Last week I talked about the possible evil I could get into with the proposed Falcon in solo encounters. Let's see how the official version compares.
* The Falcon has gained one addition turret slot.
* A 10m3 drone bay / 10 mbit drone bandwidth has been added to the Falcon.
* ECM Modules have had their base optimal and falloff ranges adjusted, the optimal range has been decreased whilst the falloff range has increased.
* Signal Distortion Amplifiers have been changed to provide a bonus to both ECM strength and optimal range and their bonuses adjusted accordingly.
In other words, 3 less light drones and no Hybrid damage bonus. All told a DPS around 200 instead of over 320. Still better than current by a little bit and I will definitely give it a good try to see how it shapes up.
EDIT: As Az pointed out in the comments, the patch notes actually say:
- The ECM strength bonus has been increased to 30% per recon ships skill level for the Falcon.
- The ECM Optimal range bonus has been switched to a 5% Hybrid Damage bonus on the Falcon.
In other ECM ship news, the Rook got overhauled:
* The ECM Optimal Range bonus has been swapped for a 5% Rate of Fire bonus to Heavy and Heavy Assault launchers per Caldari cruiser skill level for the Rook.
* The ECM strength bonus has been increased to 30% per level on the Rook.
* A 25m3 drone bay / 25 mbit drone bandwidth has been added to the Rook.
* 100 base hit points have been added to the shield of the Rook.
A Cerberus has a 25% bonus to kinetic damage to heavy and heavy assault missiles and 5% bonus to rate of fire per level.
A Rook now has 25% bonus to rate of fire and a 5% bonus to kinetic damage to heavy and light missiles (mistake on the light there?) per level... plus a flight of light drones.
In other words, with the tech II ship skills at level four I think the Rook will out-damage a Cerberus. The Cerberus will still have vastly superior range and better shield defenses though, but I still find it surprising.
The Scorpion will basically be fighting more in falloff than before, and get less strength due to the changes to Signal Distortion Amps (unless the range boost from SDAs now make up for the change to ECM mods):
* The ECM optimal bonus has been switched to 20% ECM optimal and falloff range bonus per level for the Scorpion.
The Widow on the other hand gets boost:
* The ECM strength bonus has been changed to 30% per level for the Widow
Combined with the boost from SDAs the Widow should be able to get high strength ECM going, albeit at much shorter range.
The patch notes have a lot more on changes to Stealth Bombers (which I totally disagree with) and to Black Ops Battleships (which I'm writing an article for the Tribune on) so I'll stop here. Suffice to say a brave new world in ECM ships is coming tomorrow.
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Looks like the rook will be a nice boat, which will actually do some damage now. Got an extra dronebay too !
ReplyDeleteUmm... I dunno where you get the "no hybrid damage bonus" It's the 4th point under Ships:
ReplyDeleteThe ECM Optimal range bonus has been switched to a 5% Hybrid Damage bonus on the Falcon.
Fly Safe
I swear that wasn't in there this morning. I looked for it three times. :P
ReplyDeletethis patch is wonderful for us recon flyers eh?
ReplyDeleteWhat caught my eye in the notes is this:
ReplyDelete"Any probes that are active but do not expire during a scan process will become stuck in a moving state and cannot be interacted with until they expire. Newly launched probes can now be used to scan correctly without displaying a warning notice that active probes are still in use."
I'm not sure what's it trying to say. Will probes become single-shot deal once again?
good summary on the changes! Seeign as only last week I actually sat in my Falcon I shall have to see what this means in real terms for jamming abilities, no I do not want the uber pwn mobile I do want to be able to recon and get the hell out of dodge if I need to tho
ReplyDelete9guUzxw: That confused me as well. What I'm assuming it means is that if you get into a buggy state with probes stuck, you can launch new probes to scan with until the bugged ones expire. Pure guess though.
ReplyDeleteP.S. nice name ;)
Heh, you can thank the yahoo ID for that. Every time I attempt to change it, yahoo tells me to try again in a few minutes.
ReplyDeleteI sort of like it, though. I even let a text to speech program have a go at pronouncing it. :)
So unfair. My Arazu gets like 150 DPS at best and it's EWAR is about 5% as useful as ECM. This seems like more of a buff than a nerf.
ReplyDelete