rather than mandatory; newbies and veterans can get the same DPS bonuses with lasers, hybrids, or projectiles, and toss in a rig to offset the fitting penalty (which should be small enough to be offset by a rig), if they really want to put lasers on all their ships.
And then CCP can balance lasers, hybrids, projectiles, and other weapon systems independently of the ships, and whenever they want.
Gallente only have an advantage with industry really. Caldari with their insane ranges and shield tank setups are equally proficient with PvE and youâd be hard pressed to explain why griffins, blackbirds, caracal, and navy issue osprey arenât good at PvP.
Minmatar arenât too hot at PvE but can still get by with the rupture, but the high alpha damage from their weapon systems makes them incredibly favored for gankers, and small gang roams out to do big damage in a very short time period. Meaning that for PvP Minmatar are one heck of a great choice.
It is Amarrans in need as characters with slower ships, lower ranges, and inability to put their drone bonuses to full use across most of their t1 ship choices as while they have medium drone skills most of their t1 cruiser choices just want a flight of lights!
So Iâd disagree with the statement of Gallente Alphas being too OP, because they arenât. Its just one faction (Amarr) lags a bit more behind the others in terms of comparable inequalities of advantage.
Itâs a general Amarr problem, all the people involved in balance remember the days before stacking penalties when Amarr was so OP, but Amarr have generally underperformed as a Race for a long time. There are some shining examples in the Amarr line up that help mask these issues, but those are typically Navy, T2 or Neut doctrines.
Gallente are clearly the best. Amarr is not so bad - when you consider that they can fit a gnosis about as good as Gallente. But the amarr do not get the industrial ships Gallente get. So gallente gets the nod.
Iâm not sure what you would do with a minmatar alpha.
Allowing all the alpha skills is a bit much. But ccp could allow the characters to choose their alpha race skills every 6 months or so. That would make it balanced.
It already does not matter since you can create more. There is no real difference between swapping your skill from caldari to galente and creating a galente after you created a caldari.
The next day after CCP tells they are going to implement this feature people will start to say that â6 months is too longâ and ask for reducing it.
