… that would be the trade off for being able to chose the damage. that’s the problem with the bonus taking away the advantage.
That’s why most of these boats have mixed bonuses, generally a generic RoF bonus and then a damage specific Kin bonus plus the innate extra launcher. The reason the Hookbill gets the weird 25/20 per level bonus setup is because it has too few launchers and too large of a bonus to do it this way.
And yes, damage does make them better missile boats, at least for the purposes of this discussion because the only reason ever to change damage types is to deal more damage.
The claim is that Caldari boats are worse because they’re damage locked, when in reality the trade off for that damage lock is dealing roughly 25% more damage than any other comparable missile boat that isn’t damage locked. That means that someone with Kinetic resist at 77% and all others at 70% actually takes slightly more damage from the Kinetic locked Caldari boat than the same-class comparable other ship.
If the Caldari ships were to loose their Kinetic locked damage they’d pretty much have to lose a launcher across the board to make up for it, and that’s a raw deal for them. They’d be worse ships at that point.
BTW for comparison the Hookbill with and without Kinetic:
Hookbill with Kinetic: 6.75 effective launchers
Hookbill with other damage: 6 effective launchers
That’s a damage differential of 12.5%, which means if all the Caldari ships were brought down to that sort of level relative to the non-caldari missile boats but with bonuses to other damage types they would all lose damage.
For fun I’ve gone back and added in the values for the other Caldari ships without Kinetic, taking into account their other bonuses but not the locked ones.
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Sometimes they’re not as good, sometimes they’re better. Consider an Orthrus… I’d have a hard time thinking of a better ship for turning frigates into scrap. It’s not caldari, granted, but as a missile weapons platform, they aren’t worse… they’re just different.
I don’t think you’re disputing this, your reply is just the latest in this chain thus my reply is going in there!
They have the potential for 100% hit chance unless you can kite the missiles… damage calc is of course different, but just the same, it’s a different platform to increase variety in thegame.
Yeah, but that if the bonus is the same as other weapon platform, but is better or in other cases the RoF bonuses are better than their conterparts to compensate.
Example of this, Nighthawk(9,45 effective locked, 6.875 non-locked) vs Claymore(7,28 effective non-locked) if I done the math right.
And yes, I know that the Claymore does not have a damage bonus, but I think is a good example cause both are Missile Command Ships
so again the claymore is better at being a missile boat than the drake as it does more damage taking advantage of the benefit to using missiles.
also when you look gal have better drones than the other races but dont face a lock. either with better drone bays better or sometimes just flat better damage
You did your math right but you swapped a digit on the Claymore, it’s 7.82 (or 7.8 as I rounded it) not 7.28.
The trick here is that since the Claymore gets RoF bonuses rather than damage bonuses reload ends up having an outsized effect on its sustained DPS compared to other missile boats so if you factor in reload it ends up a little closer to the non-locked Nighthawk.
The advantage of missiles isn’t just in damage switching, that’s just a way to deal more damage to a resistant target, which Caldari doesn’t have to deal with because they just deal more damage anyway.
Missiles have other advantages in how they apply damage, their projection of that damage, and their other ammo choices like Precision vs Rage missiles. They also have other disadvantages as well, but that’s kinda beside the point of this discussion.
Gallente don’t have to deal with locking because the way drones are setup as a weapon they get quite large bonuses to make them a primary weapon in the first place but almost everyone has them as a secondary weapon.
Also if you compare Gallente drone boats to the drone boats of other factions they don’t get outsized bonuses in comparison. The Dominix and the Armageddon get the same 10% per level damage and HP bonus, the Armageddon just gets its second bonus to neut and nos rather than drone application. The same sort of pattern follows for the smaller hulls with drone bonuses.
In comparison Caldari get flat out more launchers with larger bonuses in exchange for some of the bonus being to Kinetic.
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Didnt you mean Cyclone?
indeed
In that case, why you think is better the Cyclone than the Drake? If you only take into account the missiles, is a 6,25 effective turrets for the Cyclone vs 9 Kin effective turrets or 6 non-locked effetive turrets, is not that big of a difference.
I think the Cyclone is better, but not cause of the damage.
I read it as Cyclone so what I wrote stands.
See above for numbers for most of the Kin-locked Caldari ships.
As for which ship is actively better that really depends on what you’re doing with it. The Drake has been absolutely overwhelming in the Meta of various parts of the game at various times, the Cyclone can’t really claim that at any point. It’s not a bad ship, but neither is the Drake, they’re just better at different things.
… at one part of the meta… and it was so good all of missile kind still bares its scars
F
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SOME Caldari ships have a kinetic bonus. But don’t just think about the damage bonus. You need to consider the ship as a whole. Most kinetic locked ships do more dps than other racial counterparts.
The Condor is still a solid tackler, Drake a decent brawler, then theres the Tengu etc.
Balance the ships, not the race in general.
@ Lugh,
Not all gallente ships are drone boats. Not all Caldari ships (even missile ships) are kinetic locked.
It wasn’t all missiles, and Heavy Missiles were objectively OP. They had better damage and application at longer range than any other medium weapon by a fairly large margin. The more surprising thing is how long it took someone to abuse it.
And yes, one part of the meta. Not every ship is ever going to be good in every part of the meta without being overwhelming in at least one part of it. The many possible applications are too broad and require too many different stats at a high point.
In PvP missiles are very effective, omni-tanks tend to mean you choose ammo for range not damage type. There’s no problem with being kinetic locked there.
For General PvE you’ll still do fine trying to out-damage NPC resists but if you’re running Gurista sites they’re going to die a hell of a lot faster. I see it as an extension of the Caldari ship doctrine, very specialized vessels fit for specific tasks and backed up with fleet support to make up for any weaknesses.
Actually in practice unless you fit specifically to resist Kinetic it’s one of the best damage types to shoot in PvP. The reason is because Shield and Armor are either more resistant to or weak against EM or Explosive so an Omni-tank plus a mod to plug that hole generally results in slightly higher Explosive and EM resists. This means that, with the exception of T2 Gallente hulls and specially fitted anti-Kinetic setups, Kinetic and Thermal are on-average the best choices for PvP.
For PvE it’s something of a moot point these days, since the Raven and its variants are damage independent, though if you actually look up NPC resists on Chruker especially for Null Anom and Scan Site rats the resist spread between their resist hole and their first and second highest resists can be enough that even something like a Tengu is better off swapping ammo types.
Thankfully of the five common Pirate types the Guristas have Kinetic as their weakest resist and the Serpentis and Angels have it as their second weakest, making Caldari Kinetic missile boats an excellent choice against them. For the Blood Raiders and Sansha though you’re generally better off swapping to EM missiles, since the swing between EM and Kinetic for them is in the range of 40-70% more damage from EM vs Kinetic. (Generally resists increment by +10% at each step, so a Centus Dread Lord has EM at 48, Thermal at 58, Kinetic at 68, and Explosive at 78)
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Oh right, I forgot that ships are balanced around NPC values…
You apparently missed this part:
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