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Author	Thread Statistics \| Show CCP posts - 2 post(s)
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.13 19:44:00 - [1] Just ask yourself this: if you get about same damage output from blasters and pulse lasers.. which weapon would you prefer? Obviously you would judge them on the other stats, such as optimal/falloff, tracking, cap use, grid use, cpu use. To me, it seems like pulse lasers are clearly the better choice in that scenario. Does anyone here want to say that they would choose blasters? keeping in mind this hypothetical scenario
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.14 20:36:00 - [2] Blaster fitting requirements are pretty rough also In order to have a good tech 2 Tank & Gank blaster boat, you need to choose Ion blasters - not Neutrons. Which means even less optimal, less falloff, and 8% less damage. On the other hand, Tempest can still have good gank and tank with 800s and Amarr bs can always fit mega pulse Bottom line is: the damage advantage of blasters is too small to justify all the disadvantages against other short range weapons. Yes, the blasters are most damaging weapons, yes, a smart player can always find a way to get some kills. But all kidding aside, when it comes to achieving your objectives against non-specific enemy, you gotta choose versatility of other weapons over the minor damage advantage.
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.14 20:45:00 - [3] Originally by: Goumindong Originally by: Ephemeron On the other hand, Tempest can still have good gank and tank with 800s and Amarr bs can always fit mega pulse The 6 low slot untank bonused tempest pays a lot for its tank. It won't fit a tank like the Hyperion will. The Armageddon cannot always fit megapulse. In fact it can barely fit megapulse an MWD and plates. Kinda like the Hyperion fitting neutron blasters except it has a lower base hit points uses more cap and runs out of CPU. The Apoc can fit a repper, but it doesn't get a damage bonus. The only ship that can fit a rep with Megapulse is the Abaddon whose guns already use more cap than near the entuire suite of a Hyperion. Tempest can fit 2x heavy neuts, with 650s, with a 1600mm plate it would make short work of Hyperion in most cases Tempest is much more versatile for general PvP than a Hyperion. And what I'm arguing is that this advantage in versatility is clearly more important than a small, 8-16% advantage in raw dps
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.16 17:00:00 - [4] If blasters really had 30% more damage than lasers - then there would be no room to complain, at all. Even a 20% damage advantage would be sufficient to differentiate blasters as "the most damaging weapons in EVE". But the real damage advantage of blasters is much smaller, and in fact it is simple to calculate: Both mega pulse and neutrons have rate of fire as 7.88 sec. The damage modifier difference is: mega pulse II: 3.6 neutron blaster II: 4.2 Therefore, the percentage by which neutron blaster damage is bigger than mega pulse is: 16.67% Is 16.7% extra damage really worth the extreme CPU requirement, the bad tracking, the bad optimal range and barely enough falloff to do 50% damage at 15 km? That 16.67% damage advantage evaporates as soon as you get just 2-3 km out of your optimal. So yea, a 30% damage advantage would definitely make it worthwhile, but the current one is just not significant enough.
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.16 17:38:00 - [5] Originally by: Electric Universe Yeh, by looking at the gun stats, they have 16.67% damage advantage. But take in the omni tanks into the picture, then how much better will the % get then?. It is a mistake to lose yourself in the specifics when there are 1000s of different possibilities. I believe this is the main reason why this discussion will never end - people get too caught up in specifics. There's a different way to look at it: if omni tanks are indeed some kind of problem, start a thread about them and discuss how they impact the game, and whether they should be adjusted or not. But in this thread we are just comparing gun stats and performance in general, not just on omni tanks.
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.16 18:44:00 - [6] The way I see it, neutron blasters should have 25% more damage than mega pulse, not 16.&% That's an overall 10% increase. Unlike blasters, mega pulse have great range versatility - up to 46 km optimal range. Also, as mentioned before, neutron blasters have big CPU fitting requirement which makes it much more difficult to fit than mega pulse or ACs. If you take all the possible combat engagements and average them out - lasers will have more damage on the enemy, mostly due to range advantages. Only a small portion of possible engagements benefits blasters more than lasers. We don't need a big change to blasters or other weapons. Just a small boost
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.16 19:02:00 - [7] I also look at it this way: if another 10% pure damage boost to blasters is considered unbalanced, then game balance should be restored by a slight nerf to blaster tracking and/or optimal and falloff ranges. That type of balancing emphasizes blaster role as the ultimate short range weapon. It makes different weapon roles more clearly defined, something that seems to be lacking right now.
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.16 19:14:00 - [8] Originally by: Electric Universe Originally by: Ephemeron I also look at it this way: if another 10% pure damage boost to blasters is considered unbalanced, then game balance should be restored by a slight nerf to blaster tracking and/or optimal and falloff ranges. That type of balancing emphasizes blaster role as the ultimate short range weapon. It makes different weapon roles more clearly defined, something that seems to be lacking right now. Still, around 30% more DPS for Neutrons over Pulses in web range with an omni tank should be enough anyways. Nothing more to add to that. The omni tank argument is a red herring. If blasters were clearly superior against omni tanks, people would stop fitting omni tanks. People choose to fit them now knowing that overall, they get the biggest advantage, not because they want blasters to have more damage for sake of game balance.
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.16 20:02:00 - [9] Originally by: maralt Edited by: maralt on 16/03/2009 19:48:49 So the up side of blasters is 30% more dmg against certain types of tank in their 4.5km optimal. While lasers get: 1. Against other tanks lasers are the better choice for dmg types, although truth be told those tanks are not used on BS really but they are used on quite a few T2 ships. 2. They have 37% more ehp compared to blaster ships. 3. Instant reload if a ship is altering its range. 4. No need to reload for 10 seconds after a very limited amount of shots. 5. 400%-1000% more optimal range. 6. Match or out damage blasters from 8km-30km. 7. Do 730 gun dps from 30-45km + have a falloff while blasters do 0dps. Don't forget the horrible CPU requirements of neutron blasters - surely I can't be the only one who notices! try fit an all t2 neutron blaster bs And good luck fitting neutrons with LAR, MWD, and cap injector. And that 8th high slot on megathron? a medium neut at best, or cloak - then CPU is really a problem
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.16 21:52:00 - [10] Quote: 1 x Medium Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 800 That's a joke right? no seriously?

Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.16 22:06:00 - [11] my point was that neutron blasters have bad bad fitting requirements - worse than mega pulse This is yet another disadvantage that is supposed to make the extra 16.7% dps advantage worthwhile? Add up all the other disadvantages, and the extra damage is not worth it. I want damage advantage to be 10% bigger to make up for all the disadvantages btw, dual plate mega moves like a brick and will be the death of you in many small gang engagements where the enemy has superior numbers and cruiser sized ships. And without active rep - good luck finding a station in 0.0 after every battle and spending 5 mil on repaires, or play docking games while you try to rep yourself by offlining some guns. It's a gimped setup that works only in certain situations. All this self-gimping is not worth 16.7% more damage
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.16 23:46:00 - [12] Originally by: Electric Universe Edited by: Electric Universe on 16/03/2009 22:46:43 Originally by: Ephemeron my point was that neutron blasters have bad bad fitting requirements - worse than mega pulse This is yet another disadvantage that is supposed to make the extra 16.7% dps advantage worthwhile? Add up all the other disadvantages, and the extra damage is not worth it. I want damage advantage to be 10% bigger to make up for all the disadvantages btw, dual plate mega moves like a brick and will be the death of you in many small gang engagements where the enemy has superior numbers and cruiser sized ships. And without active rep - good luck finding a station in 0.0 after every battle and spending 5 mil on repaires, or play docking games while you try to rep yourself by offlining some guns. It's a gimped setup that works only in certain situations. All this self-gimping is not worth 16.7% more damage Neutrons doesn't have it harder fitting Neutrons that a geddon have to fit 7 pulses with the normal omni tank setups that we use now. And by giving Blaster 10% more DPS advantage is really asking to make Autocannons obsolete or in really really bad shape. So i don't see that happening. And increasing the DPS on Blasters is not going to help much. They still have to MWD to the targets and be shoot while they move. So they rather have cap problems then though. But when you look closer to that, they don't directly have any cap problem when they MWD a bit around. Only low skilled players with poor capacitor skills might end up in that problem. Maybe they need a capacitor boost at the same time to, so the low skilled players can stop to whine about that?. If you are talking about fitting difficulty for Mega Pulse geddon, then compare it to fitting neutron blasters on a Dominix - both tier 1 versions. I believe you'd still find the geddon has it easier. I am aware that the Autocannons are rather weak weapons, but so far people aren't complaining because the Tempest and Typhoon are the most versatile of all battleships, able to make up for lack of dps in other ways, specifically by fitting heavy neuts. And the tempest has double damage bonus, which, in a way, brings AC damage up to par with blasters and lasers. I'm all for boosting ACs - but only in a way that emphasizes their role. And their role is not in the damage they do, and not optimal - but all other stats. Each of the 3 short range weapons deserves to have a clearly defined role.
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.17 08:32:00 - [13] Originally by: Theron Gyrow Originally by: Electric Universe Have you ever heard about the thing that is called cap penalty for having an MWD fitted?. First of all, the Lasers are really cap hungry, and then you want to nerf you cap by 17% more?. That's asking for troubles tbh. There is this fancy module, fits in a midslot, that solves cap problems. It's called "Heavy Capacitor Booster II", look it up. You'd need one even without the MWD. Gods, a BS without a MWD? What a horrible thought. No matter where you fly - zero-sec, low-sec, high-sec - you want a MWD. No ifs, buts or elses. He's right, anyone who thinks that a pvp battleship without MWD is a good idea gets automatically discredited. There are a lot of inexperienced people posting theory stuff. I wish there was some requirement and a test that people had to pass in order to participate in discussions of balance. A test on basics of PvP, and requirement on 50+ kills with or against ships being discussed. You could still be a tard but at least a competent one.
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.17 16:50:00 - [14] Originally by: Electric Universe Blasters is good enough if you only can use your brain a bit. End of story. Do you really think that we will listen to the lazy mans race (Amarr) who only have to press F1-F8 and watch the fireworks?. It's not even thinking, at all. With Gallente ships, you have to think before you do anything, and it's the same with Minmatar ships to. Amarr players who don't think before using Gallente BS'es and Blasters and that are doing some epic whining because you have to use your damn brain is pretty damn funny. Just to make a point - if you are talking about a "lazy race that just presses F1+" then you have to be talking about Caldari - no other race comes even close. There's a reason why 60% of the player base farms in Ravens and Drakes. It's not really relevant this this discussion, but the fact that you had such incorrect opinion puts yet another dent in your credibility.
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.17 19:10:00 - [15] Originally by: Electric Universe Well because the Null ammo is the range ammo Blasters have, then why not fix the ammo instead so they do better damage from 10 to 20 km?. That is the type of balancing action we should avoid. It goes against the main role of blasters - which should be clearly defined as the best short range weapon, with poor medium-long range performance. Good damage at 10-20 km is the role of lasers. Lasers deserve to be different, deserve to have an edge. Each weapon should be really good at something, each weapon should have an edge. And they all should be balanced out by weaknesses in other areas. Balancing things out by making everything more of the same makes a very boring game!
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.17 21:38:00 - [16] Quote: If you want to pwn (do most DPS) in close range with BS'es, then use Blaster BS'es. As it stands now, with all the possible combination of different modules - specially damage mods, the damage advantage of blasters is too small to matter. That's what the most reasonable people argue about. No reasonable person would ask for any radical changes, no need to redesign the game (even tho CCP proved they are more than willing to be unreasonable with nanonerf) 10% to damage boost, with 5-10% nerf to some other stat (if the extra damage is proved to be unbalanced), is all that's needed to emphasize blaster role a little better. It's really a small change - a surgical touch with a scalpel, not a nerf bat, or the sledgehammer CCP used in the past. God forbid we have any more balance changes done with those tools
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.17 22:45:00 - [17] Quote: I will never stop to say the things about the 30+% DPS advantage Neutrons have to Pulses at 5 km. Simply because that is the true fact. And it seems that many players in this topic forget to take that into consideration, and just ignore it. It's not a fact, it's a statement. And whether it is true or false depends entirely on the things you don't mention: the specific setups of the ships involved. For example, your statement is false if the target ship is an Ishtar. At the very least, you have to accompany your statement with "if the target fits omni-tank and is not a Gallente or Caldari t2 ship and is not a shield tanker" - at least But if your goal is to simply derail this thread as much as possible then you succeed pretty well. I'm not sure if the dev's would be tricked, tho my opinion of their judgment is pretty low right now.
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.17 23:01:00 - [18] First, you phrase your request improperly by asking to compare damage of a gun to damage of a ship Damage of a gun depends on the following stats: damage modifier, rate of fire, ammo base damage, skills, damage mods, implants When comparing blasters and pulse lasers, we find that all of the damage influencing stats except actual damage modifier scale proportionally, therefore can be canceled out. The difference between damage modifiers shows that neutron blasters do 16.7% more damage than mega pulse. Therefore, blasters are more powerful, but that is not being questioned. The question is - do blasters have big enough damage advantage to justify all the disadvantages and maintain their role as the most damaging short range weapon. Simple, elegant argument that doesn't get obfuscated with 1000s of "what ifs" that are introduced by taking into account specific ships and modules. That doesn't require nearly as many assumptions as one has to make to accept your "30% more damage" statement.
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.17 23:30:00 - [19] It seems like you suffer from a case of "if it's not broken - don't fix it". Symptoms of which are the inability to comprehend small scale changes that don't specifically fix something that is broken, but instead are meant to adjust the style of the game. I find it mildly amusing to observe this behavioral pattern in different people - devs included. People like that are prone to solve problems they perceive in big ways - the big nerf bats, complete rewrites of game design. Yet at same time ignoring many small things that work, but could be improved if adjusted ever so slightly. I bet someone could make a PhD thesis out of this. But back to the subject at hand - I don't believe that blasters are broken. And I believe that blasters are most damaging weapons in EVE. All the 3 short range guns can be used successfully in pvp. I have personal experience with all of them - in fact I'm flying an AC tempest right now and had many kills with it in last week. What I'm trying to do is to nudge game balance every so slightly as to promote diversity of playing styles without breaking the overall game balance. Since the changes I want to see have so little impact on the game, it is very hard to convince people like you that they are needed. You are simply not refined enough to see something this subtle. You want to see something that is clearly broken, something extreme, that would no doubt push you into extreme measures - just like CCP did with nano ships. This game needs some game designers who are able to fine tune things without resorting to heavy reconstruction instruments.
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.17 23:38:00 - [20] Edited by: Ephemeron on 17/03/2009 23:41:29 in addition to my last post: I think the people who are complaining about blasters are reacting to a "blaster role identity crisis". Even if they don't really realize and may actually think blasters are broken because of this feeling. What they subconsciously ask is: "why blasters?" The role is not clearly defined, the advantages are not significant enough to stand out and answer "this is why!" At same time, people who argue balance thru sameness are afraid that something clearly stands out against the rest - they perceive there mere existence of difference as evidence of imbalance

Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.23 22:47:00 - [21] It should be repeated: pure damage advantage of blasters over mega pulse is 16.7% That 16.7% damage advantage is not worth the different in optimal: 4.5km for blasters and 15km for mega pulse. When you consider the volume of optimal range - sphere in influence, the ratio by which mega pulse have more influence is 15^3 * 4.1888 = 14137.2 4.5^3* 4.1888 = 381.7044 14137.2 / 381.7044 = 37 37 times more influence by volume - that is a pretty large difference, it signifies the versatility of a weapon - the more range it has, the more situations it can be used in. The vast majority of short range pvp fall under 20 km bracket. This 20 km number comes mostly from 2 things: the jump in radius from a gate and warp disruptor radius. Of course, if we take falloff into account, then the influence ratio starts looking much better for blasters - tho still clearly inferior to pulse laser. I could see how a 30% raw damage advantage could justify the greatly reduced versatility of blasters, I suppose even 25% would be pretty good. But if I can increase my optimal from 4.5 to 15 km at expense of just 16.7% damage - it'd be pretty dumb not to.
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.03.23 23:13:00 - [22] Kagura Nikon, I was specifically referring to short range weapons and engagements If 99% of fights happen in 40km radius, getting weapon that has more than 40km radius is not going to be worth sacrificing any damage. In my experience, small gang warfare fights that result in kills have this kind of distribution: 0-5 km: 10% 5-10 km: 25% 10-15 km: 30% 15-20 km: 25% 20+ km: 10% this is a very rough estimate, but if you have experience, you will agree that it is something along those lines. Having good damage output at 15km is about the most valuable asset in combat.
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.04.04 02:05:00 - [23] Originally by: Liang Nuren [Hyperion, Stupid.] Large Armor Repairer II Large Armor Repairer II Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II Damage Control II Magnetic Field Stabilizer II Magnetic Field Stabilizer II Quad LiF Fueled I Booster Rockets Medium Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 800 Medium Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 800 Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I Stasis Webifier II Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge L Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge L Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge L Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge L Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge L Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge L Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge L Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge L Ancillary Current Router I Ancillary Current Router I Algid Hybrid Administrations Unit I -Liang It is very bad idea to use medium cap injector on battleship with active rep. And it is completely pointless to use those on a dual-rep. And you quickly lose the capacity to use 1 of those reps. That setup is highly impractical. I never seen people use it in battle. Ion blaster setup would have been much more effective
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.04.08 21:50:00 - [24] Ibis can't break passive shield recharge rate of Abaddon Player skill level and experience are of course very important in pvp, however it doesn't enter the balance equations. You can't say that "ship A is very powerful but only dumb people fly it, ship B is weak but very smart people fly it, this way both are equally powerful with their own advantages and disadvantages" For balancing purposes, designer should assume that all people playing are highly skilled and experienced.
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.04.09 22:54:00 - [25] It would be interesting if CCP performed some datamining to see just how many ships of each type are currently present in 0.0 and low sec empire. And of those, how many are fitted with RR It would also be interesting to compare those number with the ones before Great Speed Nerf patch - tho I'm not sure how easy it would be to obtain such statistic. Certainly the devs have all the tools available and this type of information could be useful to assess the global game balance picture, at least from some perspective. But devs are probably too lazy to bother with all the extra work
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.04.10 00:52:00 - [26] how long would this thread be if all the NightmareX and Childstar posts were deleted? I know there are some people with whom it's pointless to argue. But it's tough to let them have the last word
Ephemeron North Eastern Swat Pandemic Legion	Posted - 2009.04.10 02:50:00 - [27] Originally by: Farjung When I last played, if you went out into 0.0 without a scout in a combat-fit battleship, you were going to lose it. Looking back at Axel's videos from many years ago, and then looking at mine, and then recalling how the game was a year later around the time I stopped playing, the potential to go out in a battleship hull by oneself and score kills without getting pinned down and ganked steadily diminished as a function of increased server population. It's logical to assume that nowadays it would just be an exercise in futility. If you limit yourself to only a sub-set of the population, via empire war, this problem disappears, but just going for a solo roam (truly solo, no alt scout) through 4 0.0 regions on an evening and scoring a bunch of kills is a thing of the past, and has been for a few years.. Farjung is talking sense. However, there IS still a way to solo pvp in a battleship, the last thread which makes it possible is the use of Cloak+mwd+warp tactic. When using it, you won't be able to tackle anyone, but you can get other people to attack you if they think they can gank you, then kill some of them, chase them off or deaggro and jump out. If you become proficient with that tactic, you will realize that there's hope for solo battleship pvp yet. But it is the last thing left, now that nanoships are dead.

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