Add on top the complete mess that armour tanking is at the moment and you have a character like me mostly trained to fly amarr left struggling feeling a little let down.

What made things worse was the addition of the ASB (which is fantastic) for shield tankers while armour got some god awfull module which barely has any effect.

only have range is it so bad knowing you can kill people and they can't kill you

only have range is it so bad knowing you can kill people and they can't kill you

Confirming railguns are in bad shape and need some sweet, sweet lovin.

I mean, come on, just look at commonly used fleet set-ups or tournament fleets, how many railboats do you see?

Extend maximum range. Remove on-grid probing.

Artillery is fantastic due high volley damage, selectable damage type, no capacitor cost, and the ability to reach out far with high optimal and falloff. With the tracking enhancers buffed, Artillery can do solid damage past 70km using the shortest range high damage ammo.

It is balanced out by low overall sustained dps, poor tracking, and demanding fitting cost.

But where does that leave Railguns and Beam lasers?

These are currently lacking and broken in many ways.

Both Weapon systems require capacitor to fire and have a fixed damage type. Both weapons have trouble fitting on medium and smaller class of ships.

Beams see use with the Tachyon Beam laser. The Tachyon Beam Lasers has good range, best tracking for long range, and DPS close to Mega Pulse lasers.

Balanced out by high capacitor usage and extremely demanding fitting that prevents an sort of tank to be put on the ship, unless your sacrifice fitting mods to do so.

Tachyon Beams are powerful, but fairly limiting weapons. These weapons are supposed to be a class above 425mm, 1400mm, and mega beams.

The rest of the beam lasers are not fantastic however. Regular beam lasers are rather paltry when you can use pulse lasers with scorch crystals. The high pg requirements make them rather difficult to fit, the loss of tracking, dps, and more cap usage for an increase in range make them only good for very niche situations that rarely occurs.

Now lets talk about one of the worst weapon systems in the game: Railguns (aka Failguns)

Railguns are in most cases meaningless. They do least volley damage out of all the turrets in the game, and have one of the lowest dps, about 10% better than artillery for several times less volley)

They wield the weakness of both Artillery and Beams, but has the strengths of neither.

The only advantage they have is range. Railguns requires ships that have range bonus to truly shine in that category. But that range difference between railguns and artillery are minor thanks to tracking enhancer buffs.

Sniping mechanics have been rendered mostly useless thanks to ongrid probing and 150km on-grid warp range.

Beams and Railguns IMHO should get a look at and be adjusted to provide another trait besides longer range. (Artillery has Alpha and Range, Beams and Railguns have only range)


TL:DR:

Beam lasers need more reasons to fit than better range.

Railguns need some seriously help.

What can we do to fix these weapon systems?

I want to field Tachys on my Apocs and 'geddons without shitting up half my low rack with RCUs.

It is my take on this that the turret itself should be it's own balancing factor. Indirect "challenges" like inflated fitting requirements are not effective neither appropriate balancing methods. Really, 425s and Tachyons fighting within standard tackling ranges? You're going to miss damn near everything every time. Why the stupendous fitting nerf and cap usage annoyance? At that point, nobody care if you can or cannot fit a tank as well; you'll just die slightly slower anyway.

Fitting requirements have no business being higher for the sole reason they boast higher optimal and alpha numbers. The turret itself (tracking and sig. resolution) require preparation and favourable situation to be effective. That's all the balancing they really need. Obnoxious fitting and activation cost accomplishes little for balancing but worsening them; makes them unattractive to even think about outside of the very few hulls that can field these type of turrets without major fitting wizardry.

Fix? Relax fitting requirements. All 5 fitting skills? Let us go nuts. The attributes, by themselves, will decide what's hot or not. Artificial overdone fitting reqs needs to die.

Long range guns are EXTREMELY well balanced! If they were not then Rokhs would not be used so much currently!

Make it more reasonable to fit on sub-BS ships, and take less cap (in case of rails). I just can't work out sub-BS rail or beam fits which are decent, mostly because they are so hard to actually fit on ships.

I don't understand how many threads have to be made on this topic for ccp to listen.


:(((((((((((((((((((

Rails are the weapon by which TEST's conquest of Delve, Querious and Period Basis was wrought, you know.

pretty sure they weren't

The use of the Rokh is not because rails are great. As you said yourself any weapon would have been able to give what ever damage needed as long as it fits in large numbers.

Rokh is being used for awesome shield tanking. Not because of its guns.

The fit we use only has an extra 8% EHP. The reason we use it is because of range flexibility and high ROF.

Confirming railguns are in bad shape and need some sweet, sweet lovin.

I mean, come on, just look at commonly used fleet set-ups or tournament fleets, how many railboats do you see?

GǪaside from the fact that the one factor that is really meant to differentiate them has largely been rendered irrelevant due to other mechanics (probing). So the GǣextremeGǥ balance is only on paper and only if you look at the guns on their own without any kind of context.

How often do you find yourself engaging past 100km in fleets?

Go back to your drake.

That's not to say that something should not be done about on-grid scanning, but I wouldn't go so far as to outright kill it.

I would. There is no reason to have it and it has completely removed sniping it all its forms, thus wiping out an entire class of ships (and ammo).

Thankfully, they are looking at fixing this problem, so there's hopeGǪ

Just a completely wild thought that I am sure has holes in it:


Change plates to increase sig radius and not impact speed
Change shield extenders/purgers to decrease speed and not impact sig radius.

This would have many impacts, including fixing some of the weird mismatched nonsense of gun turret types to ship types.

Armor tanked ships (typically Gallente and Amar) would now be *slightly* better off on their speed, which helps Blasters get into range.

Rails with crappy tracking would be able to better manage their range (due to speed increase)

Missile boats would be hardly impacted at all. Some would get nerfed slightly due to speed loss (Caracal, etc); I am not sure if this would really be too much or not.

On top of that I would likely still say that Medium and Large Blasters need a slight range increase just so you don't need to facehug something to shoot it.

This would be a small impact change as far as I can tell, but may help edge things a bit more center.

Just thinking out loud.

If the only strength to Rails is range, the range should be ABSURD.

For instance, Javelin (shortest range ammunition) on naked (no gyros or tracking enhancers) t2 425mm rails should be 90km+.

The strength from rails should be more dps AT RANGE, less alpha than artys. Best way to do that is extend the range of the shortest range ammo. Do that for all size rails (especially medium.... also, less pg need plzthxbai)

Railguns have plenty of range as it is.

Remove on-grid probing.

Remove on-grid probing.

I have to agree said Goon here, The issue is not range, it's that Rails just don't have the damage to be all that effective. What the could use is either a firing rate bonus or just more raw damage.

That won't have the effect you want. It'd be quite easy to probe just off grid with a covert ops, make a bookmark, get back on grid, and fleet warp to the bookmark. You'd just be shoving combat probing to off-grid alts.

Rails are the weapon by which TEST's conquest of Delve, Querious and Period Basis was wrought, you know.

Bullcrap pure overwhelmong numbers was how Delve, Querious and Period Basis was brought down.

Great idea.

No wait, it's a terrible idea.

On-grid probing is not a problem.

Stupid people who don't snipe while aligned to something they can warp to or spend a few milliseconds checking D-scan are the problem.

I think weak leadership on SoCo's part had more to do with it.

Not at all, it was simply that SoCo didn't want to put the Supers on the table because they would be blobbed out by the massive amount of enemy supers.

Now that Test doesn't have half of null sec behind them, they are starting to lose.

Not at all, it was simply that SoCo didn't want to put the Supers on the table because they would be blobbed out by the massive amount of enemy supers.

Now that Test doesn't have half of null sec behind them, they are starting to lose.

Oh dear, they're starting to lose?

GǪaside from the fact that the one factor that is really meant to differentiate them has largely been rendered irrelevant due to other mechanics (probing). So the GǣextremeGǥ balance is only on paper and only if you look at the guns on their own without any kind of context.

Bullcrap pure overwhelmong numbers was how Delve, Querious and Period Basis was brought down.

Extend maximum range. Remove on-grid probing.

hint: they had the ability to match our numbers with ease

I would. There is no reason to have it and it has completely removed sniping it all its forms, thus wiping out an entire class of ships (and ammo).

Thankfully, they are looking at fixing this problem, so there's hopeGǪ

Yeah... rails suck and need a buff... vindi could use some love too. I want 100km targeting range and 10% more dps.... and another mid slot to web ever moar.

Oh dear, they're starting to lose?

i can hit over 550km not max damage with railguns i think its more to pratice with those railguns but agree when some one is good in moving there ships well it can be hard to hit them. But range is fine

Does that means stupid with T3's asking all the fleet to kill "zdat Keres!!!" are goint to be shot again???
Ho god, this is about to become funny once again !

winmatar bias has been strong subcap-wise for the last few years. Still hoping to see devs delivering for all races.

Not at all, it was simply that SoCo didn't want to put the Supers on the table because they would be blobbed out by the massive amount of enemy supers.

Now that Test doesn't have half of null sec behind them, they are starting to lose.

I loled.

Well if you can keep on "losing" until we're done up here ...


Yeah, I know we're not going to get back down there unless it's all burned away, but one can always hope to one day put a point and web, or ECM, on the famous Makalu of T3-losing fame.

That's so cute, he thinks finally winning a battle is a turn of the tide.

Need I remind you how many battles -A- has lost?