My point is the game desperately needs content not constant module messing.

Old-school HAM Drake used to reliably beat other BCs in a close-range brawl, with the exception of the Myrm. Some things have changed since 2008 but it's still very competitive. It fell out of favour because HML Drakes was better, not beause HAM Drake was bad.

The NGE was aimed at making things easier for everyone, especially new players. It wasn't because it was a major overhaul that it failed, but how they handled it and how they simplified the game with it, along with some of the more advanced content. That you're trying to liken this balancing patch to the likes of the NGE patch really tells me a lot about your lack of intelligence.

So leave things unbalanced and add more **** to the mix to unbalance it even further? They add content, you whine about balance. They balance, you whine about the lack of new content. Can't please everyone.

Why don't you stop thinking about just the drake and tengu and consider the other ships that use Heavy missiles:


Caracal
Bellicose(future suggestion by CCP)
Navy Caracal
Nighthawk
Rook
Cerberus

What I don't like is the blanket nerf, that not only nerfs the drake and tengu, but nerfs ships that were never OP, and mostly UP in the first place.

I've never personally complained about balance. Next?

And Gila.

But yah, it's quite a weird decision by CCP to do a generalised weapon type nerf, rather than looking what causes the will to do the nerf to begin with. One is how a certain fairly-low-damage-and-well-allround-balanced ship being very powerful in blob combat. The other being how one t3, with a fairly low base damage output (200-250ish for a regular cloak setup Tengu) goes up to very-high (for a cruiser hull) when it combines the damage and engineering subsystem. Other t3's doesn't do the same.

If CCP had simply watched it this way, they'd probably be consider something more reasonable (like slightly tweaking the RoF bonus on the dmg subsystem, as that seems to be the main cause), and in the first case with the blob just flat out ignore it. As in blobs, there has always been a ship X that is the FotM and 'most versatile', while there's multiitudes of other ships playing support role for them. Drakes out of blob combat doesn't have all those light tacklers, dictors, fleet boosts, titanbridges etc to go, for one. And a solo PvP Drake has obvious flaws (not very agile, not great speed, easy to pin down and counter, fairly low damage, both weapon systems easily disrupted by smartbombs, fairly tight fit, cannot really active tank so definate high sig), with few perks (range, hits anything from frigs and up, decent buffer tank, ok-ish slot layout even for a Caldari).

TL;DR CCP just feels it's better to look at what blobs do, and blantanly strike down on a complete weapon system, rather than looking and what potential could be causing this skewed vision. We all know CCP wants everyone to fly blobs, bring friends to tackle for you so ships will never be balanced around the need for tackle slots for example. Ships that lives too long while dealing damage (no matter how low) obviously is doing "too much damage" (as they take time to kill, so the killers can't move on to next target faster). Lag and support compositions is not taken into consideration. Etc. And noone really knows why doesn't even look at how the Tengu goes from a low-damage balanced boat, to a high damage long-range platform just by fitting a single subsystem.

Do CCP even play this game, or are they just the same kind of mindless drones as the average pilots in the blobs?

Highlighted a keyword for you.

Edit: removed rant

Please feel free to debate this 'tentative' change in a constructive manner.

ISD Suvetar.

You cannot argue that these changes are good. They are horribly thought out and to try and iterate on poor thoughts is much more useless than asking for a restart and proper solutions.

Ahh ok because I'm now not everyone my post has no validity?

Ignore the drake and the tengu for now and lets take another ship I'm skilled for The Nighthawk.

Now I'm trained for it near perfectly but I never flew it because it was underpowered humm guess what I still won't be flying it because now it's even worse if that is possible, this affects too many ships to be considered good.

{...}a nerf to heavy missile range and damage to put them in line with other long range cruiser weapons, a rework of all T2 missiles so they become usable, and the expansion of both tracking enhancers and tracking disruptors into the realm of missiles. {...}

And keep in mind, these poorly thought out changes have massive outside implications such as:

MASSIVELY BOOSTED:

Loki
Sliepnir
Muninn
Absolution
Legion

MASSIVELY NERFED:

Nighthawk---- b/c it wasn't already **** enough.

If they are going to make TD affect missiles, they should make Ballistic enhancers of some sort

So you want us to not nerf the drake and the tengu because the nighthawk is ****? How about we nerf the drake and the tengu and then wait for the dev blog about command ships before we start making hasty comments.

MASSIVELY BOOSTED:

...
Absolution
Legion

If you could expand on the reasons for these changes in more details (graph of damage vs range for the long range cruiser weapons, etc.) I think a lot of the complaints would go away and you might get some more constructive feedback.

How is it that ships that didn't change somehow received a massive boost from this?

I assume you're talking about the Arty Loki and Arty Sleip? Those... are not really common fits. Even still, they're kinda underwhelming. The Muninn would matter except for the whole LRHACs not mattering at all. The Absolution and Legion both need some buffing.

And the HAM NH is actually getting a pretty massive buff. And the HML NH is getting a relative boost next to the Tengu, which I personally find to be a good thing.

-Liang