In a gang environment, just about any frigate has the speed and scan res to be fast tackle. Fleet inties get used the most for this role because of the bonus to scram and disruptor range, allowing you to use a long point and tackle from outside of heavy neut range, while maintaining enough speed to avoid light drones, turret, and missile damage. Survivability has a lot going for it, so much so that AFs are a no-go in the current meta.
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Then the whole point of trying to tackle as an AF ship is flawed, no? Or am I misunderstanding?
Because the tackler is the very first guy to enter the field and will very much be the very first guy to be targeted because he is a Threat, kill or neut, whatever, and the first thing the tackler victims want to do is āgtfoā, so given the limited choices they have, the gang either uses a second wave of tacklers or let the battleship escape because he did good to counter the tackle role with either neuts or killing the tackler ASAP and avoid dying. It would highly be unfair for the battleship, for instance, to have no counter-play to tacklers just because suddenly the tackling ships in question have been given resistances to neuts.
Heck if anything this module is Helping the AF to do the tackle role, they are being given a module that pretty much grants massive resistances and will definitely give room in mids for said job, to let go some shield tank or give up one current meta module for a cap booster or something. They will pretty much have heavily reduced damage, so it will depend on keeping the cap up.
Which is another reason I think AFs really need a solid, class defining role bonus, as along with inties, they are the most accessable t2 hulls in the game. Iāve never regretted the time spent training inties, because it has always been useful. Once you train a racial cruiser to 5, there is very little reason to ever use an assault frigate vs a tech 1 combat cruiser, or even a dessie at racial dessie 5, you get better performance and survivability for less isk. Making AFs more survivable without giving them overly large fangs (i.e. keeping them about where they are nowā¦ none of them are even remotely close to daredevil levels of gank) gives them a useful role for pilots that have just trained them as well as vets that want to fly a frigate that wonāt lead to reshipping multiple times (weāve got interdictors for that particular itch), but donāt really want to fly a 60 dps fleet tackle inty.
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I miss flying high-speed-cloaky-scout-hero-tackle interceptorsā¦ the most fun throwaway ship i ever had, and the FC of the fleet i was supporting was too dumb to take advantage of it.
I never liked Assault Frigates, they were just bad AF.
Heavy neuts. Should Alpha a frig.
The design goal is not to make AFās light/heavier tackle. We already have fleet inties for that kind of job anyway.
They are trying to make ACās and HACās more of a āship of the lineā - ship. In this scenario Battleship neuts is just not even a concern.
To be honest this module will make things super interesting for fleet combat, and there will be smaller interesting things you can do with this kind of module in a small gang or even solo environment as well.
I like the idea, but generally speaking Iām not a fan of these kinds of modules. Why canāt more ships be like T3Ds and have āmodesā that you activate or switch to?
Creating a ship-specific module that will basically be mandatory to the fit seems odd, compared to just giving it something like āHardened Modeā that is only available every X seconds for Y duration. Hell, Iād love to see stuff like Bastion Mode be an actual mode instead of a module you pretty much have to fit, thatās iconic to the ship class, that changes its function temporarily just like a T3D mode.
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overlaps too much with the current T3Cās bursts of damage/tank achieved through overheating, I think. At least on HACs.
Not to mention this module will become a must-have for af/hacs, hurting the Caldari line the most, since they often need those few lowslots (looking at the Hawk) for damage mods to achieve competitive dps.
I think the assault line of ships could use a role bonus to web/target painter resistance (possibly even neut resistance?) to allow them to punch above their weight.
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Both design decisions are valid. I am personally indifferent about the two.
Being a module has the added effect of being more āmodularā. You have to sacrifice a slot and some fitting for it giving some more options when fitting and feeling more rewarding and interesting for people who like to theory-craft fits. Personally I would like to see more variations of the module, like you have for the Emergency Hull Energizer on caps, where you can choose between less fitting (compact) or better module (T2/faction), as well as letting you optimize for isk cost (t1 version). Also in long fought attrition wars availability also becomes a thing (another reason why there are very few deadspace alliance doctrine fits).
Now for the Marauder there is literally no reason not to fit one, so it is kinda sillyā¦ However it gets artificial niche usecases like in the AT where the Bastion module is banned. But for like a Command Destroyer that you only want for the boosts for instance you can remove the MJFG and slap on a different midslot witch opens up more options.
I donāt really like this idea on AFs. I can see how it will work on HACs but a lot of frigate PVP is solo / small gang. 20s is too long in a solo frigate fight yet not long enough to help if you go up against a small gang (solo). I can see most stuff will just run from AFs when this is implemented.
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It still has passive resist bonus while cooldown.
I think the module is useless. 20 seconds of ubber resists, 2 minute cool down, why use it?
If you face a large enemy fleet, they can just cycle between your AFs and will quickly reach a point where all the mods are in cool down.
If you are using oneā¦ Wellā¦ Timing is key and seeing how many people fail to broad cast for reps on time, I doubt they will fire the module fast enough.
It just seems like a gimmick with very limited use.
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I can see it now. A 450dps Enyo/Thalia-logi Afterburner Doctrine with Magus for armor bonus and sig reduction and pontifex for ewar resistance. Hehehehe. The days of cynoing caps on frig roams are finally over. The enyos could tear at least one or two apart by warping out and warping back in with this ADCU module HEHEHEHEHEHEH FUNNNNNN!!! Implement now!
Gonna be lots of HAW dread tears!
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Problem: Assault frigates are sub-optimal compared to similarly priced T3Dās.
Solution: Give them a temporary āimmunityā module so they can prolong life in fights.
Umā¦ no? Whoever proposed this idea? Iād really love to know.
CCP you guys really worked yourselves in to a corner with this one. I do have a couple of ideas for myself, Iām hoping you see them before you commit too hard down this path and make AF broken for another 7 years.
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Concentrate their hard tackle role: remove the mwd bonus (or keep it, more options are better) and add an AB bonus. A small boost per level rewards training deep in to the class and provides similar bonuses but much lower speeds than MWD. This will aid them in holding tackle while webbed as well, since not all AF have the room for webs.
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3 mid slots minimum per hull. Remove highslots from kiting ships as necessary.
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Provide ewar resistances to the class. Whether this manifests as immunity to ECM drones or as neut resistances making AF hard to shake off is can provide a good niche for the class in roams where they can take over tackle roles from interceptors and take a bit more punishment.
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Generally improve capacitor pools. Some AF have very weak capacitors and this makes them extremely unwieldy.
Otherwise Iād not suggest any other huge changes like more damage buffs or drone bays or whatever. Some ships need their pg/cpu revisited in the wake of new roles and/or extremely low performance. In the case of the amarr ships which struggle for relevance having them take a bit longer to wear out will help but having a 3rd mid for a retribution will let it do itās job for longer, like it should have been from the beginning.
The main thing to remember for everyone about AF is that the whole game has changed since they were done. IIRC they were the first ships to be worked on, before clear racial delineations were created and before the various other changes to how weapons worked were introduced.
I for one, still maintain as I always have, that rebalancing self-repair modules so that they arenāt awful would go an extremely long way towards making AF better. Feel like a broken record now. Been saying it for 5 years. Itās part of why I unsubbed. If you canāt even make frigates work properly why should I even GAF about the rest of the game.
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Who would ever use a Vengeance again? Retribution would be op. 5 lows, 4 turrets with tracking, optimal, AND damage bonus. Thatās just crazy talk.
Clearly the vengeance also requires some work if its that simple to discard it.
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The vengeance is the only AF that can actually perform itās heavy tackle role lolol. You can check my lossmails where I two recent deaths using them. Itās all the others that need help. I rock 85%+ omni resists in my Vengeance before the reactive hardener starts shifting its resists to give you 90%+ against the damage type your absorbing.
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Yeah. Iāve seen your other posts on the tackling thread. The Vengeanceās armor resist bonus will always give it a place. But a mid on the Retribution is op, when compared to the others. That optimal and damage is just too good to allow it to control range over and above the rest, while throwing out considerable dps.
I have some troll 500MN maller losses on my KB too. Good times. Cheaper than the one-trick pony 500MN HIC. If youāre gonna be a one-trick kamikaze pilot, do it in a cheaper hull.
Itās sad that we need 500mn mallers to fill the role that the AFās in general canāt seem to handle ā the heavy tackle. The ADCU will help the AF hulls but not in ways that are class appropriate. The ADCU is appropriate for HACS but in my opinion OVERPOWERED for AFās. Check out my thread on consumable afterburners for AFās. That would be the proper route for the AF line.
And I agree, unless all the AFās get +1 med slot, the Ret cannot get one either.
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SO nerf the range on the retribution.
I for one would just really like to see 4/6/2 on the hawk. The sacrifices you make for this hull are just too much imho, its a slap in the face to for the first instance not having enough fitting unlike other hulls and secondly be slow as ā ā ā ā and not have enough slots so you can fit yourself properly on top of a useless highslot that only meme builds ever use.
4/6/2 +10 cpu and call it a wrap. GG.
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