Valleria Darkmoon
Convicts and Savages
Shadow Cartel
286
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Posted - 2014.07.30 09:07:00 -
[1] - Quote
Kagura Nikon wrote:Vlad Vladimir Vladinovsky wrote:
Yea you're right, just looking at pyfa shows the artillery trades some optimal range for fall off and the rails have more optimal but less fall off, leading to about the same overall range
Nope. rails ahve far more effective range. 100km range and 20 falloff is SEVERAL times better than 20 range and 100 falloff.
Indeed, optimal > falloff particularly when you start talking about sniper ranges. Assuming the guns had the same dps under their optimal conditions then they would meet up at 120 km in this example. However at all ranges between 20 and 119 the 100 km optimal and 20 km falloff would outperform the 20 km optimal and 100 km falloff. At any range where 20 + 100 km wins you'd be starting to run into struggles with lock range.
Artillery still has its uses, like when you know tracking won't be much of an issue and rails might allow rep cycles to land.
I have to be honest though, I HATE the Ishtar, despite the fact I'm well skilled for it. I can't stand "minion" style gameplay in any game and EVE is no different in that regard. I like drones as a supplemental as opposed to a primary tool for the ship I fly. (Note that this is my own personal feeling and I'm not suggesting drone ships shouldn't exist, I'm just saying I want to be able to fly something else for once and as long as the Ishtar stays the obvious choice I won't get to). I'm glad to see it getting nerfed because I don't like it being practically the default ship and tbh I fly support when I can, just to not have to be in one. That being said I can't see this change significantly affecting its appeal, and on top of it all I think it's one of the ugliest hulls in the game, at least if it was pretty my dislike of it might be mitigated in some way.
The best way I can think of to sum it up is like this. Seeing the results of the HAC changes after they'd been live a few months made me think of The Justice League from DC Comics. Most of the HACs are like Batman, competent and good at what they do but forever locked in the shadow of the far superior Superman (who obsoletes every other member of the team) for any of the heavy lifting, so to speak. Well the Ishtar is Superman, does fine for damage projection and application, can be nano and shield tanked or heavy and armor tanked and all variants of it are tough to beat. The Ishtar may not be the stand out best at every conceivable combat role but as an overall package nothing else comes close.
I would really like to see other ships being competitive choices with the Ishtar and while this is a step in the right direction I think there's a few stairs left to climb. A big part of the issue though is that the highs on the Ishtar are somewhat irrelevant often being fit with small guns if any at all or downsized modules allowing a large part of the fitting to be devoted to making a really strong tank. The issue is that with drone ships there is no direct way or addressing this short of removing slots and I don't want to suggest that either.
I had a very fleeting thought at one point where I thought it'd be neat if T2 combat hulls only got resist bonuses to their primary tanking method which at least would probably make sense from a lore perspective, why would the Amarr bother to boost the shield resistance output of a Vengeance or Sacrilege when they are so focused on strong armor that it's just assumed the shields will fly off at the first sign of danger, presumably it takes a lot of extra effort to strengthen the shields as well as the armor. So Amarr/Gallente would get T2 resists on armor only and Caldari/Minmatar would get T2 shield resists only, but from a game perspective some of these ships are setup so they can work either way and I'd hate to see some of those variants removed as viable options because of a change like that. Though in the Ishtar's case it might have made shield fits unappealing so at least it could have freed up some roles where the Ishtar is clearly not boss. Would it be worth removing the unorthodox fits to get at the Ishtar?
I'm inclined to say no, but it might be possible to convince me otherwise (see stated bias above).
Reality has an almost infinite capacity to resist oversimplification. |