Yeesh

Ok, Ok, I get that the Vagabond canonical fit does not involve missile launchers....

The statement was a generic one for all Minmatar cruiser sized ships. One thing you have to realize is that most Matari pilots (myself included) tend to develop our missile skills last. This leads to a self fulfilling prophesy where in we don't tend to fit launchers on any of our ships, even those that seem to be designed for split weapons fire. I'd like to point out that when you have one weapons skill that far outstrips the other, this will be the case no matter what. Of course missiles are not as good as guns - your missile skills suck.

As much as there are good arguments for concentration on a single weapon type when fitting out a ship for gank, and 90% of the time this is indeed the way to go. However, there are times where one must know when to break that rule. The thing is that unless you work on all your weapons skill, you'll never have the option to do so. Hence me working on my combat skills to get all 4 Matari weapons systems to the same level (yes target painters are a horribly underused and underestimated weapons system).

Mind you to a certain extent this represents the pattern of skill development in EVE in general. One starts off will few skills, one concentrates on getting some key ones up to snuff, and then one branches out, one branch at a time, each time adding more options to our pallet of ships to fly and things we're able to accomplish. The real kicker is that one must be careful of chasing the shiney. For example, if you've been reading this blog, you know my summer plan is diving into gettting: Large AC, Large Artillery, Torpedoes, Cruise Missiles, Heavy drones and sentries all up to T2 levels (get all the specialization skills involved to 4). After that there's plenty of other supporting skills I've worked on that I still need to get higher - and tanking skills and what not. The point here is that I've gotten all the frigate weapons skills to those equivalent levels already. I'm finishing off the cruiser weapons right now and I'm restraining myself from diving into BS weaponry until the cruiser stuff is completed to the level I'm aiming for.

Notice I didn't say finished - good lord there's a lot of skills to get to level 5 if I wanted to do that. But either way the point here is that I am making sure I can fly cruisers and battlecruisers properly BEFORE I head off and get the BS up to snuff. I've said it before and I'll say it again: It's better to fly a frigate very well than to get into a battleship before you have the skills to fly it correctly. Too many players go way too quickly into the larger ships. Usually to the detriment of their PvP abilities. Ask Cosmik, Teister or Quebnaric, At one point Coz's skills were WAY lower than most other pilots in BOZO, but from my understanding there were few pilots who were as good at tackle and frigate work. One of the major reasons? He stayed working on his frigate and general skills way longer than most pilots do. And once he did get into cruisers he had plenty of backing skills to slap the cruiser specific skills on and make those ships work.

One of the big problems with EVE is that for the most part PVE is way too easy at the various levels. They give you no clue that you're horribly under skilled in reality since they are so easy. About the only NPCs that provide a "skill check" are the sleepers. The reality is that the core game-play in EVE is PvP. Everything else is in support of this. There is also the problem that the AI on most PvE encounters is criminally stupid.

Suggestion that CCP will never go for:

How to improve the AI and make it more realistic and challenging:

1) design each encounter with a "breaking point" where the NPCs will try to get the fuck out of dodge. THIS NEEDS TO INCLUDE MISSION OBJECTIVE SHIPS!!!

2) give them the "squadron" AI of the sleepers. Make sure the AI does concentration of fire and knows to target the drones. This would solve a lot of those AFK Dominix macro issues.

3) Balancing this: Up the bounties a bit (scenario dependent) since depending on the design of the encounter some to a percentage of ships will be getting away.

The main reason for this is that one of the features of PvP is that when you do have the upper hand you need to make sure your targets don't escape. Current PvE does not reflect this reality. It bloody well should. This "breaking point" can be applied at the scenario level or at the NPC squadron level (when there are obviously different squadrons on the field). For advanced scenarios have 2 levels: "break off" and "flee". When a squadron hit "break off" level, any ship that comes under fire will warp off, but then warp back to another squadron member (if they can). When at "flee", they will leave the scenario never to come back. ex: squadron of 4 ships - after the first is killed, they go into "break off" mode, when there is only one ship left - it will flee the scenario not to come back.

Why they will never go for this: CCP see the PvE game play as simply a way to fund the PvP, not as a training ground for PvP. They don't want it to take too long or be too challenging. As such they are unlikely to want to make things more difficult (even if doing so would make things more difficult for the macro'ers).