If we look at what's been done to the Amarr ship list over the last few patches a trend quickly emerges:

Dragoon = drones, half turrets, half missiles.
Arbitrator = drones, half turrets, half missiles.
Prophecy = drones, half turrets, half missiles.

Now the question is: Why is this being done? Didn't Amarr ships always revolve around lasers and nothing else? Well, yes they did - and it sucked! Weak tracking, weak damage, massive capacitor drain (and on active armor tank ships, no less), and confined to only EM & Thermal damage. If you saw an Amarr ship coming you knew that you could totally ignore all Kinetic & Explosive resists and just pack in the EM & Thermal and call it done.

Aha... but not any more! Now yes you could always put cannons on your Arbitrator (a recommended tactic, btw) and you can still do the same with the same with the Dragoon and new model Prophecy (again, a recommended tactic - save your cap for armor reps), until recently your non-laser options as Amarr were very, very limited.

But now we see three dedicated drone boats, all split between turrets and missiles, and each without any gun bonuses so there is nothing stopping you from sticking artillery or blasters on them. What does the Amarr gain from this? Variety. You can load down any of these ships with Thermal drones, then stick some rail guns in set to do Kinetic damage and top it off with some Explosive missiles.

Meaning they are in no way confined to that limited EM & Thermal Only prison that all the classic Amarr laser boats have been locked into so far. And you'll notice that a number of other Amarr ships have been getting the missile launcher refits over time as well; even the Apocalypse now has the option to stick a couple of missile batteries on there if the pilot wants to.

All very refreshing changes indeed!

Now, if only they would implement scorch for the rest of us...

it's going to be the Geddon. At least you'll have 5 heavy drones.

According to CCP Fozzie's last statements, the Amarr Battleship lineup will get minimal balancing changes as they are all in pretty good shape.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=73530

Armageddon: this ship is performing well at the time being, and thus we have little reason to alter it.
Apocalypse: is behaving well at the moment, so there is little point in changing it.
Abbadon: a nice ship with fine purpose in fleets and large gangs.

Hmmm. I wonder why all the races are using each others weapon systems more and more with each patch?

I'm all for giving amarr more variety.. but something about gallente not being the "drone race" and caldari not being the "missile race" anymore kinda bothers me.

Makes ya wonder what the game is going to look like in a year or two.

Hello there, that blog ain't from Fozzie though

But yes, Amarr Battleships are fine at the moment, so there is no reason to change one of them to fit this drone line-up. If / when we introduce the line on the Battleship level, it'll likely be on a new hull. The Battleship that'll change the most with the Tiericide will be the Typhoon, as it will most likely move over to the Breacher / Bellicose / Cyclone philosophy by focusing its weapon system on missiles. Of course, large missiles need to be looked at for this to work (the Raven needs it as well).

Hmmm. I wonder why all the races are using each others weapon systems more and more with each patch?

I'm all for giving amarr more variety.. but something about gallente not being the "drone race" and caldari not being the "missile race" anymore kinda bothers me.

But yes, Amarr Battleships are fine at the moment, so there is no reason to change one of them to fit this drone line-up. If / when we introduce the line on the Battleship level, it'll likely be on a new hull. The Battleship that'll change the most with the Tiericide will be the Typhoon, as it will most likely move over to the Breacher / Bellicose / Cyclone philosophy by focusing its weapon system on missiles. Of course, large missiles need to be looked at for this to work (the Raven needs it as well).

But yes, Amarr Battleships are fine at the moment, so there is no reason to change one of them to fit this drone line-up. If / when we introduce the line on the Battleship level, it'll likely be on a new hull. The Battleship that'll change the most with the Tiericide will be the Typhoon, as it will most likely move over to the Breacher / Bellicose / Cyclone philosophy by focusing its weapon system on missiles. Of course, large missiles need to be looked at for this to work (the Raven needs it as well).

Now the question is: Why is this being done? Didn't Amarr ships always revolve around lasers and nothing else? Well, yes they did - and it sucked! Weak tracking, weak damage, massive capacitor drain (and on active armor tank ships, no less), and confined to only EM & Thermal damage.

Hey Ytterbium, does that mean there will be no attempt to preserve the iconic Minmatar split weapon ships?

Whether by merging the missile/projectile bonuses into a single one (so as not 'waste' one compared to other hulls), or by....well....you are the Dev.

But yes, Amarr Battleships are fine at the moment, so there is no reason to change one of them to fit this drone line-up. If / when we introduce the line on the Battleship level, it'll likely be on a new hull. The Battleship that'll change the most with the Tiericide will be the Typhoon, as it will most likely move over to the Breacher / Bellicose / Cyclone philosophy by focusing its weapon system on missiles. Of course, large missiles need to be looked at for this to work (the Raven needs it as well).

Its going to look like a bunch of the same ships on diffrent hulls with the only racial trait being their tank type. That balances the game right?

It does seem to be slightly tipping this way, so many people whining about there races ships and how they cant compete that CCP seems to be slowly turning a lot of ships to be exactly the same just with different hulls.

Hello there, that blog ain't from Fozzie though

But yes, Amarr Battleships are fine at the moment, so there is no reason to change one of them to fit this drone line-up. If / when we introduce the line on the Battleship level, it'll likely be on a new hull. The Battleship that'll change the most with the Tiericide will be the Typhoon, as it will most likely move over to the Breacher / Bellicose / Cyclone philosophy by focusing its weapon system on missiles. Of course, large missiles need to be looked at for this to work (the Raven needs it as well).

Drones need a buff, particularly with their AI.

Hmmm. I wonder why all the races are using each others weapon systems more and more with each patch?

I'm all for giving amarr more variety.. but something about gallente not being the "drone race" and caldari not being the "missile race" anymore kinda bothers me.

Makes ya wonder what the game is going to look like in a year or two.

Like in any war, different empires see what weapons their enemies are using and adapt similar systems to counter it...

Great, now you got me worried. You do have a point though, it seems there slow trend of homogenization between races going on.

That would suggest flying a cyclone and a drake would be the same. Weapons alone don't equal homogenous design. The racial attributes in the hulls also have a large role to play as well.

They are pretty much the same. Drake just does kin damage, cyclone can do any...

Shield boost bonus is just a less useful version of the resist bonus that the drake has.

One goes faster and the slots are a little bit different.

I wish CCP would strive to make a game that had 4 very different races while being as balanced as possible.

Think of what brood war was like. Zerg, Protoss and Terran were so different yet so unique.

They're more different than you're giving them credit for, I think. By that logic the Hyperion and Abaddon should be just about the same thing, but I'd much rather meet an abaddon on a lowsec gate than a hyperion...while inversely, the concept of a massive hyperion fleet roaming around null is almost laughable.

They haven't "Balanced" the battleships yet now have they?

Hello there, that blog ain't from Fozzie though

But yes, Amarr Battleships are fine at the moment, so there is no reason to change one of them to fit this drone line-up. If / when we introduce the line on the Battleship level, it'll likely be on a new hull. The Battleship that'll change the most with the Tiericide will be the Typhoon, as it will most likely move over to the Breacher / Bellicose / Cyclone philosophy by focusing its weapon system on missiles. Of course, large missiles need to be looked at for this to work (the Raven needs it as well).

Of course, large missiles need to be looked at for this to work (the Raven needs it as well).

Hmmm. I wonder why all the races are using each others weapon systems more and more with each patch?

I'm all for giving amarr more variety.. but something about gallente not being the "drone race" and caldari not being the "missile race" anymore kinda bothers me.

Makes ya wonder what the game is going to look like in a year or two.

All the races have always had primary, secondary and tertiary weapon preferences. It's just that the secondary choices (rails for Caldari, missiles for amarr, etc) were generally horrible gimp platforms. Now they're being fixed, but Caldari will always have the biggest selection of missile boats, Gallente will always have the best drone ships, and so on.

Irrelevant as the changes that are being considered will likely be minute .. YtterbiumGÖÑFozzie has stated repeatedly that tiericide will have only marginal effect on the BS class as they consider it fairly well balanced. Only caveat so far has been the Typhoon which they apparently have plans for, my guess is it will be turned into a missile spewer as people are still moaning about the dual nature and since guns are pretty well covered by the Maelstrom/Tempest ...

Biggest change to BS warfare will probably come from whatever revisions they do to large missiles (read: cruise) which they have said is being looked into .. if Typhoon is made into a fatty version of the revamped Bellicose/Cyclone with viable long range options ...

I'm all for expanding the Khanid theme with Amarr ships, but darn it, we need to get them skinned properly. Something close to the Curse would be best I think.

Curse is the only one of the lineup that I DON'T like. Sacriledge / Damnation are far cooler with their silver-black skins, an Abaddon with those colors would be downright epic.

Never a truer word said.

I must admit though, I've never understood why the Amarr BS line is exclusively laser based, both in T1 and T2. I just don't see why all 3 T1 BSs need to be laser boats. Maybe its just me. But then a 4th line of BSs would be great, especially as a disruption line. TDs and Drones with a mixed high layout offers a lot of options, though I would expect a 100mbit bandwidth with a 450m3 bay, so that it follows the current trend with Amarr vs Gallente.

Speaking of Gallente, another Drone boat for them would be brilliant. Drones and damps on that scale would have a lot of potential.

The Typhoon would really benefit from a TP bonus. It would also follow the current cycle referenced earlier:
Breacher - RoF + Boost Amp
Bellicose - RoF + TP
Cyclone - RoF + Boost Amp
Typhoon - RoF + TP
That leaves an Attack line open for a new hull. That could see the return of a real split weapons hull. Split damage and falloff/velocity for both launchers and projectiles, low tank, all out speed and gank?

That leaves Caldari. I still think the Raven is more of an Attack ship than a brawler. If they don't beef up its tank a fair bit, either by more raw shield ehp or swapping a high to a mid, then it could probably remain as a kiter, if its speed gets tweaked. But then you could also drop in a new rail boat, with a damage bonus and either an optimal, (which would probably clash with the Rokh,) or a RoF bonus, making it a pure gank mobile. That would need a fairly weak tank by comparison, or keep it slow. (Blasters with a RoF and a Damage bonus... I think may have over stepped the mark on that one...) I prefer missiles over other platforms, but right now there is only one hybrid caldari BS, the line is open to extension in that direction.

Yeah, history clearly shows that the old world all took to fighting from horse back riding after they were clobbered by the Mongol horde, Rome equipped all their legions with pansy spears to mimic the Greek phalanx's even though they had trounced them thoroughly using their tried'n'true sword based meat grinder and the French hastily abandoned their unrivalled heavy cavalry to adopt the longbows that had shown them what for!.

Generalisations have and will never be either good or have merit .. just so you know. CCP's main flaw at the moment is that they seem to have to forgotten the roots .. all those napkins containing the basic descriptions of the Empires, some of which has seeped into hull/module descriptions.
If any one race has all variations available to it, why should anyone cross train anything ever again? It goes beyond the weapon choices for hull revamps mind you, weapon performance has been brought dangerously close as well over the years (blasters almost equal to lasers range wise for instance) so the problem is rather pervasive. There ought to be downsides to taking a excessive dps but short ranged vessel up against a fast and/or longer range ditto!

And guess what: Their drive to keep us sheep happy by introducing new hulls/mods periodically will exasperate the problem because they won't have anything other than "the other sides" stuff to use when designing it ..

I went Amarr, because it was the closest to a pure gun race .. lasers Dammit! And now I am being peddled silly missiles and cowardly drones.
CCP need to dig deep into their heritage and come with the same level of inspiration that made Eric the Red return to Iceland from his voyage and sell people the idea of living in even harsher environs by calling the new place "Greenland"

They haven't "Balanced" the battleships yet now have they?

Hello there, that blog ain't from Fozzie though

But yes, Amarr Battleships are fine at the moment, so there is no reason to change one of them to fit this drone line-up. If / when we introduce the line on the Battleship level, it'll likely be on a new hull. The Battleship that'll change the most with the Tiericide will be the Typhoon, as it will most likely move over to the Breacher / Bellicose / Cyclone philosophy by focusing its weapon system on missiles. Of course, large missiles need to be looked at for this to work (the Raven needs it as well).