As the title says, it is about time that the kinetic lock for most caldari missile ships goes away and get a universal damage bonus like most amarr and minmatar missile ships.
Why do amarr missile ships like the damnation and legion get a bonus to all kind of damage types with missiles?
Why do the Scyte fleet and the typhoon fleet get a bonus to all kind of damage?
Even some caldari ships don’t have a kinetic lock(Jackdaw, Stork, Golem, Phoenix, Crow, Condor etc) So why not give all caldari missile ships like the drake or the kestrel an universal damage bonus? Just like the amarr ones.
Droneboats don’t have damage locks, Mordus legion ships dont have damage locks, so why not give all missile ships a universal damage bonus?
Cause Kinetic is the main Damage for Caldari Ships. If you want to remove that lock, then why not Cristals wich do Explosive and Kinetic Damage? Why not Hibrid Ammo wich do EM and Explosive damage?
Even if they are lock in that damage, is better than the non-lock damage bonus of other missile ships.
You mean, like the Raven, RNI, Scorpion, SFI, Caracal, CNI, Hookbill (mostly), kestrel, and others?
Because weapon platforms aren’t homogenous.
They all have strengths and weaknesses.
That’s like complaining that literally ALL of the T1 Amarr cruisers with turrets are damage locked EM/therm. Wait… maybe because the Amarr are primarily lasers, which are locked EM/therm, they have more flexible missile platforms to make their race not worthless against armor tanked doctrines?
Why does this only apply to caldari ships? Gallente are not locked into thermal drones nor are amarr locked into only em drones or em missiles.
Hell if we really want to use your logic minmatar should only get explosive damage bonuses even to projectiles and gallente should only get teir damage bonuses applied to the thermal parts of the rounds
What makes it worse for caldari is missiles are their primary weapon system and the main and one of the only advantages of that weapon system is being removed from several of their ships. There is no good reason for this it’s a hold over and already being removed from many of their ships thankfully. CCP just needs to get on with it and remove the locks on all but the stealth bomber.
Then for that logic on Missiles, remove the lock damage for Lasers and Hibrid weapon systems.
And yes, minmatar have Explosive exclusive damage for Missiles in some of their ships, their T2 ammo is Locked to Explosive and Kinetic. Each race have Lock Damage, why then remove that to one race and not the rest?
You already have gotten the explanation: It’s similar for all races.
Amarr: EM/thermal locked because of energy turrets
Gallente: Thermal/kin locked because of hybrid turrets
Caldari: Kinetic locked because of missile bonuses
but with Caldari, you actually can use other missiles, unlike hybrid or energy turrets which cannot deal other damage types at all. It is mostly only beneficial if you have low skills for your hull type or if your opponent has a large resist hole though.
Granted minmatar have it a bit better, maybe. Caldari have it a little bit worse since their secondary weapon, hybrids, is also damage locked, whereas amarr (missile/drones) and Gallente (drones) aren’t. That’s a reasonable cost for having a somewhat more versatile primary weapon, especially when you can upgrade to pirate ships which are not as heavily locked. With a gurista ship’s bonus to thermal and kinetic, you can hit at least the secondary resist hole of any npc, for example.
If we want to keep ships different, they need to be different. Otherwise what’s next? damage bonuses that apply to all weapon types and the removal of turret vs launcher slots?
But why kinetic only? As much as I can tell, aside from the bombers which has a very distinct role there are no ships with exclusive bonus to EM missile. Or thermal. Or explosive.
Yes, with turrets Amarr deals EM and thermal damage, Gallente deals thermal and kinetic and Minmatar deals… I don’t even care anymore.
But would it really matter if we would remove the kinetic lock?
Or make each faction have the same bonus that they can deal with the turrets - Minmatar would get kinetic/explosive lock.
As mentioned, there are even some caldari ships that don’t have a kinetic lock like the jackdaw or golem, so it would make sense to just remove the kinetic lock from all caldari missile ships except stealth bombers
Amarr don’t have a em lock on missile ships (turrets do em/therm)
gallente don’t have a thermal lock on drones (hybrids do kin/therm)
(most) minmatar missile ships don’t have a explosive lock on missiles (projectile weapons do all damage types)
The Talwar is lock to Explosive damage, the T2 ammo of Minmatar is Locked to Kin/Explosive damage, also Minmatar weapons only have 3 ranges even if they have better damage distribution.
If you remove the kin lock for those ships, that are few, you need to nerf them or remove the lock to all weapon systems.
Edit: And to add information, Missiles for Amarr and Minmatar and Drones for Gallente are the Secondary Weapon system and not Primary. Also, Caldary Lock Damage Bonus is better than the other Missiles Bonuses to compensate, so if you remove it you’ll need to nerf those ships.
The Gallente and Amarr have one turret system… hybrids/lasers. These are invariably locked. As a result, their second weapon system (drones/missiles) are far more flexible, though each with their own drawbacks.
Caldari and Minmatar have their one type of damage (missiles/projectiles), however given that you can still swap damage types (something amarr and gallente cannot do) to do a different damage type, their bonuses are restrictive to prevent them from being obscenely overpowered relative to the other two.
Ultimately, Caldari have plenty of flexibility. “Kinetic” damage locks only apply to boats with damage bonuses, all of their others can swap weapon types. Their T2 missiles come in all four flavours. Their other platform (hybrids) are certainly locked, though Caldari bonuses tend to favour sniping platforms.
Minnows have a lot of flexibility, though actually less than Caldari. Their T2 ammo is locked. Their missile platforms are occasionally locked to explosive.
Gallente drones are of course exceedingly flexible, at a cost of being vulnerable to everything. It’s not that hard to defang a drone boat. Their secondary is hybrid, locked the same as Caldari.
The Amarr primary weapon system is pretty sad that it is locked, however on the flip side, scorch is amazing. Their missiles make them viable against things resistant to EM/therm.
The Caldari kinetic lock isn’t so bad as it seems most of the time. Many of the kinetic damage bonuses are on top of another dps bonus. They will typically perform as well as their missile counterparts when they are off kinetic, and then excel further with kinetic. This usually works out well, unless the kinetic lock is more extreme, like in the cases of the Drake, Condor, and Hawk.
This is in no way unique to caldari missiles either. Drones are “damaged locked” in almost the same manner. Gallente drones (Thermal) do significantly more damage than Minmatar (Explosive). Even projectiles have their damage selection hindered by the nature of the ammunition. For example, there is no high-damage kinetic ammo. Projectiles also lack a T2 variant for anything other than explosive/kinetic mixes.
So I can see the argument for reducing some of the kinetic-heavy bonuses a bit, but removal of that kinetic bonus on many of those ships would simply make them just better than other missile ships, rather than a different choice.
has the same kin/them lock as the gal but an arbitrary kin lock on their missile boats.
in general caldari the missile race has worse missile boats than minm or amarr because of this arbitrary lock. Missiles are already given a load of downsides to compensate for the selectable damage the caldari ships keep all of these downsides but lose out on the one advantage.
The Lock is not for all missile boats and is better than the Amarr and Minmatar Damage Bonus, 10% for lock damage vs 5% for non-lock. This also apply to other non-lock damage missile bonus on caldari ships.
In other words, you prefer a Homogeneous missile bonus for all caldari ships at the same level as other races than a better bonus even if is locked. Isn’t it?
Tengu: 10.3 effective launchers
Legion: 7.8 effective launchers (and a flight of 7.5 effective medium drones)
Tengu non-kinetic: 8.25 effective launchers
It really doesn’t, very few fits end up with a Kinetic bonus that outweighs the extra damage they do compared to comparable non-kinetic locked boats and if someone does bring that damage almost all of them have a non-kinetic bonus and an extra base launcher so swapping still puts them almost as good as the unlocked boats against a hard-counter fleet.
but that’s not the point if im after raw damage i’m not using a missile weapon system. their damage being higher does not make them better missile boats. if they really want to keep this they should go the rout of the hookbill give them a stronger bonus to kin and the standard bonus to the rest.
