Possibly Insane? Medium guns on Dreads?

Communications Center General Discussion
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Not intending to put this one in PF&I as I know it’s pretty insane, the community would flip their ■■■■, and the coding to make it work would be… awkward.

Buuut I thought I’d put it here and see who gets triggered. I’m not trolling, specifically. I am interested in what people would have to say. You can get all angry and “don’t touch my eve you ■■■■■■■ retard” or you can play along with the what-if and see where it leads.

To do this, I’m going to make an assertion, with the Rev as my example. Feel free to respond as desired. If it’s just an angry “god you’re a stupid troll” answer, I probably won’t bother answering. Know that I understand how you feel, I am compelled to say that every morning when I look in the mirror.

Anyways, assertion time.

It be interesting for dreads to loose their HAW modules, and instead gain 5 (ish) high slots (with accompanying hardpoints) that can only fit medium sized guns.

The trait, role, number of hardpoints, and siege bonuses would be applied at a significantly diminished rate, such that the dps output was similar to a single HAC (in this case, a Zealot).

To be specific, it would be fitting the same number of XL guns as before, and adding a rack of medium guns. Ergo it can shoot at a big thing and attempt to swat the flies at the same time.

WHY:
HAW dreads are a contradiction. A dread is for shooting big things. They’re structure killers. They’re cap killers. The idea to duct tape 4 battleship guns together and say “HEY LOOK now I can shoot subcaps!” is dumb.

Yet in spite of the niche, you should NEVER see a massive ship lack the ability to engage smaller targets on some scale (aka the death star) because it’s such an obvious design flaw. Whether or not this argument should apply to Titans is… well… up to you.

I get that Rock/Paper/Scissors matters, but the damage would only ever be enough to repel an unsupported target.

Between the ~500-600 total DPS (seiged), poor scan res, and mediocre tracking, a dread bomb would be substantially lower threat to a subcap fleet than it is now, increasing the need for carriers and dreads to work together. In cases such as entosis dreads, it would be a way to swat an annoyance like a cruiser. Something like a cepter would still be able to orbit at ~20 and /lol as the guns miss.

The pheonix would need some special attention as RLMLs would be… interesting.

So with that in mind, bring out your thoughts. Good, bad, ugly, they should all give me something interesting to read. I’ll be back tomorrow to see just how many people are left twitching and raving on the floor.

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Wouldnt that be what a BS and cruiser group surrounding it be for? Or better yet, a carrier?

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I know I wrote a lot, so I can forgive a bit of TLDR:

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Ah sorry I missed that.

Well… I can see what you are saying… perhaps an alternate version using the same chassis because it would be more correctly a Pre-Dreadnought. (Yeah I know EvE dreads dont actually fit the designation themselves but Im guessing thats why they are only big gun craft)

Ive flown medium armed BS before, its quite a lot of fun against an unsuspecting enemy

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Fill all the slots with smartbombs!

More insanity!

–Gadget would install mining lasers

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I would add drone bays on every capital. Come on, they are huge enough.

But maybe i am trying too much to be realistic with what I would really want to fly in space.

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This would actually be a good solution for a lot of ship classes. Battleships gaining a few medium slots also wouldn’t be a bad thing. But it would require setting all weapon slots to be locked to a specific size.
Personally I’d go ‘one size down’ with weapons, and then fix the ‘quad’ turret weapons to be like RLML/RHML, so you can use them to effectively go two sizes down. So Dreads would get say… 4 L weapons (They could even get the basic dread bonuses, but not the siege bonus to the weapons. But if they wanted to fit better to fight small ships they then would fit RHML instead of Cruise, and if they wanted to maximise brawling damage vs caps they would fit Torps and use rage.

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+1 for point defence weapons on battlecruisers and lower. Hell, maybe even cruisers!
Now F1 monkeys can be F1+F2 monkeys!

Drones are a step forward, for sure, but a lot of ships are far too limited in what they can hold for that to really make sense.

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The lowest tier of all weapons types, the most unused guns and the cheapest need a huge buff against smaller targets but a significant counter nerf to same sized targets and a huge nerf to larger targets.

Turning them into HAW style weaponry might give them life and value.

But changing HAW to other guns? Nope.

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Double or triple the fitting requirements (likely PG). It’s how they already effecitvely prevent battleship guns from fitting on anything smaller than an ABC.

In essence. make it so that sure you CAN fit say half a rack of large turrets on your battleship, or you can fit 2 L, 3 M, and 2 S, or 1 L, 5 M, etc. Different permutations. It would go a LONG LONG way towards breaking arty doctrines, which are utterly horrible gameplay.

It’s just like when you’ve got 75m3 of drone bay space. Sure you can put 3 heavy drones in, but if you want to optimize you’ll get the best DPS with 2 heavy, 1 medium, and 3 light. (for anyone reading this I’ve just gone back to read this post and apparently 2+1+3=6. Not a very common number of drones for a ship. Apparently math was hard at that point in time. The correct number would be 2 heavy, 2 med, 1 light).

Overall, I absolutely love the concept. It would have to be something in a major release (damn near Eve 2.0 given how significant of a gameplay change it would be) but I love the concept.

Lol I’d be lying if I didn’t consider suggesting that titans get citadel Stand-Up PD systems.

In the case of a Titan I can almost see it, because the Titan is “■■■■, you just spent 100b on your ■■■■. Go ahead and stomp on something”. But a dread? They’re getting WAY too much out of their niche with HAW guns.

The rest of what you said is why I said medium weapons rather than small weapons; I agree they’re underwhelming. Adding RLMLs to a Phoenix may cause people to undock them for more than an upgraded Drake joke.

Never the less, this thread is about encouraging discussion. So… why do you hold the position that you do?

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I think simply locking sizes of weapons to specific high slots works out much easier. Since changing fitting requirements then means you have to change PG/CPU of the ships involved. Or change the stats on every turret to reflect the fact that you’ve just dropped the number of L turrets they can fit. That or you end up with Cruisers/BC’s that will out DPS or match the battleships. So in terms of which requires the least effort for the same result, locking slots is the way to go.
Especially since they already are pretty much capped at their intended size due to the dramatic jumps. Locking slots just allows you to put more slots in (something citadels proved they could do) without having to worry about ‘what if they don’t fit a PG using tank and instead fit more XL guns’.

Don’t they already have that with both smart bombs and the Doomsday smart bomb variant? PD system for Citadels is just a Smart bomb really isn’t it?

Still, Medium weapons just sound too small for dreads for balance. I’m still going with L slots on Dreads, but give the turrets also RHML like versions. You can still apply some damage to frigates, but your secondary weapons are only going down 1 or maybe 2 size classed with efficiency. And the smallest ships still get to be small and fast.

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This would be a massive change already, so if they’re going to put the work in I would think “easiest” should be their last concern. One thing I really love and would never want to change is when someone comes up with a fit and at first you’re like “god… what in the literal ■■■■ is that fit?”. Then you look at it a bit more, and you realize the bastard is an evil genius. Rudimentry example, Arty Abbadons… it’s an energy turret ship. But it’s tanky as all hell, and the arty volleys are still more than enough to delete other battleships.

I agree that a single large slot would be relatively useless… but it would have advantages. Consider an enemy carrier group. A large turret (lets say a mega pulse II) with scorch can wreck fighters as they’re closing, LONG before they’re in range of your medium turrets. Once they get closer, said medium turrets have better tracking and will apply better than the large.

(EDIT: Nothing says that the power of a large turret could not be amped up dramatically given the much lower count that you’re expecting to see… give them a significant punch).

Even if the cruiser did meet in DPS, it would fall FAR short in EHP, with potentially the same calibre of weapons. Honestly, I’d love to see everyone’s DPS get nerfed hard, evenly across the board. It’s fun when a fight really lasts. I’m talking about a 1v1 lasting 5-6 minutes. Blapping is a good lul every now and then, but there’s nothing to keep you on the edge of your chair. It’s a cheap thrill, imo.

In thinking about it, I’d almost worry that we’d result in “bigger is better” because the smaller guns would have the tracking to mess up smaller ships. Why fly a cruiser with medium and small guns when you can fly a battleship with large medium and small guns. Apart from being slower it doesn’t really have any sacrifices to worry about against the cruiser.

Very true… but PD looks WAAAAAY COOOLER. Like… first time someone turned on the PD while I was tethered I just about came in my pants. I’d rather see the PD fire be a lot more focused (actual turrets shooting at actual targets, not just spraying fire everywhere) but overall, PD looks awesome.

EDIT:

With it just being a function of power grid, it could be large instead of medium :wink: :wink:

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I feel like this would be a realistic thing, make it like point defense turrets in a sense (Which most big ships would normally have). Could even extend this to battleships having a rack of small guns for assisting in anti-frigate defense.

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It certainly does have the potential to be, but it’s definitely a MAJOR re-work.

I’d worry about the same as said above, however:

In order to make sure that this doesn’t become a problem, I think we’d have to ensure that the effectiveness of the guns is less than on their “optimal” platform. For example, a frigate using small guns will end up out-performing the small guns on a battleship.

Edit:
I suppose another option would be to lock them to a “two smaller” rule. If a battleship fits large turrets, it gets a secondary rack of small turrets. Thus a cruiser can still be a threat to it. Likewise, if a dread can fit XL, then it can fit a secondary rack of mediums, leaving battleships and quite probably battlecruisers as a threat to it.

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If Frigates get 3 Small guns, then BS get 2 small guns, assuming the BS gets bonuses to the guns that match the bonuses to it’s L weapons. That avoids BS out performing frigates in the small gun range while still allowing them to do some small gun fighting.

Using your example obviously. I’m still in favour of the one smaller rule as I think it leaves frigates/destroyers in a better place in a Capital fight. Since a Dread fitting mediums then fits RLML or equiv and kills the interdictors & interceptors easily, well one dread might not, but 5 dreads would. While 5 Dreads with RHML’s are going to have a much harder time doing that.

Still, it’s another good point towards what I was saying about locking slots to whatever size you design the ship around. And locked slots provide another point to differentiate certain ships. Most races have 3 weapon based Battleships currently. A way to differentiate two attack biased battleships could be secondary slots available.

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I agree with this concern… and I agree that going “one size smaller” would resolve it.

That said… does the phoenix not deserve a real reason to be jumped into a fight? :rofl: Slap some RLMLs on it and it’s actually useful for something. Haha.

You know what, that could REALLY increase the flexibility of many hulls.

Imagine an Amarr battleship with a rack of large energy turrets and a rack of HAMs. Distinct weapon systems for distinct roles. Your large turrets wouldn’t track a HAC to save your life… but a rack of HAMs sure would. As it’s a secondary system it would of course need to be subpar dps compared to the HAC, but enough that the HAC needs to be careful. Then the svipul menace strikes again, and your battleship is toast because the HAMs just can’t apply.

The Gallente kind of get shafted because they already have drones on most of their hulls. But maybe it’s just an example… maybe they get another rack of smaller hybrids.

Minmatar have their projectiles and missiles, caldari have missiles and hybrids. 3 of the 4 races have dual weapon systems, and secondary weapon systems could be different by design. “Redundant approaches”.

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chribba beat you to it

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I’ve already suggested secondary weapon racks for undersized guns for all ships as they go up in weight class and offered the alternative of a buff to haw style weapons in the vein of the rapid light middle launcher.
So a double heavy pulse laser or quad light beams and similar weapons would have a use similar to the rapid lights where they’re good against undersized targets but less damage against bigger targets.

As they exist now they’re wasted turrets that almost no one uses.

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I hope this discussion gains traction because as of this writing, I have every reason to believe your statement is entirely true. However I don’t pretend to know everything about this game nor do I claim to have immense experience. But within my experience, yes, the smaller turrets have almost no use.

Right now I’ve only ever seen them used seriously once: in Black Ops battleships to save on powergrid.

A few years ago I did some minor PYFA warrioring with smaller turrets, trying to see a viable use-case for them. Yes, they track better and that was entirely what I tried to build for. But…in the end they had almost identical damage curves (verses range and transversal) as the larger turrets…just that their curves were a kilometer or two closer. But never was the application all that much better than the biggest guns to be worthy of note (and the higher DPS from the larger guns more than made up the difference, so the point about application was moot anyway).

I also haven’t done this anytime recently, so things may have changed.

In the end, the only consideration ever was about powergrid and CPU. Otherwise, the difference in tracking using smaller guns was never enough to justify it. The concept of using smaller guns with better tracking to better go against smaller targets with the tradeoff being less DPS against full-size targets never panned out precisely because you could never get a meaningful increase in applied DPS on smaller targets. In the end, you were simply gimped, not differently-abled.

But again, I must stress, given how limited my experience with this game has been, I’m really interested in hearing other people’s experience with this.

I might be mistaken on this, but I think on the old forums I once voiced an opinion about also giving the dual/quad turrets a sig res halfway between their current size and the appropriate-size down, so that they might actually apply better should you choose to downsize guns. Nobody liked it then, but I still feel it would be worthwhile to explore the balance feasibility of it.

A little more directly on topic…putting smaller classes of guns on larger vessels, I think would also be quite interesting (also agreeing to only one size down). If you wanted to restrict it to two turrets to prevent overwhelming the smaller classes…you might consider asking for this as a sort of rigging with around 150 calibration. Each rig gives you one smaller weapon slot to plug a turret into. That way you’ve made an interesting sacrifice to enable yourself to somewhat engage smaller vessels. This would be similar to the way command rigs give you an additional command burst per rig.

I really don’t expect this topic to ever gain traction, but it’s still fun to think about.

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Question: What would up put in a Scorpion’s high slots?