Part of the problem is that Missiles are a huge tree for something someone is supposed to train alongside the huge gunnery tree. If someone wants to cross-train Caldari... they essentially have to retrain every weapon support skill from scratch. Conversely, for Gallente, drones are used by everybody as they fulfill an essential role in PVE and PVP (even if you're not flying a dedicated drone boat). So really, all a pilot has to do to cross-train Gallente is work on Hybrids and Damps.

In practice, most players only train 1 type of weapon: turrets or missiles because of the way the skills are set up that they do not benefit eachother in the slightest. However, turret users have far more options. Pure hybrid-users have access to all of Gallente and half of Caldari, while pure missile users have access to half of Caldari. People who have both skills have access to everything, but that leaves out new players.

I don't want to be like those Minmatar pilots

why battleship+ sized missiles are not very appealing on ships other than stealth bombers.

Because they trade away too much applied DPS. Cruise trades it for raw (but mostly useless) range while torps trade it for EFT DPS numbers. I'd say that fixing both of them is relatively straight forward (and I have ideas, obviously), but I figure its best to leave that to CCP.

-Liang

Correct. That's what i'd like to read about.

Honestly the only reading that can be done is figuring out which way CCP wants to lean on the balancing act. I'm sure that any communication by CCP will be fascinating to read, but whining by the players isn't a whole lot more than just that.

-Liang

Let me paraphrase you.

"I believe, as Caldari, that my skill training queue should be as straightforward as an Amarrian's. I want a world where all I have to do is show info on citadel torps and work through the checklist. I don't want to be like those Minmatar pilots who are confronted with a training queue which is bloated with missile skills, gunnery skills, shield skills. Oh, and poor them for having to train armour skills too. Ha ha, us Caldari, we got it easy with missile + shield."

-snip!-

Hearing more about that way CCP wants to lean was the intent of my gentle yet firm coaxing. I've been attempting to pull this thread out of whine mode so we can better penetrate this fascinating subject matter.

C'mon Ytterbium, just a tip. Just to see how it feels.

For those of us who are gurista specialist and focused on both missles and drones it's been a very sad few months.
From the forums I've read people already seemed to be against drones when it comes to the larger ships for pvp purposes. ((cheap neut domi is the only decent option without dropping down to cruiser size))
Those who are gurista heavy would rather fly the gila over the myrm and now with the drake nerf the gila is better then any bc we could chose from. Seems to be a huge case of no love in the BC class of ships for us.

Awwwww poor thing. Ok, ok, fine, since you look desperate with your whimpering and puppy eyes here is one for you

Tip: there are dev blogs incoming on ship balancing, and don't worry, they will give you plenty of things to talk / argue / rabble / whine / set things on fire when they go out.

*inset cliche evil villain laugh here*

Ironically you could have trained T2 large rails from scratch in a sad few months.

Tr 3 ships are not unique in this either btw. How about gun-skilled people who want to use Stealth Bombers, they have to train up a load of missile skills. Or how about when people get to caps... oh wait carriers only use Fighters/Drones.

Tip: there are dev blogs incoming on ship balancing, and don't worry, they will give you plenty of things to talk / argue / rabble / whine / set things on fire when they go out. [b]

Awwwww poor thing. Ok, ok, fine, since you look desperate with your whimpering and puppy eyes here is one for you

Tip: there are dev blogs incoming on ship balancing, and don't worry, they will give you plenty of things to talk / argue / rabble / whine / set things on fire when they go out.

*inset cliche evil villain laugh here*

This thread could use some blue light.

We have to admit creating the Naga was possibly one of the most challenging ship balancing task we had to tackle so far. Not only because finding a proper role for it without overlapping with the Talos too much, while still remaining effective was crazy difficult, but mainly as we knew that no matter which kind of direction we picked it would still generate a heated debate among the community.

The core problem here lies with the Caldari combat philosophy, or at least how it is externally perceived. Some believe Caldari to be missile based, other hybrids based. And to be honest, that is quite a logical assuption to do so, as most of the Caldari hybrid hulls are quite underused (or were before Crucible), and the most popular ships remain missile based (Caracal, Drake, Raven).

As designers, we can tell Caldari have three main points going for them as a race and that is, missile, hybrids and ECM. To be an all-rounded Caldari pilot, one must realize all aspects have to be considered and learned, just like, for example, a pilot has to consider training for hybrids, drones and dampening to master most of the Gallente tech 1 ships.

However, we are players as well, and we can freely admit only having one side of the coin for a new expansion is indeed frustrating. Favor the Naga as hybrid, as missile pilots feel shafted. Make it missile based and hybrid users will hunt your family down with torches and pitchforks. It is, in essence, a no win situation, no matter how much you try to please the player base.

The first iteration of the Naga attempted to please all interested parties by having both missile and hybrid bonues, but as the feedback quickly shown, it was quite a failure, as it was not achieving any specific role and lacked a purpose.

So, in the end, we had to go for the option that made the most logical sense. Tier 3 battlecruisers are supposed to be mobile, heavy damage support for fleets and hybrids were the most appealing to reach such goal. Torpedoes are too short range based for a hull that frail, while cruise missiles have their own issues for long range combat.

It is not to say cruise missiles are fine and that we don't want to tweak them, but the Naga is, and will remain a hybrid ship as it best fits its role. The issue with missiles in general needs to be and will addressed, but that is a separate discussion altogether, that we will happily discuss with the player base when we come down to it.


Crap, made a wall of text Well, hope that helps a bit no matter what.

CCP must just love missle/drone pilots.

They gave us a nice new BC to play with.
What no tier 3 drone ship. Damn.
No missle tier 3 ship either? WTF?

Atleast we still have the drake.
Your nerfing the drake too?

Thanks for the love guys. Really. I'm so sick of hearing how missles and drones are over powered.

Well atleast the new BC's are good at killing all those mission runners.
I mean how often to you see missle or drone ships running mission? Oh, yeah all the time.

No drone Tier 3????

Try the talos man

Tier 3 battlecruisers are supposed to be mobile, heavy damage support for fleets

As opposed to gunnery V small V spec IV, medium V Spec IV, large V spec IV and sharpshooting V and whatever the tracking skill is (depending on long/short range). Per turret type.

Why is it when people compare gunnery to missile training times they always include the support skills for gunnery and ignore them for missiles?

Not all of the missile supports apply to every missile. You can put together a hell of a bomber pilot for very little SP investment. I know. :)

-Liang

Not all of the missile supports apply to every missile. You can put together a hell of a bomber pilot for very little SP investment. I know. :)

-Liang

One launcher skill does not apply to unguided missiles in much the same way one gunnery skill does not apply to capless turrets. Valid argument that missile trained alts skill into their t2 large/med weapons marginally faster though.

And what use is Controlled Bursts skill to minmatar? or Trajectory Analysis to amarr?

But thats an aside, my point is that the hue and cry from gunnery pilots about training times difference is usually pretty biased. When you factor in all support skills training times difference is very marginal.

And every comparison I see from missile users is similarly biased. Simple facts: I have 18M SP in gunnery to 11M SP in missiles.

-Liang

And every comparison I see from missile users is similarly biased. Simple facts: I have 18M SP in gunnery to 11M SP in missiles.

-Liang

And even THAT is another way of saying that missiles take a mere 61% of the total SP I have dedicated to guns.

-Liang

There are only 7 missile launcher weapon systems in the game and 54 different turret weapon systems. (sub-capital)

Only 61% of the training is not a good deal overall as those gunnery skills support almost 8x as many weapons. I'm not saying that is broken, but it certainly leaves no room for complaints about missiles being light on sp. As I said, it's quite valid to point out the efficient nature of training strait into a battleship weapon system for a specific use, but for the number of weapons and ships you are getting, it's much less efficient overall than gunnery.

Isn't it much more efficient because only 61% of the SP covers missile ships across all 4 races?

-Liang