Avon
Caldari
Black Nova Corp
Band of Brothers
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Posted - 2008.03.05 12:47:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Avon on 05/03/2008 12:51:02
The OP is wrong, or at least misguided, but most of the responses are equally limited.
The problem is people arguing over the minutae, without actually looking at balance as a whole.
The racial specifications and roles, as I remember them are:
Caldari:
Long Range & ECM, primary damage Kinetic.
Racial Weapon Systems: Railguns & Missiles.
Tanking Method: Shield (therm)
Vs
Gallente:
Short Range & Sensor Dampners, primary damage Thermic.
Racial Weapon Systems: Blasters & Drones.
Tanking Method: Armor (kin)
and
Amarr:
Medium/Long Range, primary damage EM.
Racial Weapon Systems: Beam Lasers & Pulse Lasers
Tanking Method: Armor (exp)
Vs
Minmatar:
Medium/Short Range, primary damage Explosive.
Racial Weapon Systems: Artillary & Autocannons / Missiles
Tanking Method: Armor/Shield (EM)
Ship bonuses are supposed to reinforce the racial roles.
Caldari vs Gallente
Caldari should be fighting at long range, using range and ECM as defence.
Gallente are meant to rapidly close range and engage, using sensor dampners to mitigate damage until in range.
Amarr vs Minmatar
Amarr use lasers to maintain mid range damage advantage, and tank incomming damage.
Minmatar skirmish, either sniping at long range using their inherent speed advantage to maintain that range, or fight at extreme close range to outdamage Amarrian ships.
The complementary racial aspects also reinforce the Empire relationships. Caldari/Amarr and Gallente/Minmatar ships work well together vs each other.
The overall balance works well against "native" racial enemies, and also in the larger factional conflict.
The Hybrid weapon system itself has caused some problems for balance.
Really Railguns and Blasters should have been seperate trees, with their own ammo. This would have made it easier to enforce racial roles, and bonuses. The Megathron, for example, should have a blaster bonus, not a hybrid bonus, and blaster ammo should do more thermal damage than kinetic.
Game balance changes, and new ships, should help strengthen racial roles, rather than move everything towards the middle ground (that's what Khanid ships are for :P).
Caldari missile ships, for example, should be getting missile velocity bonuses rather than damage bonuses to reflect the fighting at range Caldari ethos. If a damage bonus is favoured it should either be gained as a straight Kinetic bonus, or a ROF bonus where that would not be overpowered.
Ultimately ships seem too good/bad (reflecting badly upon the race) when they are used outside of the stereotypical racial role.
If we go back to the Megathron we see that it is the favoured sniping ship in a fleet because the tracking bonus it needed to effectively use blasters becomes a huge advantage when using Tech II long range railgun ammunition, making it better than a similarly equiped Caldari ship designed for that role.
Ultimately the whole thing boils down to one key question:
Should the ships of Eve have specific racial features?
There are perfectly good arguements for and against.
However, people tend not to consider these when they argue about balance. They tend to focus on FOTM, rather than the bigger picture.
Personally I am a huge fan of the original vision for the racial roles (bring back the rail raven tbh), but following that through ultimately leads players to feel restricted.
I am fortunate that I can fly all the race's ships, but players with less time invested may feel constricted by their choices, and may favour a more generic approach to balance.
Horses for courses, I guess.
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