Stop trying to get me to fit blasters on caldari.

I don't want to fly a bad version of a blaster harpy :(

Anyway I think the Merlin and the Tristan should have 2 turret slots and 2 missile slots and get bonus in BOTH. Merlin should be long range with rails and missiles, Tristan should be shot range with blasters and rockets. Get the respective bonuses for each and move on. I personally like the idea of having different weapons in high slots and having it work.

In what way is this at -all- consistent with Caldari gunboats? The Moa is not a brawler, nor is the cormorant, nor the eagle, nor the ferox(1). Some would argue this but I would also argue that the Harpy isn't, either.

You're shitting on Caldari ship philosophy(2). If the existing role doesn't work (And I would argue that no, certainly the current Merlin doesn't really work as a railboat) then fix that instead of trying to make it a Gallente ship. The biggest problem the current Merlin has is that it only has two turrets and no damage bonus which means it's not very usable by newbies and non-damage-bonused rails alone don't do enough damage.


Optimal + damage bonus with three turrets is a great idea. Merlin could still be used as a blasterboat, but the bonuses would reflect what other Caldari gunboats are(3). Three bonused rails could actually be very, very usable in frigate combat

Hybrids + optimal = caldari only results in these ships (much as I love them) being pretty gimpy and not often used. Best fitting for Moa = gas harvesters. Fixating on rangey rails as purist Caldari gunboat design philosophy excludes all brawling possibilities and simply makes Caldari boats more predictable, more easily countered, and never used. Especially in frigates. "I'll tackle in my kiting railmerlin wlololol..."

Inflexibility with gun bonuses already relegates most of the Caldari gun lineup to non-usability except by wackos like me who still get FC-shoved into a cane or blackbird or... hey, you know what kind of Caldari ship doesn't suck at tracking in facerange? A Drake! Everyone wants more of those out there, I'm sure.

Crazy idea: change 10% optimal bonus to hybrids in a 5% optimal, 5% falloff bonus.

(the bombardment role was removed as feedback shown it wasn't great to start with)

ah thats a shame(1) as i was hoping attack ships would be mobile turret platforms like vaga's (2)
so bombardment described missile boats well as spewing out missiles and if they become rather mobile it could be hard to counter them and makes them seemingly OP slow/ weak defence in exchange for plenty(3) of dps and range seems a fair exchange. (4)
also a note on why use a caracal / cerberus instead of drake could be resolved with giving drakes dmg and rate of fire bonus for assault missiles only 30k doing 700-800dps with range assaults is pretty nice role for them instead of drakes being tanky 100k Heavy missile spewing ships doing similar dps to cerb this would give the drake and cerb specific roles thus worth using both ships.(5)

Mira Lynne you have clearly misunderstand what i wrote, the point was to give drakes higher dps in exchange for having a weaker tank and less mobility and the massive sig is largely to do with t2 missiles adding 5.4% sig rad per missile, missiles do have strange penalties for using the t2's they need to be looked at.

And i felt like talking about it :P

Compare it to other t1 frigs and see who wins. Gviing it 3 turrets slots was already good but giving it ALSO a damage bonus was too much. Its tank/dps combo is just miles better than any other t1 frig while still being mobile and able to do dps within kiting scram range. How is that difficult to understand?

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Sacrilege

Race fighting philosophy will most likely dictate engagement range

add one tier 2 destroyer to each race, they should be singificantly better than tier 1 destroyers