[Sarmatiko] New Target Painter

[elmicker]

There's obviously helpful and then there's must-fit. There are plenty of things wrong with eve, but at the minute general balance is pretty good. There's no one major dominant fit style, there's no dominant gang makeup. We've got a fair few options of how to play while still being competitive. Eve's never really been like that before. We had RR BS, and nanohacs before that, and nano everything before that. It's easy to forget that everyone used to fit a nos to everything because it was so fucking useful that you'd be mad not to, creating a metagame where you couldn't fit anything but a nos, because everyone else had a nos, making the nos pretty much useless. The way unguided missiles are and the way the tracking formula is, TPs are currently so effective that without strong limitations the game will just degenerate into who can bring the most oversized guns and utility highslot TPs.

[Ophichius]

There's obviously helpful and then there's must-fit. There are plenty of things wrong with eve, but at the minute general balance is pretty good. There's no one major dominant fit style, there's no dominant gang makeup. We've got a fair few options of how to play while still being competitive. Eve's never really been like that before. We had RR BS, and nanohacs before that, and nano everything before that. It's easy to forget that everyone used to fit a nos to everything because it was so fucking useful that you'd be mad not to, creating a metagame where you couldn't fit anything but a nos, because everyone else had a nos, making the nos pretty much useless. The way unguided missiles are and the way the tracking formula is, TPs are currently so effective that without strong limitations the game will just degenerate into who can bring the most oversized guns and utility highslot TPs.

I was pretty sure we were on to the age of Tornados. Tornado fleets are alpha maels at half the cost and with better projection, agility, and mobility. At the very least, Ti3 fleets are seeing a huge surge in popularity it seems. Only real negative to running them is that you don't really want to engage by jumping through a gate, but that's common to most LR fleets.

-O

[Ophichius]

Edit: My Little FHC: Doubleposting is Magic!

-O

[Gypsio]

I'm not convinced a highslot painter is a must-have. Useful, sure, but it's still competing against neuts for the utility highs. I mean, would a Hurricane start dropping neuts for painters? I don't see it.

Drakefleets may be a different question, but HML Drakes tend to be a bit tight on CPU sometimes, and it's quite easy to scatter a few medslot painters around a drakeblob anyway, surely.

[Glyken Touchon]

Useful, sure, but it's still competing against neuts for the utility highs.

Was going to type something, but this.

[AmaNutin]

Useful, sure, but it's still competing against neuts for the utility highs.

Was going to type something, but this.

Different purposes in the end if going fleet vs solo roams...

[Glyken Touchon]

Useful, sure, but it's still competing against neuts for the utility highs.

Was going to type something, but this.

Different purposes in the end if going fleet vs solo roams...

Of course, but this would have meant a decision. Without it, neuts are the must-have for utility highs. Variety in viable fits is a good thing.

[Mfume]

I was pretty sure we were on to the age of Tornados. Tornado fleets are alpha maels at half the cost and with better projection, agility, and mobility. At the very least, Ti3 fleets are seeing a huge surge in popularity it seems. Only real negative to running them is that you don't really want to engage by jumping through a gate, but that's common to most LR fleets.

-O

Sensor boosted Maels/Rokhs, ABing Tengus, AHACs, etc. trash Tornadoes all day, errday.

[elmicker]

I'm not convinced a highslot painter is a must-have. Useful, sure, but it's still competing against neuts for the utility highs. I mean, would a Hurricane start dropping neuts for painters?

it should if there's more than half a dozen people in the gang.

[Me]

I'm not convinced a highslot painter is a must-have. Useful, sure, but it's still competing against neuts for the utility highs. I mean, would a Hurricane start dropping neuts for painters?

it should if there's more than half a dozen people in the gang.

With 6+ in gang you'd already have 6-12 painters depending on fleet comp if everyone thinks that way. Better off with the neuts imo, let your buddies paint.

[Sponk]

I think I can put my finger on why everyone considered the RATPainter a must-have.

It's the range.

Mid-slot e-war has pretty decent range; something like 30+60, with the crucial exception of webs, scrams and points. Those three types are so important that they have their own terms 'web range' 'scram range' etc due to the way they warp the battlefield if you get into range of them. It's also why those ranges are a lot shorter.

But 'normal' e-war range is pretty far out, and is generally used by fairly squishy ships, or more tanky ships that have made the tough choice to give up a mid slot to fit one.

With the RATP, this changes. Suddenly, you see 100% combat ships with full-strength, full-range e-war instead of the very limited range of other high-slot ewar (i.e. neuts and nosses). And it's wrong. It's just overpowered to give up a spare high slot and some CPU and get 30+60 range painters that give the same boost to tracking as a scripted Tracking Computer II without making any sacrifices.

Just nerfing the strength of the RATP won't work. Dropping it to 1/3 strength is still better than giving everyone in your fleet a free Tracking Enhancer as soon as you get a ship within 90km of them that has a lolutility high.

The solution is obvious.

1. Drop the range by 75%. Base range becomes 7.5km optimal + 15km falloff (or 9.4/18.75 with max skills).

This means you are much more in danger from your target (point range) and thus it's OK to fit to a ship of the line, plus it makes it more difficult a decision whether to run with a painter or a neut.

2. Drop the strength by 50%. Base sig radius becomes +15% (+22.5% with skills) which is necessary because there's a lot more spare high slots in a gang than spare mids.

3. CPU probably should be 30 (halfway between the 20tf of a medium neut II and the 40tf of a heavy neut). After all, it's T2.

[Shade Millith]

There's obviously helpful and then there's must-fit. There are plenty of things wrong with eve, but at the minute general balance is pretty good. There's no one major dominant fit style, there's no dominant gang makeup. We've got a fair few options of how to play while still being competitive. Eve's never really been like that before. We had RR BS, and nanohacs before that, and nano everything before that. It's easy to forget that everyone used to fit a nos to everything because it was so fucking useful that you'd be mad not to, creating a metagame where you couldn't fit anything but a nos, because everyone else had a nos, making the nos pretty much useless. The way unguided missiles are and the way the tracking formula is, TPs are currently so effective that without strong limitations the game will just degenerate into who can bring the most oversized guns and utility highslot TPs.

You mean like neuts? Everybody and their mother tries to fit neuts on just about everything. Is it that bad that MAYBE there would be something to compete with it?

[elmicker]

You mean like neuts? Everybody and their mother tries to fit neuts on just about everything. Is it that bad that MAYBE there would be something to compete with it?

You don't solve the problem of a dominant, must-fit module by introducing a module equally as overpowered. Besides, neuts aren't really comparable. Neuts are actually quite hard to fit, have a short range and are readily countered by cap injection or using a cap-light setup (or both, lol ASBs). A high slot TP is to all intents and purposes a high slot, fleet-wide tracking computer for a bit of CPU. As i said earlier, once you get past about half a dozen ships in the gang, carrying half a dozen TPs is going to be far preferable to carrying half a dozen neuts. It's been a while since I've played seriously but I'm pretty sure there are still more ships with a spare high slot and excess cpu than there are ships with a spare high and excess PG (and that's only really fair if you neglect the neut's other disadvantages mentioned before).

ed: for shits and giggles if you ditch the guns off an eos you could bring a c. 120k ehp battlecruiser with 2x sebo, eccm and 4 highslot TPs, painting at +45.6% at 55+90 while still providing flexible drone dps. while that'd be utterly hilarious and would finally give us a use for that otherwise forgotten ship, just no. That'd ramp a cruiser up to 400m sig at fifty five kilometres. Start talking about huginns and things get silly. The same four painters on a huginn (drop guns or missiles or both) and a cruiser balloons to 560m sig, verging on rage torp explosion radius. Neither of those are particularly difficult fits and neither of them sacrifice any significant DPS nor any tank for what is a massive boost to the rest of your fleet's effectiveness. Highslot TPs with comparable stats to mid slot TPs would be so common they'd make off-grid boosting look like a competent solo pvper in goonfleet. Even if you cut the range to something similar to neuts and tightened up the fitting they'd still be as handy as a high-slot web.

[Mfume]

i hope you realize TPs are stacked nerfed so that more than 4 or 5 are essentially pointless.

[Sponk]

i hope you realize TPs are stacked nerfed so that more than 4 or 5 are essentially pointless.

The fifth painter provides a base ~3% more signature radius, which is still a non-trivial +3% tracking.

Besides, it is pretty easy to spread e-war when it has 30+60 range.

[Mfume]

Besides, it is pretty easy to spread e-war when it has 30+60 range.

Why would you spread TPs?

also: 45+60 with dem skillz

[Zavior]

Besides, it is pretty easy to spread e-war when it has 30+60 range.

Why would you spread TPs?

also: 45+60 with dem skillz

i hope you realize TPs are stacked nerfed so that more than 4 or 5 are essentially pointless.

I know I know, having more than 2 or 3 rapiers in a fleet with few hundred people is blasphemy!

[AnzacPaul]

Item is no longer on TQ or elaborate troll thread

_1 either way.

[Madner Kami]

Item is no longer on TQ or elaborate troll thread

Yeah, well... Welcome to last week.

[Dierdra Vaal]

Besides, it is pretty easy to spread e-war when it has 30+60 range.

Why would you spread TPs?

also: 45+60 with dem skillz

You never trained Frequency Modulation?