I'm comparing the Stratios to a N.Vexor





Both have 10% drone HP and Damage
Both have same base resist profile.

Stratios has larger drone bay
Stratios has a larger Cargo Bay.
Stratios can utilize covert cloaks.
Stratios has better fittings.
Stratios has better capacitor.
Stratios gets role bonuses to Exploration (Scanning, Hacking, Analyzing)
Stratios has a 4%/level to Armor resists compared to a 5% drone velocity and tracking bonus.
Stratios has one less low, for an extra low and an extra high.

NVexor gets 25% more armor and hull.
NVexor has 25% faster base speed, but unsure how it will compare in mwd velocity.


TBH, doesn't this new ship pretty much obsolete the Navy Vexor?

before bonuses apply, a 425mm Autocannon with RF Fusion will deal 37,3 dps. While shooting explosive. Or em. Or therm.
A Heavy Pulse laser with IN Multifreq will deal 41.6 dps. While being holed into EM / Therm.

So unless you're shooting ships that have a hole on EM / Therm, Projectiles are always better. and even then, they're maximum SLIGHTLY WORSE. It is true that it will be better at scorching ranges, but i already showed you earlier that this is basically where you want Railguns already.

Laser cap usage is one of the most useless bonuses in the game. How many people fly a cloaky laser legion? Zero.
Because all it has is the cap bonus.

Replace it with something else please. Damage bonus, tracking bonus, literally ANYTHING would be better than a cap bonus. Put another way, if I fit it with auto cannons/artillery I have just as many effective bonuses as if I fit it with lasers.

The frigate looks good. Could probably use another high (See: the least used covops is the helios).

For Exploration, no one will use these as a +10 bonus is significantly better than a +5 bonus. That's just a simple fact. They'll be decent for pvp though.

But all things are not equal, you have a covops cloak meaning you dictate initial engagement range. In that situation acs are superior with higher dps up close, better tracking, damage type selection, cap independance, and easier fittings.

Like I said, you never see cloaky laser legions for many, many reasons.

Edit: fixed typos from phone

Read dehval's post. If autocannon's won't be used, blasters will. Either way, lasers won't be the first choice. Not when you can get 1000+ dps off of a covops hull with blasters.

Also, the "full complement of bonuses" argument is batshit stupid. That's like saying the Cynabal's "25% bonus to Medium Projectile Turret rate of fire" is "just a free extra one." A bonus is a bonus, end of line.

Yeah, you clearly don't do the whole cloaky ganking thing. After the NPC AI changes, every single hostile in the mission/anom/plex will shoot you instead of the other guy the moment you use your tracking disruptors on anything. Your 35k ehp Stratios will die a quick death to NPCs alone, before your target even decides to shoot back. And it will die even faster when he decides to shoot back.

You could of course wait till your target kills all the rats, but I'd much rather apply my 1000+ blaster dps alongside the 600+ dps from rats without triggering their aggro, killing my target in less than 20 seconds.

But you have fun plinking away at your target from 24 km while he gets his 30 friends from next door to kill your shiny ship.

I see no problem with this. You just have to be visible when you are warping. You still can leave bubble fast being cloaked.
Anyway... guns are not absolutely necessary to survive anywhere in new eden - just use covops if you want to be fully invisible. Otherwise - why will you ever use covops for exploration if you have enough isks to buy this OP ship with both cloak and ability to fight back?

Well... OK. It's true, but actually I have said that it should duplicate CovOps cloak in any way except cloak warping so recalibration delay can be simply not totally removed but reduced to the same 6 seconds as for CovOps.

The point is to make these ships much like Combat/Force Recons in terms of gank/stealthiness

You guys are right, this thread is definately the best place to discuss whether lazers are better than projectiles, in general, endlessly.

Flying a ship that would cost 300M to 400M with just about twice the tank of an Assault Frigate and a third of the speed - not sure how many people would want to do that.

Sure, you could, but there's not much you could effectively engage. Which is sort of the point to restricting to the fit I posted - these won't be the solopwnmobiles with a max-gank fit. Cut the shield buffer in half, and you're pretty much set.

]Pretty sure this thing caps out at 1150 PG with skills (920*1.25 = 1150). You'd need to downsize two of those neuts to get it to fit.

Gets 46,651 EHP with that fit, (A DC over EANM would up that to 49.5k).

700 DPS is just fine, it's common for any droneboat (Vexor? Vexor Navy? Ishtar?).

Keep in mind, a lot of other buffs are coming along the way too - along with recon cruiser rebalances.

Vexor is a t1 ship not special in any way (still love you Vex) unlike the faction Stratios. Ishtar has other things going for it (hint, resists among others).

Also, they have different roles. Why can't you see that?

Most agree with you that it's somewhat OP, though it appears that we don't all agree to what degree. Even some people citing your posted fits just think it needs a CPU nerf. So I wouldn't say it's quite so obvious that it can't go live in "anything remotely resembling its current state."

To scram/dual web you'd have to armor fit, and therefore lose the mythical 1100 DPS.

You could get about 700, but that's hardly overpowered given the ~50k EHP

It would seem that there is a fair bit of premature "OP" cry-out in this thread.

If the Machariel had never been introduced into this game and was announced in this expansion, I feel that the its "OP" crowd in here would be outraged if it was described with its current stats as it stands in TQ. I mean a BS hull that is as fast as most cruisers in this game and puts out a ridiculous amount of DPS with either shield or armor fits must be OP. Interestingly enough there aren't 256 man fleets flying around in Mach's raping everything in sight.

Perhaps actually waiting to see how it (SOE Cruiser) functions in the game as it was announced and then judging it would be better. If it turns out to be way overpowered then something can be done to rebalance it.

The best answer I can offer you is that the covert ops ship has superior scanning strength and as you stated is -+ the cost so there's loss mitigation if the ship is destroyed.

Nerfing drone DPS in any way will make Stratios useless for lowsec DED`s.

You are asking for a christmas gift. The only reason you gave for the +10 virus bonus is because it's an exploration ship. Yet people already demonstrated that +5 was enough even for nullsec. So we have your wishes and questionable allegations versus proven facts. There's nothing more to say IMO.

Not true.

If you calculate the dps the same way people calculated it for the Stratios (overheat all guns and drones), then you have 630 dps with the Proteus.

And the Stratios don't have any more range than blasters. We are talking Ogre dps. And T3 have twice the tank of this Stratios BTW.

Indeed, but if we go for details like this, we should stop these ridiculous numbers considering oh dps with blasters/void in the Stratios too and start talking about more rational things.

What remain is Ogre dps (4 unbonused guns do marginal dps compared to them). And then, well, it's ogres. If they were so blatantly overpowered, we would know it I think and drone boat wouldn't bother carrying anything else with them would they ?

It's just common sense here : the dps figures of the Stratios come almost only from the Ogres, yet Ogres were more often laugh at than feared and suddenly, because a ship with a cloak have them, they become completely overpowered.

So many people forget.. Having a CovOps cloak does not mean you can just deloak and lock. T2 Covops have a bonus for locktime.. This ship does no.. When you decloak you are looking at 10 + actual locktime before you can do anything. Half the ships it will face can warp or speed off before that time is up, the other half have 10 seconds or so to apply their own damage instantly.

If your views were accurate, this ship would be op.. but it's not, this ship can't just decloak and blap anything.

And that's before the simple idea that a smartbomb renders this ship DPSless.. And that drones aren't instant applied DPS like turrets.


Someone said earlier this would take on any current Pirate cruiser ? HA.. It's not gonna break a Gila. Vigilant will destroy it without a sweat. It won't be able to keep up to a Cynabal.. and who cares about an Ashimmu lol.

It doesn't have the same bonus.. Read the info.

It has a bonus to drone Hitpoints (HP) not damage. Gila has both.

The Frigates does not need +10 either. A covert ops frigate cant solo a 3/10 complex.

near unbonused HAMs and heavies...pass.

Yes, the Stratios has a weak tank, but that isn't the biggest problem with these ships: they have horrific CPU issues. They need at least 100tf more CPU in order to be remotely comparable to a covops in actual functionality, especially the frigate. As it stands, good luck shoehorning an expanded probe launcher onto one!

Good luck applying Ogre DPS effectively with that fit.

Hi,

It looks to me that these two ship will totally f...k up FW.

1. Warp in cloaked with 4 friends
2. kill whats on site
3. if no one inside then cloak and camp
4. kill anything what comes through warpgate
5. repeat till bored

I think they are hugely overpowered right now by combining Covops cloak and dps capability they present now.
so CovOps cloak ability should be removed from them.
Especially now, when warp speed changes are on horizon.

BTW, they are T1 exploration ships, why they present better combat ability than T2 CovOps frigate.
The cruiser present better combat ability than T3 cloaky cruiser or most of T2 Recon cruisers ?
There is no cloaky T3 or Recon capable of over 1k dps.

Another question: what is the point of skilling CovOps T2 frigate or T2 Recon ? What makes them better than these ships
requiring relatively low skill investment to get i.e. same probe bonus
For SoE frigate its: amarr frig 3 + gallente frig 3 = 2 DAYS !!!
For any CovOps scanner its: racial frig 5, electronics upgrades 5, covops 4 = 2 MONTHS !!!

If that is part of helping newbies to enter the game then I feel brutaly raped with my 25mil SP...
Whey the hell I skilled CovOps ????? Harmless scanner requiring a lot of SP to fly it.

BR,
Uncle

Oh no, I'm not forgetting that part either. I'm just not bothering to argue it, I have at least that much faith in CCP that they have some clue about heavy drones damage application.

So your ideia for balance is give this already overpowered ship a expanded probe launcher, and then take away 160dps?

Jesus, theres alot of stupid people in this world...

Double webs + scram have limited range.
You have Cloak lock delay + lock time.
You have slow cruiser initially, with only AB to try and close range.
You can't start within 2500m or you decloak yourself anyway.

Sure you might catch the odd person.
But even then you only have 700 DPS which still won't apply perfectly due to sig size unless you are shooting a BS, since even if it's under their tracking, if it's under sig size & moving even 1m/s sig size affects DPS & 45k EHP. And are entirely drone reliant.
This is no more threatening that the cloaky T3's already are.

So what you are trying to tell me is that Cloaky T3's are OP & will break the game by being able to combat probe..... Oh wait. They haven't broken the game for years of existence already. From this I can only conclude that you are defending your T3 ships unique abilities in order to force everyone else to train T3's, rather than having viable options in the Pirate/T2 ship range to combat probe.

Yes, pushing DPS to guns won't drop the surprise gank fit DPS. Well, it actually will a bit since it will be a bonus to lasers, while the gank fits have been based on blasters. Nor does it need to drop the surprise gank fits anyway, since anyone flying in an anom should be expecting that kind of hot drop, given they only have 5 seconds from when someone hits local to warp out now before the interceptor lands on grid and tackles them possibly, if the interceptor guesses the right anom. After which the Battle cruisers follow fairly soon. So.... Gank DPS with very few targets is not a problem.

This ship is not going to be fit this way often (due to low EHP and CPU) In this guise yes it is OP but at a price. T2 rigs + faction CPU mod + ship cost. You want to hope it is OP. You can make pretty much any ship OP if you spend enough isk on it, don't cry simply because 1 person has no respect for his wallet and posted an OP fit.

I think the fit you posted before you edited the post was a better example of what the ship will likely be fitted towards. Slightly less EHP (only 4k), but much much cheaper, no?

Oh nooo !! Heavy drones are gonna eat my ship !!

Ah yeah, I remember now, just flying a cruiser might be ok.

Oh, and on a side note, while it will have less ehp, a Pilgrim will do as much dps as a no gun Stratios on cruisers and below, but with really nasty ewar.

If any, the Stratios only have a bit too much fitting.

This thread is a farce ! A mind boggling farce full of EFT warriors who don't understand anything about the tracking formula and drones.

In fact, I am imagining you saying that sentry drones should be used to gank something and trying not to lough to your own joke at the same time. Or loughing out loud behind your keyboard at the idea of someone possibly believing you are saying this seriously.

Reading before posting, it's very interesting you say that, because you talking about something I already discuss a few pages ago : a cloaky proteus can have 100kehp and 600dps with covops cloak, and it *already* exists. Yet nobody ever complained about it. Why ? Why did the cloaky Proteus not have broke EVE yet if this Stratios is going to do so ?

The only complaints about T3 are the 100MN AB fit and more generaly fleet and combat fits ; and not so long ago there was the problem of the links better on them than on command ship on top of cloaky nullifier ; and of course the cloaky nullifier fits which are only good at making bubble camper to emorage because they can't catch them. The problem of T3 is generaly that they are better at some thing than specialized ships which is not what they should be. Yet cloaky gank fit is a niche they are the only ones to occupy, and this niche have never see serious complaints whereas the power of the current cloaky Proteus is a lot higher than the Stratios will ever be.

HAHA ! Now that's priceless ! Stating that sentry drones have more practical damage application than medium blasters !!

Well, I have nothing else to add. I mean, you greatly enumerate all drawbacks of blasters, very good. Now, please do the same with sentries, and then build a fantasy where the Stratios will always meet all conditions to use full sentry dps but not blaster dps.

Good luck.

I think the concept is good. So T1 Scan Frigates will basically evolve into two different branches, one being Covert Ops Frigates which focus more on scanning itself, and the other one being SoE Faction Ships which focus more on exploration (as in the general PvE/Hacking content).

Maybe you should consider even removing the virus bonus from Covert Ops Frigates completely and replace it with something like Scan Deviation or Time or both - to make the difference between both roles even more distinct.

Qft.

And thus hilarity reigns as the whining, clueless masses win and it becomes another one of *those* ships, which no one will use thanks to vastly superior alternatives. Know I shouldn't pre emptively write it off but lets be realistic here, it's the way it's going to end up so lets all pack up and go home.

Good game, good game.

I agree with you.

Let me see... dual web: check, scrambler: check, 0.1125 tracking: check... I'd say it's quite good for the job. Why would I engage a Raven solo in a cloaky ship? The whole point of having a cloak is to choose my targets. Would you engage dual web, heavy neuting Domi - you wouldn't, right?

For those asking about the price, the Astero (currently on Sisi) is 30k LP and 15 Mill Isk.
The Stratios is 150k LP and 30 Mill Isk

The Stratio won both fights.The big thing was the cloak, being able to sneak up on your target first helped a lot. Also ECM drones help anytime I had issues with neuts/noses, or taking too much DPS. But really you have to use your combat drones to be able to do enough damage. And without any prop mods the Stratio still went over 1,600m/s, so it's pretty fast for an armor boat.. So against faction cruisers the Stratio isn't too bad, you probably won't win every fight, but you can win some. And against T1 cruisers you will win pretty much any fight, same against destroyers and frigates as long as you have scout drones. Now against T2 cruises, I'm not sure how the Stratio will do, I'll check tomorrow, but I'm guessing the Stratio against HACs and BCs it won't do too well. Big thing is use your cloak to stock and get in the range you need to use your scram, disruptor, and web. That's its biggest advantage.

Rerun the numbers to include the nerfed bandwidth. Underwhelming doesn't begin to describe it.

Possible gatecamps, bubbles, smartbombers etc etc that may be waiting on that gate? I don't have a safe for every gate in the universe.

Stratus focus using is lasers, lasers has only EM/Thermal damage type, that good only to:
Sansha nations, Drones & Sleepers. From this list sleepers can remove, because with this Stratus you can't run theys, sleepers has incredible aggro to drones, you lost theys tons before finish one lowest strengh anomaly in WH, if not solo grab Falcon/Scorpion(for jamming sleepers). Solo explorers i think is more(because sharing so poor reward, i am not see sense), than explorers fleet(using alt account can only WH/Nullsec, Hi/low sec rewards is too weak, plus PLEX raised price)

I think with the upcoming mobile depot and T3 refit in space we can agree that a T3 will be much more capable for exploration then the stratios. Sure you need more SP to fly it but you are granted to be actually capable to do sites. Seriously who is going to buy a stratios if they can fly a T3 for the same reason? have a cloaked exploration fit with interdiction nullified for relic/data sites and if you find a decent combat site refit in a safespot.