Kestrel:
Frigate skill bonuses:
5% Bonus to Missile damage per level
10% Bonus to Missile velocity per level
Slot layout: 4 H, 4 M (+1), 2 L, 4 launchers
Fittings: 45 PWG (+15), 180 CPU (+30)
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 500(+109) / 350(+37) / 350 (+84)
Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second): 330 (+80)/ 165s (-22.5s)/ 2 (+0.667)
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 320 (+24) / 3.27(-0.6) / 1163000 / 3.56s (-0.65)
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 0 / 0
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 50km (+10) / 620 (+155) / 5 (+2)
Sensor strength: 11 Gravimetric
Signature radius: 38 (-9)
Cargo capacity: 160 (-145)

Tristan:
Frigate skill bonuses:
7.5% Bonus to Hybrid Turret tracking speed per level
10% Bonus to Drone tracking speed and hitpoints per level
Slot layout: 3 H (-1), 3 M, 3 L, 2 turrets, 0 launchers (-2)
Fittings: 35 PWG (-3), 130 CPU (+5)
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 350(-41) / 450(+20) / 550 (+167)
Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second): 350 / 175s (-59.38s)/ 2 (+0.5)
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 310 (+4) / 3.44 (-0.21) / 1106000 (+100000) / 3.56s (-0.02)
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 25 (+20) / 40 (+35)
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 40km (+12.5) / 600 (+10) / 5
Sensor strength: 9 Magnetometric
Signature radius: 41 (-1)
Cargo capacity: 140

Breacher:
Frigate skill bonuses:
5% Bonus to Missile damage per level
7.5% Bonus to Shield boost amount per level
Slot layout: 3 H (-1), 4 M (+2), 3 L (+1), 3 launchers, 0 Turrets (-1)
Fittings: 35 PWG (+4), 180 CPU (+45)
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 500(+149) / 350(+37) / 300 (+50)
Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second): 300 (+112.5)/ 150s (+9.37s)/ 2 (+0.667)
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 350 (+16) / 3.16 (-0.62) / 1087000 (-100000) / 3.21s (-0.99)
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 10 (+10) / 10 (+10)
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 35km (+2.5) / 650 (+75) / 4 (+1)
Sensor strength: 8 Ladar
Signature radius: 36 (-5)
Cargo capacity: 175

CCP Fozzie

What about the Inquisitor?

With ASBs as they are, I have a hard time not seeing this new Breacher dominating every other frig in its class. Have you tested this particular aspect yet?

And can anybody please answer the question of the Amarr cap use bonus? There have been lots of people asking questions and few threads also.

CCP Fozzie

Is there any chance that the -10% laser cap usage bonus will be looked at while you're rebalancing T1 ships? It's something that you guys probably want to address sooner or later, and in this case, sooner would save you some work.

There are about 20 ships with this bonus and many of the T1 ships with it are just not competitive due to it. I've written some of my thoughts about it here. If you want to look at it, seeing the affected ships in a list makes you realize how far reaching this issue is.


I also want to mention that I'd really like the Inquisitor to be a Khanid ship (rocket damage bonus, armor resist bonus).

I knew deep down in my gut where the navitas was headed, im not sure i like it, it was far more exciting when it was going to be a drone ship.

I agree, cap usage of lasers should not go up. What I'm suggesting is this.



More than anything I'm interested to hear some dev comments on this.

Tristan's hybrid bonus make sense when you use smaller guns than 125mm to defend itself against fast moving targets...like drones and those T1 tackling frigates.

Those who are complaining about losing the "Cyno" Kestrel....you do know the Exploration Frigate revamp will still give you a T1 option for a suicide cyno run :P

the main idea behind the bombers was not making them torpedo spitting missile boats, but have a platform for deploying bombs, which do not have much in common with missiles. it would be rather cool if only the caldari bomber would use torps and the other bombers would use large lasers/projectiles/ blasters.. heavily modified to make them only viable when shooting larger targets. like a penalty on signature radius.

Lasers in general are the least used weapon in PvP nowadays as evidenced by these statistics: http://eve-kill.net/?a=top20

But I'm sure you'll be telling me that statistics don't mean anything while your opinion and anecdotes do.

I think we have very different ideas what massive means. Did you not read the link that I posted? Tell me:

A Tormentor with +7.5% tracking and +5% damage per level (and built-in -50% laser cap usage) would be massively more powerful than the same ship with -10% laser cap usage per level and +5% damage per level?

What about the Retribution getting a 10% damage boost that replaces the +5% damage per level and -10% cap usage bonus? The ship currently has problems breaking 200 dps, can't fit a web and is the worst AF to engage bigger targets with.

What about the Abaddon? Would it be massively overpowered if its cap lasted a few minutes more?

Wouldn't it be likely that lasers aren't used in a lot of fleet doctrines now because they are not up to snuff? and need a boost?
I think they would be used a lot more in fleets if the ships they are fitted on could be used in fleets and be cap stable. I'm thinking the people who come up with the doctrines that effect those statistics use projectiles, missiles mostly cause of the long term cap stability of those ships in fleet, without having to use convoluted cap chains.

Even if all other laser stats are on par with other turrets at the moment, the fact that you will run out of cap just on gun use and propulsion mod use makes them very poor choices for long fights.

I find it kind of funny when they talk about Amarr needing smaller cargo holds because their ammo is so small, when the real Amarr ammo on a lot of my fits is cap boosters. And then my ships are only viable for 5 mins or so. I think this is worse the bigger the ship gets, but I don't think it invalidates the point that lasers as a whole need a change when they need a 50% bonus on a hull to stay somewhat competitive.

If Amarr would become OP with a sweeping change of say a 50% reduction on all lasers. Then I would be willing to see some small nerfs to the stats of the guns, optimal, tracking, that could be then be affected by real second bonuses on ships. So that balance is maintained. But I would say that should be a 2 or 3 step process. First change the bonus and the cap use. If OP then nerf the stats on the guns. They are still going to be the biggest cap using weapons in game and cap is life.

So a 5% damage bonus to all four damage types is strictly worse than a 10% bonus to a single damage type?

You gotta be kidding me. You're just bullshitting me now.

I think I'm done discussing things with you.

Tip: nobody cares about Crusader balance dicussions from 3 or more years ago when since then blasters, railguns, rockets, artillery and autocannons have been buffed.

Yes but is losing 5% bonus to kinetic for 10% velocity really that bad?

I already deal with it, but I can also argue for a buff.

I have mostly been suggesting tracking bonuses because these precisely do not help at all in the big fleet stuff work where Amarr ships are best at. They help most where Amarr ships SUCK, namely dealing with smaller ships which is useful for soloing and small gang stuff. If you read the list I prepared, you would notice that I gave tracking bonuses to all ships currently considered "good" precisely for the above reason. No, the Armageddon or Oracle will not become overpowered with a tracking bonus. Fleet doctrine Zealot AHAC won't either because they already track their targets perfectly fine.

A damage bonus on the Maller, Prophecy, Legion drone & covert subsystems is not asking too much.

20% more dps on the Crusader and Retribution is not insane. We have rocket ships doing more than these nowadays. Even if you disagree, the actual bonus is something one can reasonably discuss because these ships are on the low end of the dps spectrum and they are not popular.

Nowhere have I suggested an optimal bonus. The only armor resist bonus was on the Harbinger, as suggested by CCP Ytterbium in the CSM meetings. In fact I have been very careful to not make any of the good ships noticably better at what they're already good at.

As for whether the laser cap usage bonus is THE problem, I think the Maller & Prophecy & Legion subsystems have demosntrated that very well. The cap usage bonus bonus is not good enough to make people fit lasers on these ships. So I think it's clear that there is a problem and that's why I'm posting here. I want to know what CCP has planned to do.

Armageddon is not underpowered. Its not cap stable but not under powered.

Just fitting Dual Heavy Pulse Lasers II and one heat sink with perfect skills will have the Geddon run out of cap. Lasers in general with all the buffs to Hybrids and Projectiles aren't so good that it should be okay for that to be true.

And for comparison, lets say you do fit a cap booster. Every boost you use gets you less than it does on a Hybrid because the straight cap amount needed is so much more with lasers. Oh and because Amarr have small (expensive) ammo and cargo holds, you have less cap booster charges than other ships.

Other than getting rid of the cap use bonus, what replaces it I am less concerned with as it doesn't have to be something that bonuses straight damage or damage projection. But giving Amarr two useful bonuses on their ships does seem to be fair. Or how they make that possible and balanced. They could fix all the hulls to be viable with laser cap use or just change laser cap use.

And I'm posting in this thread cause they are balancing Amarr ships that still have the cap use bonus and no one from CCP has answered any of the threads about it. (That I know of, please link me something if I'm wrong.)

Actually some quick pyfa-ing says this is incorrect. It is true for all Amarr ships. All Gallente BS can use 425's on their own and stay cap stable. Rokh is also cap stable with just guns. Apoc can use dual beams but past that it is not stable. But who uses dual beams on an Apoc. And when they changed the bonus on the Apoc to more optimal they also buffed the hull's cap.

The punisher yes. The others not so much. PIE is taking a break from FW and not much use for frigates outside lowsec.

Below is some quick EFTing.. Perfect skills, T2 guns.

However the Executioner is the only attack frigate that is not cap stable with guns, mwd, and point. The other 3 are fine. Caldari and Minmatar obviously better off with there 0 cap weapons.

The Tormentor "Tormentor: role changed from mining frigate to medium range combat vessel " is not cap stable with a point, mwd and guns... I'm fairly certain the other 3 in this group will be. Medium range to me means outside, web scram range, which means MWD.

The Punisher is cap stable with a Nos or a Afterburner which is a perfectly viable setups, but they also gave it 2 bonuses and buffed its cap.

So yes all the frigates they have buffed are better in general. They all have better defined roles. But Amarr are still having ships without a defining second bonus and are more cap unstable than the other races.

And aren't Amarr supposed to be the best at Cap? or did this change?

I don't think Ive ever seen one in the wild.

And I just have to say - thank you guys so much for the re-balancing. Frigates are sexy now. I am in love with the Atron.

With the most cap to support their hunger.

And before the projectiles and hybrids were buffed. They had an inherent advantage, now they are better in some ways, worse others. And I am arguing unbalanced on their cap use.

And if they adjust the cap recharge time to make them comparably cap stable to other ships in there role/class with similar fittings then they would be balanced. But the cap per sec is almost identical to other ships of the same role/class, because the cap recharge time is slower. Which leaves them, I argue, cap unbalanced compared to other ships, and why I keep harping on about either the lasers or all the Amarr hulls needing a fundamental buff to cap stability. With the added bonus of being able to give Amarr ships a second bonus, which doesn't have to be more damage, or more tank, it could be lots of things but it should be there.

Add by the way I am impressed at how fast you can pull up stats. (not joking seriously impressed.)

Uh what solo pvp are you doing? How do you catch a kiting Drake or 100MN Tengu with your Myrmidon or Proteus? Please enlighten me.

Drakes and Tengus are a balance problem at the moment, believe me when I say we understand that.

But if anything I feel we need to rely less on eve-wide module and ship stats like those available on eve-kill or in our more accurate internal tools. We can track every single module activation in eve but there's a big difference between having those numbers and understanding them. Context matters much more and if you were to rely too much on those numbers you might for instance think that the Talos needs a huge buff (which is obviously not true when you step back from the numbers).

I heartily disagree that 70km Kestrels are going to become some kind of gameplay juggernaut. Some people will find cool uses for them but delayed damage frigate bombardment is simply not close to being too powerful.

I also completely understand the difference between 1v1 combat and small fleets. I simply mentioned 1v1s because it was an area we had been able to get some very good testing in so far and an area where the Tristan excelled (if it was as good for fleets as it is in 1v1s we'd have to hit it with a giant nerf bat). We build our ships with a bunch of use cases in mind, and once we get the testing opened up to more people we'll be able to get even better feedback on those areas.

No. You have implicitly assumed that a balanced game requires all BCs to be equal in the attributes that are favoured in fleet combat. Or you've assumed that fleet combat is the only PVP, either works. Ships with good EHP and damage projection are inherently better suited to fleets. A drone-gun BC such as the Myrmidon can never hope to have the damage projection capabilities of a missile BC - and if it did, then there wouldn't be much point to the missile BC.

The more appropriate environment for the Myrm is solo and small-scale combat, as these favour its drones, high-but-poorly-projected DPS and rep bonus, so seek to balance the Myrm here, not in fleet. Does the Hurricane have too much of an advantage over the Myrm at this level? If the Hurricane is also supposed to be focused here, is it justified that it also has its own fleet doctrine? It's also arguable that the Drake is too good at small-scale combat, given its competence at the fleet level. But this criticism can just as easily be applied to the Hurricane too.

It's a fair point, it always takes a good few months before things really settle down, and the rate of change recently has been much higher than in recent years, and the boosts to drone damage, blasters, null and Gallente mobility have all added up for the Myrm.

I'll be very interested to see what does get proposed for the Drake though. While I criticised Jame's methodology, it wasn't my intention to defend the Drake also, even on the fleet level - it is too popular there. But how? The old idea of changing it to missile velocity and ROF will never work and there's little point in balancing the fleet Drake/Tengu if all the fleet Drake pilots immediately just jump into Hurricanes. I don't envy CCP tbh.

For example, there are drone boats. Ideally there would be a fleet doctrine that favours drone boats. For example, a bunch of spider-tanking Dominixes. But it won't work. Because a few ships with smartbombs will completely decimate these ships' ability to do damage.

Like I mentioned before, suppose I go Gallente. I end up with a Myrm. Now suppose I want fleet PvP, because that's where I ended up (joined a friend's corp, for example). And this corp is part of the alliance, and the doctrine is Drakes. What am I to do? Train for Drake from absolute zero (no shield tank, no missile skills, Caldari hulls at zero)? A new player at this point has a choice - face months of training to be useful, or do something else. And doing something else when the whole corp is cheering on vent about how great a fleet engagement is going is hard. And while technically you can participate in a frigate or something, performing some minor role, it's just not the same. It's one of the things that keeps EVE's population so low. Yes, I said low. 450k divided by an average 2-3 alt accounts per player is not that much, UO had that many in 2003.

Really? Just for once, take a look at the effective range of a Hurricane and compare it to the dps and effective range of a Harbinger.

For a turret that is supposed to have a built in damage bonus Energy turrets are laughable at best given the insane requirements to fit them properly. Don't even get me started on the literal dozens of threads on how completely broken Tachyons are.

Fortunately, the harb in the same shield configuration as the cane can hit heavy pulses.

Oh, a cane with heavy pulse lasers outdamages a cane with autocannons at just under 23km. And it has 0 bonuses with lasers.

except for t2 minmatar ships :(