Originally by: Derek Sigres

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I AM of the opinion that AF's have potential. Things about giving the ships a role is fairly silly when lack of a role is not the underlying problem of the ship design.

The single NUMBER ONE issule that AF's have is their price tag. They simply do not perform as well as their price indicates.

There is not (or least there should not be) any argument that an Assault Ship is a match for it's T1 equivalent. Thus it already has a role - the same one frigates do, only they do it better.

But "doing something better" is only part of a the issue - just because a Wolf can outperform a rifter doesn't mean it's the best ship for the job. Often a rifter is thrown into suicidal situations, getting early points and webs on targets and fully expected to die. Such a task means expendability is of paramount concern.

An assault ship should be designed from the ground up to fight people with pure gank and tank. In order to maxamize it's potential as an assault ship, the vessels would need blanket bonuses on the order of:

2x Gank Bonuses
1x Tank Bonus
1x Racial Bonus

This assumes the resists are built into the hull rather than added in as a useless bonus.

Immunity to Webs has been thrown about quite a bit, but such a bonus is not in line with the assault theory of ship design. Web bonuses indicate the role of the ship is tackling, probably inside the 13km death zone - and tackling is a role already filled to bursting by t1 frigs (expendible tackling) interceptors (ultra fast ADD tackling), HAC's (vagabond for example for heavy tackling) interdictors (for bubble tackling) and HICS (for ultra heavy tackling).

Instead, I suggest the following blanket changes to the ships:
1) A cut in component requirements that would make 6 - 10 million ISK a reasonable average price for the ship.
2) Agility that mirrors the agility of the ship's T1 hull.
3) A bonus to afterburners that will allow an AF's to achieve similar speeds to the average t1 cruiser using a MWD.

These changes maxamize the role implied by the name: assault. They would be hard hitting little ships, taking tank and gank to the logical extreme for the frigate class. Reduced price combined with an overall increase in survivability means they could indeed be used in headlong assaults on enemy support craft, where two or three fully fitted assault ships could be lost for each enemy recon destroyed and there would STILL be a net win for the assault force (in terms of isk at risk). This would mean that no ship was as supremely suited to the task - cruisers may hit harder but their much larger size means they are far less durable than their smaller cousins, and frigates would have far less firepower at their disposal.

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