Shoehorn ships into Long/Short Range

No. Bad Idea. Each ship needs to be able to perform as either a long range or short range weapon platform, else there is no variety. If i want to use a HAM Drake, im going to. Try and stop me.
The problem isnt the drake, the problem is mainly heavy missiles and secondarily missiles in general. Leave the drake with its resist bonus.

If there isn't something wrong with the Drake there is something wrong wth all other missile ships.

If there is variaty strongly depends on point of view, a lot of people here say the Drake should be looked at because every one is flying it (No variety).
CCP thinks it does to many things to well (Or at least says so in the meeting)

Now I never will stop you making a HAM drake though I'd suggest they bring in 2 new ships where there is now one will be more HAM friendly than the other.

Keep the Drake but turn it to a Navy faction, maybe adjust it a little to fit that role.

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For example when you look at the Caracal and the Raven.

Caracal has bonuses on 3 types of missiles, though it's all but impossible to fit one of them the other only works marginal and the only fit that make the ship shine is with rapid assault launchers, The Raven has bonuses for both Cruise and Torp though to low in power, cap, cpu shield and slots to make a working Torp raven that can should anything smaller than BS.
While the Cruise Raven is only usable in PVE.


Now I don't say missiles are fine, Cruise missiles definetly should be looked at.


But I think it would be a better solution to look at those ships like Hybrids, While both Caldari and Galente are able to fit Blasters and railguns, their ships are specialised for one or the other.

That will bring "Variaty" in the number of ships flown and give us the posebillity to fly certain ships more effectively, Would be nice to fly a working Heavy missile T1 Cruiser in to battle. Or a Ham T1 Cruiser for that matter.

You still dont understand,no problem with drakes, but they dont want missile spamming because that's create too much lag.

This month starting out like all the others for the past few years http://eve-kill.net/?a=top20

But keep telling yourself and posting your authoritative opinion. It will surely be more persuasive over factual/statistical evidence. Nothing to see here move along> These are not the Drakes you are looking for . . .

Regardless, as both proponents and opponents know, heat death may come before CCP gets around to doing any serious ship rebalancing. Here's to 5 more frigs with the next expansion

Although I've heard of this popular believe, I've a hard time buying it when CCP puts so much time money and effort in, Missile grafics and new ship models.

New Drake will have 8 lauchers, given this (Eve Online Facebook page): www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150961517219394.436182.17614129393&type=1

So it will most probably lose the kinetic bonus (else it would be a dps buff, I doubt that), but what else will it lose? And what will it get instead?

You are wrong. 0.0 fleet battles with 600+ drakes, not equal with pve players at high sec with new missile effects.

Maybe you never see a fleet battle in 0.0.

Check Top 20 http://eve-kill.net/?a=top20

RankShipsKills
1 Drake 60432
2 Hurricane 35874
3 Tengu 19113

RankWeaponsKills
1 Heavy Missile Launcher II 21684
2 425mm AutoCannon II 14925
3 200mm AutoCannon II 10490

Most used ship in 0.0 is Drake because they have massive shield HP with enough high resists.
This is why easy to tank them with logistic ships.

A smaller ordinary fleetbattle in 0.0 : http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=13451706

Check how many drake used there.

I think you're missing the point. He's not disputing that the Drake is widely used in massive 0.0 battles. His point was that missiles aren't such a significant issue that CCP is actively trying to discourage their use.

The Drake changes are part of the adjustments that will be made to all ships as part of tiercide. It has nothing to do with missiles.

Also, that battle report... wtf? Why are there so many CFC members on both sides of the engagement? I don't understand what happened there.

Most used ship in 0.0 is Drake because they have massive shield HP with enough high resists.
This is why easy to tank them with logistic ships.

I think you're missing the point. He's not disputing that the Drake is widely used in massive 0.0 battles. His point was that missiles aren't such a significant issue that CCP is actively trying to discourage their use.

The Drake changes are part of the adjustments that will be made to all ships as part of tiercide. It has nothing to do with missiles.

Also, that battle report... wtf? Why are there so many CFC members on both sides of the engagement? I don't understand what happened there.

Really and to decrease lag you give it a RoF bonus.

Good point. Higher ROF means more missiles on the field. If this was done in the interest of decreasing lag it's a pretty poor choice.

But on the other side the Drakes will be easy to kill in fleet warfare and as such might potentially lag more at first but not for long...

It will take time to get people away from Fleet Drake habits, however if done right Drakes will be too short lived to be the cheap-fleet mainstay as it is right now, but in return be way more fun for roams and other small stuff :-)

Pinky

-20 to 25% shield

There's 3 dominant issues with the drake:

Remove the resist bonus and replace it with a flight time bonus.

Remove 150 base power grid so a drake can't fit so many ******* extenders so easily.

Remove the drone bay and quit giving every god damn ship in game a drone bay you ******** fucks... drones are not meant to be in every ******* ship.

I don't think nerving it to dust will be a good step.

I understand there is a blob problem, (witch is something different than CCP don't wantinhg us to use missile ships) but that shouldn't be done by making it useless.

I don't have the math but -20 to 25% shield and the removal of the resistance bonus will make it compleet and utter useless for heavy assault missiles wich isn't a bad thing if you'd create a second ship for Assault missile launchers. and fit the current drake as a base for a Navy BC, that will probebly price it arround 150 - 200 mil isk for the hull.

That will reduce the blods as well.

No, this is not true. Already the drakes have atleast +20% HP advantage than any BC.

Check this out:

Harbinger with 1600 plate +3x trimark rigs has ~16000 armor (hard to fitting, need smaller med guns). 65k EHP
Brutix with 1600 plate +3x trimark rigs has ~16300 armor (hard to fitting, need smaller med guns). 61k EHP
Hurricane with 1600 plate +3x trimark rigs has ~16800 armor. 59k EHP
Drakes with 2x shield extenders +3x CDFE rigs has ~21400 shield (fitteable to HAM) 96.5K EHP

I hope you see the differences.

Yes but its a bonus to one group, not all of them at once. The drake problem was never just it's DPS, but the DPS/Tank ratio.

It is the same issue with the Dramiel, Having a ship be really good at one thing is fine. Having a ship that is really good at EVERY thing is bad.

In which case, what is the drake bad at?

Speed? Perma-MWD drake blobs are very common.
Range? Not with heavy missiles
DPS? pretty good with kinetic missiles which aren't often a default resistance.
Tank? Default 20-25% resistances make it pretty awesome in tank.
Cap warfare? Passive tank and missiles don't use cap.
Ewar? Sensor strength is about the only thing it is average on.

Compare this to say, a Harbinger or hell any Gallente BC.