In fan fest 2018 just went, they was talking about revisiting the HAC’s again.
So this is a page where I like people to link there idea’s of what you like to see on the HAC’s that wasn’t touch in the last update to them.
Myself I would love to see the Zealot get some speed behind it, since it’s way to slow compared to it navy and T1 brother, even if it’s Nano fit or 1600mm plate on it.
With maybe 25m3 drone bay with 25mbit in space only to make it seem close to the navy or T1 brother flyability.
What are you guys thoughts on your ships choice.
Lets let CCP know our ideas.
i would love to see the eagle able to get more DPS than the onyx. right now the onyx tanks better, has better flat dps and has better damage even at range where the eagle is supposed to shine. right now all it has going for it is a little more base speed and the mwd sig reduction.
HACs have a problem. With the moon mining changes pushing up the cost of advanced components, T3 and pirate cruisers offer better price/performance in almost every use case. For the Zealot, you need to ask whether the Phantasm, at half the hull cost, might be able to do the job just as well. The answer will be situational but I would expect the Phantasm to win for most use cases.
I’m not sure how CCP fixes this, I would prefer they adjust the bill of material to bring prices in line with capabilities rather than significantly buff the ships - we really don’t need more power creep.
odds are CCP will not lower the build cost but rather either raise the yields of the moon drills themselves or the individual rocks. it will take time CCP likes to make sure they have a really good picture of the market and that it has fully settled before they make changes to it. Its one of the few things they take their time and actually try to get right lol
Vaga: It’s designed to be a kitey ship but it doesn’t have much range, it doesn’t have enough mid’s to be a fleet ship(tank) and its extremely gimped on cpu.
Suggestions: Low to Mid, +CPU, +Grid for arties or 12.5% fall off per level instead of 10%.
Zealot: It’s dps/projection is decent but no way to maintain range becuase it’s so slow, it need’s more speed and some form of anti tackle (not overkill like rapid lights)
Suggestions: +speed, either + 25 drone bay or increased damage - 1 turret to have the same effective turrets but with 1 utlity high for a neut for anti tackle.
Eagle needs dps, maybe a little speed.
Cerb is great where it is the best hac atm.
Ishtar is pretty good as well not sure if a buff will put it into op status again.
New muninn is nice the speed helped a lot.
Sac need’s a bit more speed to help it fill the screening roll that it seems to be designed for, maybe a bit more brawling dps.
Deimos is still one of the greatest pure stat solo ship’s tank and dps is amazing but it becomes diemost in fleet’s but not sure what would keep it balanced so will not make suggestions.
to be honest the vaga isn’t a bad ship people just don’t use it for what its good for.
it is neither a kitey ship nor is it a fleet ship. its built for light fast skirmishes and while i think it could do with a little more tracking to keep up with itself it does do this job very well. while some may argue its to niche a roll and there are not many opportunities for it i would argue there are very few ships in the game that fly quite like the vagabond. I understand the confusion considering its fall off bonus but what that actually lets it do is continue to apply a good deal of damage while maintaining a range it can more easily disengage from.
while moving a low to a mid would make some of its current stronger fits unviable it would open it up to more straight forward fits being an overall lateral change but encouraging more people to use it so i’m not opposed to it. fitting arti is already possible (i assume its why it gets 5 lows tbh) they are not used because other ships do it better and even if you let it fit artillery easier that would not change. however if the low to mid change did happen more PG would probably be required.
also curious why you feel the sac is a screener? it would certainly not be my first choice. now i will admit to having little experience flying or even being in fleet with a sac but the times i did we always used it as a heavy tackle. It gets a mean buffer and responds to reps well. even max tank fit the DPS is pretty good relatively speaking. I had always considered it one of the stronger hacs solo or in fleet. Not being caldari its one of the few solid missile ships that doesn’t suffer from damage lock with a double damage bonus.
That’s what I mean It sits on the front lines and tackle’s anything that could threaten the kitey ships behind it, it provides mean resists that let it just soak huge damage with the right support. A very good example was during the alliance tournament where they where against vindicator’s, 2 sac’s completely shut the vindi’s down while tanking comfortably with logi reps.
If you mean flying just out of scram range where the Dps is reduced enough to have an effective active tank while still having a good balance of thing’s then yea the Vaga is good at that sort of thing, like the wolf and retribution. But that’s really only for solo, once you add more people the Cynabal becomes a better option as buffer becomes more important than active rep unless your using implant’s, drugs, faction fit’s then maybe it will be effective up to a few people engaging it but that’s not very cost effective as a 2bil ship will have to fly really well to kill 3 70mil ship’s.
for screens like that a HIC will always be a better alternative to a hac considering its much greater scram range and overall tank. we use them a lot with minmatar EAF (sometimes recon but not often) they can react to threats better than screening frigs and while the gal EAF and recon do have better range they don’t have quite the staying power.
generally a little bit further out than scram kitting and they work pretty well in small groups but no they don’t hold up as they get bigger. like i said they are good for skirmishing not extended fights
normally its the EAFs people forget about. most can fit 10mn and are hard as balls to hit yet with the exception of the amarrs nuets and caldaris jams the e-war is just as strong as the recons at about 1/10 the price