8 turret slot with bonus laser dmg seems good on paper.
But its crap capacitor base, not enough PG for Tachyons, and in general, Tachyons are meh.
The ship caps out so fast and the dps advantage is nonexistant vs Railguns, nor is there a range advantage, there’s no real advantage to lasers considering t2 and faction crystals break and are costly, so the argument of not paying for ammo no longer flies.
Lasers need a cap reduction pass, or Amarr laser bonus ships need a better base cap stat to improve their competitiveness.
Meanwhile Projectile is 0 cap firing damage type selectable… /facepalm
-25% to energy guns cap cost
it’s better in terms of damage/GJ ( → ×4/3 = +33% = 0.41dbl) than eg a collision accelerator (+15% = 0.20dbl and huge calibration cost)
Not every ship is good for every job.
The Abaddon is a very poor mission running ship - I know, it was my first Level 4 mission ship many years ago. Cap demanding, slow, etc…
However, itted for a fleet it’s very tanky with great resists, very high DPS - easily over 1,000dps - and in a fleet it won’t be flying alone. it’ll have logi-support with it - a set of Guardians normally - that can keep the armour up (those resists help there), and - as required - top the capacitors off.
If you want a mission ship look elsewhere - Apocalypse, the Apocalypse Navy (Napoc) or a Paladin.
If you want a fleet ship, as part of a good Amarrian doctrine, then the Abaddon is your armoured fist.
All ships roughly the same value, so no crazy differences in pimp.
In a certain site there is a spawn where 3 sleeper battleships of exactly the same type spawn right about 20km, so perfect range for all of them. So we each shot one of them and counted the time to kill. Guess who did win (by quite a margin)?
Yes, the Conflag-Paladin. Then came the Torp-Golem, last was the Hail-Vargur. Projectiles being capless and having somewhat free choice of damage is nice, but the insane power-projection of lasers due a very good optimal range, non-reload times and ability to insta-switch ranges is simply amazing.
And thats why the Abaddon as an 8-gun-laserboat (which can fly a full rack of MegaPulses and still have enough PG and CPU left for all tank/prop/cap it needs) is such a crazy good frontline battleship for groups, because that advantage multiplies in a fleet when all of your ships can do that on command with nearly no delay. And don’t need to fit tackle or repmods because the fleet brings tackle, remoterep and application-assistance. Abaddons only lost their top-spot to the (crazy OP) Leshaks that offer a similar tank but many other nice features in addition. But as cheaper Leshak-Alternative, it’s still superior to almost any other (non-faction) battleship.
The Mael is my favorite battleship hull. I actually really like all the battleships. They’re all either stunning or iconic or both. My least favorites are probably the Apoc/Pally and Scorp/Rattle/Widow. The ones that are truly magnificent in my opinion are:
Rokh, Mega/Vindi (not the Kronos though, idk why), Mael, Geddon/Deemer, and Abaddon.
As as recall abaddon used to have bonus to large laser capacitor use instead of bonus to damage and were “balanced” not so long ago.
It had 100% of a sense in AT meta this year due to points/dps/tank index, but I don’t think we’re not talking about AT stuff here, right?
So the secret technique of abbadon wide combat use in fleets is that u can put projectiles for cannons instead of lasers without major dps loss. It gives you cap stability, damage type variability and puts brain-raping debuff on hostile FC. Abaddon is cheapest and fattest armor projectile platform!