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[SCC]

When it comes to weapon mounts, only large energy are comparable to ballistic. Midline ships typically sideline other energy mounts. Champion has 1LE/2MH and HEF, which lets it mounts efficiently into long or medium range kinetics on mediums and long or medium range energy weapons (with HIL and TL having an added bonus of being competitive with ballistics in general). Would Champion still be strong, if its hybrids became energy? Midline energy-using ships are propped up by the ability to make energy into poor man's HE to complement the ballistics. Eagle's closest two builds are either kinetics + phase lance (OP expensive) or kinetics + 6 tacticals (slow).
Similarly Vigilance was buffed with swapping its energy to a hybrid, Conquest's two medium energies are most often forgotten or filled with PD, Centurion's or Hammerhead's only energy weapons are typically ion cannons (if that). Sunder has more build variation, since it's built around energy weapons, but I can't help but wonder if non-SO non-beam builds care about mediums at all, instead of PCs + railguns/needlers.
Eagle can be decent, if it uses a Heavy Needler to get some sustainable burst potential. It's a shame HN was recently nerfed, though it might still be serviceable. Midline in general likes elite ballistic weapons. I guess you could make ghetto old HNeedler with LNeedlers and Ballistic Rangefinder. At this point, though, I think I would rather get a Sunder.

Maybe there should be a character skill and/or mid-tech hullmod (possibly built-in) that makes energy + ballistic combo more viable? Maybe specifically beams + ballistic. Because as skills and mods exist right now, you want a ship to specialize in either ballistics (any range) or short to medium range energy weapons.

I would prefer Eagle to be good out of the box.

[Thaago]

Hiruma Kai's point of the Eagle effectively not having a ship system is bang on, as are all the other poster's comments about hard flux medium energy weapons just not fitting the Eagle's size/role. Hard flux medium energy weapons are for close range hunter ships, and with its new faster speed the Falcon can use them effectively but the Eagle has trouble.

Advanced Optics + Phase lance is a good combination and even gives the ship some burst damage, but has a few problems:
1) OP expensive for the hullmod, and while the hullmod also helps beam PD get more range, it slows down their turn rate tracking, so advanced turret gyros might also be needed for even more OP.
2) Even with AO the energy turrets are just set quite far back so it loses more range (this isn't a huge problem, just annoying)
2) AI has a burst fire bug where if it turns the autofire group off mid burst the guns actively turn off target (fixed hooray!)
3) AI has a nasty tendency of wasting the burst by firing just outside of range/into empty space vs non-circular ships - its aiming for the enemy's collision radius rather than hull.
4) If the AI activates its system and decides to spin during a burst the turrets can't keep up and the burst is wasted. This also applies to the front kinetics.

Even with these problems kinetics + phase lance is an "ok" Eagle build. Its decent, just not exceptional in any way other than occasionally flash popping swarming frigates.

The other successful usage I've had of the medium energies on Eagles is beam support. Ion beam behind kinetics is quite good for supporting other ships, but it doesn't kill things, and the Eagle doesn't do the job much better than a Falcon would. Gravitons have decent efficiency but their high OP cost/damage and lack of hard flux make them very low impact expensive weapons, to the point where the slot is less than half the value of a medium kinetic slot. A major buff to beams would help make Eagle's more useful - we'd need to be careful about making the high tech ships too strong with them, but currently beams really aren't a good build on them other than the Disco Paragon so I think there is room to do this.

But going back to the system: Maneuvering Jets + forward facing kinetics are a double edged sword. On the one hand, it lets the moderately sluggish ship keep its guns on target vs smaller ships. On the other, I think that while its on it makes the AI 'think' that its more maneuverable than it is: it then tries to use that maneuverability to either distribute armor damage or swing to a new target, then the system turns off, and the Eagle is now "stuck" for a little while not being able to shoot its main guns at anything. The same thing happens to the Falcon a little, but again the Falcon's higher base maneuverability means that it isn't stuck in the bad position for nearly as long.

Giving the Eagle better base speed and maneuverability and then an offensive ship system would go a long way to making it competitive. While new systems would be cool, what if there was one version that got AAF, and one version that got HEF? Say for a certain purple painted faction that has special energy weapons?

[SCC]

Wouldn't giving Eagle AAF would turn it into a slower (unless it is buffed to 70 or more) and tankier Eradicator without the burst damage? Eradicator kinda made this way of buffing Eagle... perhaps not unviable, but certainly unelegant.

[Thaago]

Hmm you are right, it would be rather "samey" now. HEF runs into the same problem with the Champion.

What about a system that lowers the flux cost and raises the range of energy weapons? And also allows beams to pass over targets while active? Say similar duty cycle to AAF (35% uptime but a nice long burst on activation), increases the base range of all energy weapons by 25% (up to a maximum? Needed?), reduces flux cost by 25%, allows beams to pass over.

[Grievous69]

Give it 70 base speed and Active Flare Launcher
/thread

[smithney]

What about a system that lowers the flux cost and raises the range of energy weapons? And also allows beams to pass over targets while active? Say similar duty cycle to AAF (35% uptime but a nice long burst on activation), increases the base range of all energy weapons by 25% (up to a maximum? Needed?), reduces flux cost by 25%, allows beams to pass over.

I don't think that this approach on its own would differentiate Eagle enough from its competitors, namely Champion. I also wonder how would AI handle the opportunistic approach to medium energy. It would probably feel better in player's hands, as they could abuse the window granted by such system to employ flux-inefficient burst weapons, but that doesn't usually translate well to AI. At this point don't forget that Eagle is supposed to be the core of 3 (or 2.5 if you insist :P ) different AI fleets.

I think the baseline for turning Eagle viable would always be raising it's movement. Then we can start talking whether it also has what it takes to be a killer. And if it does, what kind of prey should it kill. Unfortunately, there's no middle option, since any hull punching up is naturally an even greater threat to its own class unless the foe can run away.

I don't see how Eagle manages to stand mano-a-mano against its lo-tech or hi-tech competitors, the former outgun it, the latter outrun it (I expect comparable results if it faced Champion and Falcon respectively). Midline's forte has been fleet synergy, so I'm biased towards thinking about Eagle in those terms. However, I can't find a niche for it otherwise for the reasons stated above.

Give it 70 base speed and Active Flare Launcher
/thread

Beat me to it -_- :D

[Igncom1]

I guess power creep kinda smudged the Eagle as it used to be the gold standard of cruisers (it even had a decent chance of 1v1ing a heavy cruiser.)

[Grievous69]

What cruisers lol? Eagle in its "prime" only had to compete versus Apogee, Dominator, wait that's it. So basically Eagle was a nice pick then because every other option (2) was slow as an ice cube. Finishing targets off also didn't matter as much then, since your fleet was basically a distraction and you could annihilate the enemy by yourself in a capital with crazy combat skills.

It's a bit harsh calling it power creep when we just kept getting other options. Try to imagine a world where the only high tech frigate is Wolf, suddenly it doesn't look so bad and you might consider it for an end game fleet.

[Igncom1]

Aurora, Falcon, Gryphon, Venture.

And the wolf used to slay, now I never even buy them.

[Grievous69]

I mean I was comparing closely costed ships, if we count all combat cruisers then you could mention the Doom as well.

And even from all of those cruisers, I'm picking Eagle over all but Gryphon (which is the real OP cruiser and not some others).

[Igncom1]

Yeah I've seen what dreams of madmen once did to the ORIGINAL Gryphon. Even now it can lean heavily on the fact that missiles are effectively outside the flux mechanic, so you either win massively, or waste your shots and lose. 

[Plantissue]

How have you guys built your Eagles? I've been using 2 Heavy Autocannons and a Heavy Mauler and a single Ion Cannon as an automatic goto build. It's not amazing, but it isn't nearly as bad as some of you guys are making it out to be. Though it is annoying that the AI insists on firing the heavy mauler and ion cannon unnecessarily. I consider the speed to be closer to 75 than 70, which is better than the Eradicator, though in practice it does mean the AI Eagle does leave itself in vulnerable locations especially when it decides to swing itself to face down a flanking frigate.

I find that its main weapons being right at the front centre means that once its shield has gone down the weapons are disabled shortly afterwards. Not sure how that can be fixed as hardpointed weapons are already tougher than turreted weapons and I do think it would be greatly helpful to the eagle of its medium ballistic mounts had a wider arc like the energy turrets do. Perhaps move the 3 ballistic medium to replace the 3 small energy and place 3 small missile hardpoints to make it more like the Eradicator? But then at that point it is almost a symmetrical but tougher and less offensive normal Eradicator.

[Igncom1]

3 HVDs and 3 Phase Lances do the trick quite often for me. You batter anything smaller then you with the long range kinetics, and then rip their armour away instantly with the Phase Lances, if you catch them.

I'm still trying to figure out just how cursed the 6x antimatter blaster build is, it's a work in progress.

[Plantissue]

I am guessing you are talking about personally piloting the Eagle, for I know the AI would do poorly built like that. Which as always, people should clarify whether they are talking about personally piloting or not.

[Igncom1]

Oh I never pilot, and yes the AI frequently messes up but honestly the whole game is like herding cats anyway.