If you're going to have TE and TC affect missiles ala turrets then why not go Full Monty and have short range ammo and long range ammo like the turrets as well?

If you were remotely right they would be nerfing mssile dps through rof rather than alpha and changing rof bonuses to damage. But oh look they are doing completely the opposite so you are wrong, yet again.

^This, why not have tech 1 short range high damage and long range low damage versions of missiles?

^This, why not have tech 1 short range high damage and long range low damage versions of missiles?

You continue to post bull$#@ numbers. The cane is not running around without TE's. Neither are these other ships.

Because missiles are not turrets.

Yeah, except I am basing the statement on what CCP said just last year in their previous "nerf the drake" trial balloon. THEY were the ones who initially named server load as their motivation for nerfing the Drake. And it makes sense if you look at the numbers.

Two-Hundred HM Drakes engaging two-hundred HM Drakes adds 2,800 additional server tracked objects every six seconds or so, and over longer ranges it is entirely possible to have multiple volleys of missiles in flight at the same time. So yeah, server load from missile spam is HUGE. Instead of tracking 400 ships and some drones, the servers have to keep track of an additional FIVE to TEN THOUSAND individual missiles crawling across the field.

An ROF nerf helps here, but it doesn't address the reason blob fleets like Drakes in the first place -- Alpha damage. It helps lag a bit, but unless the reduction is large enough to eliminate a second salo, it would have minimal effect on server load and no effect on fleet doctrine.

The missile velocity bonus, however, does reduce lag. It gets missiles off the servers faster. And reducing missile range gets them off the server faster still. In that 200 on 200 fight, even removing one additional volley from the servers saves them from tracking an additional 2,800 objects. That's a huge savings right there.

But even that's not enough. CCP doesn't want every blob to be a Drake blob. So they added the new long range direct fire BCs to see if that would do the trick. Apparently it didn't do enough. So we are back here again. And it seems this time CCP plans to do the job correctly and just nerf the crap out of them. I'm sure they would love to find some sweet spot where HMs work fine for small gangs but suck for blobs, but that's probably impossible without a major rewrite.

CCP is free to step in here and clear this up if they like. But until then I'll go with what they said previously and what my own objective reason tells me.

CCP is free to step in here and clear this up if they like. But until then I'll go with what they said previously and what my own objective reason tells me.

CCP Foozie I understand you guys are taking on a huge project already, but with the changes coming is there any chance you might get around to BC this patch. I think that would make most of the arguments in this thread stop.

CCP Foozie I understand you guys are taking on a huge project already, but with the changes coming is there any chance you might get around to BC this patch. I think that would make most of the arguments in this thread stop.

What about with a mini-release like inferno 1.2 and the attack frigs, etc.

So why are we bringing them more in line with Turrets then?

Look, he's got a point. The missile ammunition is what needs to be mainly focused on for change here. Not the launchers themselves. (Albeit, I think the fitting requirements should be changed with HAMS).

The ammo needs to be tweaked to be LIKE turrets (exchange tracking w/Explosion velocity) or something.

Remove damage types and focus on Short-range powerful, long-range weaker mentality and don't overly nerf the launcher.

TLDR
Focus on the ordinance, and the fittings; not the launchers.

I would absolutely love to, but there's no way we'd be able to get them done for this release.

Out of curiosity what exactly are you guys hoping you'd see from a BC balance pass that would change your opinion of this missile proposal? The Drake has a fine set of bonuses so once heavy missiles are balanced I don't expect I'd want to change it very drastically.

If I was to find the time by some miracle to skip ahead and fix another few ships along with this pass it would be the Nighthawk and Cerb, not the Drake.

Right so you are saying everything is fine because a cane using 2 low slots (for tes) and a med slot (for an invul to get back the drakes resist bonus) does ALMOST (but not really) the same damage at that range? We will just pretend drakes don't have those 3 slots to do something else with right.

Damage and range are determined by the ordinance. The launcher has no range or damage mod, only capacity and ROF which look as if they are not being altered. Additionally your suggestion would be a big step to fully homogenizing weapons systems. In this case why not save effort and drop the whole skill tree?

^This, why not have tech 1 short range high damage and long range low damage versions of missiles?

If only I had already answered that question we could have avoided this whole debate.


I also wanted to once again let people know that I'm still reading, and that since I got back from the weekend I've been continuing to work on an adjusted proposal to pass to the CSM then on you all.

I would absolutely love to, but there's no way we'd be able to get them done for this release.

Out of curiosity what exactly are you guys hoping you'd see from a BC balance pass that would change your opinion of this missile proposal? The Drake has a fine set of bonuses so once heavy missiles are balanced I don't expect I'd want to change it very drastically.

If I was to find the time by some miracle to skip ahead and fix another few ships along with this pass it would be the Nighthawk and Cerb, not the Drake.

we should also remove flight time and add falloff while we're at it.

I would absolutely love to, but there's no way we'd be able to get them done for this release.

Out of curiosity what exactly are you guys hoping you'd see from a BC balance pass that would change your opinion of this missile proposal? The Drake has a fine set of bonuses so once heavy missiles are balanced I don't expect I'd want to change it very drastically.

If I was to find the time by some miracle to skip ahead and fix another few ships along with this pass it would be the Nighthawk and Cerb, not the Drake.

I would absolutely love to, but there's no way we'd be able to get them done for this release.

Out of curiosity what exactly are you guys hoping you'd see from a BC balance pass that would change your opinion of this missile proposal? The Drake has a fine set of bonuses so once heavy missiles are balanced I don't expect I'd want to change it very drastically.

Knowing this, why then do you suppose that you can go into virtually any low sec system in the game and see PvP pilots who can choose to fly anything they like, choosing the Cane over the Drake?
.

Making missile ordinance more in line with charges doesn't quantify the need to drop the whole skill tree. Come on now...

It moves to make the ordinances easier to balance because everyone and their mom screams stuff is OP, or whatever.

Missiles could use a nice tweak in terms of fittings, and also a change in the way the ordinance is setup. Doing so will give missile users MORE choices instead of just Kinetic..... I'd say that would give us much more diverse setups.

I would absolutely love to, but there's no way we'd be able to get them done for this release.

Out of curiosity what exactly are you guys hoping you'd see from a BC balance pass that would change your opinion of this missile proposal? The Drake has a fine set of bonuses so once heavy missiles are balanced I don't expect I'd want to change it very drastically.

If I was to find the time by some miracle to skip ahead and fix another few ships along with this pass it would be the Nighthawk and Cerb, not the Drake.

Kinetic is a gripe I'd give you if it weren't for what we are seeing in the balancing passes. Missile bonuses are changing at the levels we've seen from kinetic damage to ROF, so this is becoming a non issue and hopefully will continue to do so. Additionally this won't make setups more diverse, it will make missile setups mirror turret setups. The mechanic will be the same of maximizing the reach of higher damage ammo through the use of TE/TC's. In the end the only real difference would be the drawbacks of missile mechanics over turrets thus making them truly useless or buffing their damage over equivalent turrets to make up for it which makes them obsolete turrets in many of the same situations as now.

This suggestion only deepens the balance nightmare without solving anything. In the end dropping the system and skills would likely be more effective and require less effort then trying to shoehorn missiles even deeper into turret mechanics.

A fairly typical nano arty cane:

MWD
Disruptor
LSE x2

DCU
TE x2
Gyro x2
Nano

A fairly typical nano HM drake:

MWD
Disruptor
Web x2
LSE x2

Nano x2
BCU x2

Obviously people mix and match to taste. Comparing these two, and assuming both are rigged for tank, the Drake has about a 5k ehp advantage in tank, about a 30% advantage in dps at range, and loses about 300m/sec. I have NEVER said that the Drake does not do more damage at range. What I have said, repreatedly, is that it probably SHOULD do more damage at range as this is it's job. If the Drake lands at range there is no way an unsupported Cane can close the range and kill it before it dies in a fire. That's okay because the Drake has no way to stop that cane from leaving.

Knowing this, why then do you suppose that you can go into virtually any low sec system in the game and see PvP pilots who can choose to fly anything they like, choosing the Cane over the Drake?

The answer for most is probably SPEED, AGILITY, and instant damage application. In Eve, speed is LIFE. You cannot overestimate it's importance. Speed alone might not save your butt, but the lack of it ensures that your enemy has control over your fate. And when you start adding in things like implants and T3 boosts, the difference between the cane and the drake becomes pretty significant.

I would argue that the BC class is perhaps the most balanced class of ships in the game. It's not perfect, but nothing is. I don't have a problem with CCP deciding that HMs and Drakes do not fit their vision for how the game should be played. That's their call, I don't fly Drakes anyway, so for me personally it doesn't much matter. BUT, when I think about how screwed Caldari Missile pilots have been for years, and now CCP is talking about screwing them some more, I get irritated -- particularly when the reasons they are offering are complete BS.

I am the arty cane pilot that is supposedly getting picked on by those big mean Drake bullies. I am the guy that is supposedly at some mythical disadvantage. Yet I can fly either ship, I have T2 HMs and T2 arties, and I thing the Cane is the better boat most of the time. The Drake has it's uses, it's perfect for some things and sub-optimal for others. And in my opinion that's just how it should be.