Session 9: Ship Balancing
CCP: Fozzie, Rise, Ytterbium, Xhagen
CSM: Ripard Teg, Chitsa Jason, Mangala Solaris, Progodlegend, Malcanis, Mynnna, Sala Cameron, Ali Aras, James Arget, Mike Azariah, Sort Dragon, Korvin, Trebor Daehdoow
Rise opened with a number of quick balance questions, and asked the CSM to vote on them by show of hands (all votes but one yes-no):
Double AB velocity bonus on Sansha ships. CSM response: 11-0
Should Mach/Cynabal get nerfs? 3.5-6.5
Should Nestor have covert cloak (no bridging) 1-10
Should Serpentis Webs be 10% or 7.5%: 7.5 GÇô 2.5, 10 GÇô 8.5
Should we roll back rapid missile changes? 1-10 General consensus that the CSM liked the basic principle, but that the numbers needed tweaking.
Should drone assist be flat capped at 50 to any character: 5.5-3.5

So the current CSM killed rapid launchers. Now we know who not to vote forGǪ

Heavy missiles were way OP. They got nerfed down to where they are equal to guns. Let's get over that.

Rapids are plain untenable. Totally garbage, all of them.

The original rapid lights and first iteration of rapid heavies were awesome. Now, not so muchGǪ What they need are reduced reload times (T1 = 30 seconds, T2 = 25 seconds, Faction/Officer = 20 seconds) and a slight buff to ammunition capacity (+25%).

Except that a year later all of the other long range medium turrets were buffed to where HMLs used to live. So with the range, damage and application nerfs that heavies kept they are utterly crap compared to beams, rails, and arties.


Rapids are plain untenable. Totally garbage, all of them.

That implies certain things about missiles which I don't feel are true. Observe how missiles work best in brawling range with webs on the target. Contrast with turrets which work best while kiting (even in scram range).

So when we find complimentary ships and play styles we observe that
1. medium and large missiles have explosion velocities at 150m/s or lower

and that most ships are faster than this natively except industrial ships.

2. sig radius for missiles is typically under a target of the same size catagory

compare with turrets where if I'm not mistaken they're based on the average sig radius for a given target with armour tanking minmatar being slightly under and most caldari ships being slightly over this turret sig threshold.

3. the damage calculator for missiles favours the comparison of target velocity versus explosion velocity for the purposes of applying damage reductions. When the velocity ratio reaches or exceeds 1 then the formula compares explosion vs target sig radius.

turrets suffer a linear degradation of applied dps due to range as the major fsctor while tracking determines likelihood of a shot landing. A stationary target is treated the same as a moving target only the relative transversals of the two ships really matters for tracking.

those 3 simple thoughts in mind make a rapier/huginn/hyena or any new blood raider ship much more valuable to a missile gang than to turret gang as the velocity of your target dirrctly influences your applied dps while a turret user mostly only needs to orbit within 5% of his optimal. Similarly target painters are of limited utility to turret users unless they're shooting targets significantly smaller than their gun sig resolution - because missile users are highly unlikely to push a target under 200m/s in the first place the influence of sig which is factored second can pretty much be discarded. Turret users are more likely to benefit target painters in situations where they don't have established control of the field and where they're shooting afterburner equipped and/or small targets.

I don't see how being speed tanked by battlecruisers and the odd battleship is even remotely comparable to railguns in deep falloff. When planning for an assault ship what points do we consider? Don't you too find mono damage types to be a bit narrow and penalising - especially on caldari ships which lose 25% of their dps when nit shooting kinetic?

If you can't bring yourself to use a battleship for long range fights, there is always the Cerberus, Tengu, Navy drake...

For the record, I use missiles on amarr and guristas ships.

You know the Navy Drake is only a decent sniper with 1 Missile type (Navies) and then only with a booster in fleet to allow it to hit past 75k?
As far as Missile Battleships may work in WH space pvp, unless your in a sizable fleet they are generally more likely to end up fodder in known space. With the exception of lowsec gate camps (smart bombing Raven is quite common) where the target rarely gets to shoot back.

I suggest you try a pair of navy ravens with cruise, MJD and target painters. Your opponents will lose a lot of ships trying to catch you...

Caldari still ahve more damage type variability than amarr or gallente, so stop hitting that key.

Once you pass BC IV there is basically no point in ever loading anything except kinetic (also applies to tengu) whatever damage you make up in resistance holes you pay back in damage that you plain aren't doing.

Also to add, why does caldari T1 hulls have lower scan res compared to say.. the mimatar? doesn't it go against lore? and doesn't it kinda gimp caldari a bit when you factor in flight time for missiles and slightly slower lock time?

Why not have a skill that reduces reload time by 4% per skill level, knocking off another 7 seconds at lvl 5.

Thought I'd throw the link to the slide on Rapid Light Missile Launcher damage/usage metrics that came up on the Twitch Stream as CCP Rise and CCP Fozzie are talking about balancing.