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[Thaago]

Interesting.  Overall, a 33% increase in base flux dissipation (or about 21% increase in max) over the 0.95a Eagle.

It's 16.6%

It's 16.6% for the 0.95.1a Eagle, but 33% for the 0.95a Eagle.  To be fair, comparing to the previous release Eagle flux stats is a bit odd, but I was just struck by such large back to back flux stat buffs, on top of the coming 20 DP cost. It's gone from typical middle of the pack cruiser flux stats of it's original design to high tech tier flux stats.  I think it had been 525 flux/second since it's inception until the current release, but I only started around 0.7.  But being kind of in the slow but shield tanky slot like the Apogee, it's becoming clear it needs it.

From 0.95.1a patch notes:

Eagle:
Increased flux dissipation to 600 (was: 525)
Increased flux capacity to 11000 (was: 10000)

My point was the 0.95a Eagle (from the prior release) had only 525 flux dissipation (and 10,000 capacity) and we are discussing 700 flux dissipation and 11,000 capacity here, which means the 0.95a Eagle was that severely under tuned compared to other 0.95a ships like the Champion.

I think part of this is also recognizing the major buffs that missiles have gotten with the missiles skill potentially adding new ammo and +50% fire rate, all flux free. The Eagle only has 2 small missile mounts so it fell further behind in damage potential compared to Champion/Aurora/Dominator etc even though its flux got a buff.

Plus the skill system rewarding either ballistic or energy with the 'mastery' skills makes it harder for mixed firepower ships to stack bonuses, and the system expertise skill is ok but not great on the Eagle/Falcon as its just a medium/small speed increase... the updated skill system in general was not very kind to the pair!

[BCS]

I modified the ship_data.csv with new values(20 DP/supply, 700 base flux dissipation) and played around with a monofleet of 10 Eagles. Ten level 6 quadruple elite officers, S-mods, the whole shebang. And the results are... not good. So "not good" in fact that when I pitted said Eagles against a 366k Hegemony bounty, an Eagle died. In two separate attempts. TBH I was surprised when it happened - I didn't expect it to be good but an outright ship loss? For a monofleet of cruisers that is basically unacceptable and should never happen against something as basic as a randomly generated Hegemony bounty.

If we rate ships by three criteria - firepower, tank and mobility - then Eagle brings almost nothing to the table: C-grade firepower, B-grade tank, C-grade mobility. Every other cruiser has something to get ahead. For example Fury may have C-grade firepower, but it has A-grade mobility and a B-grade tank(and people say it's underpowered) Apogee may have D-grade mobility, but it has B-grade firepower and A-grade tank(at 10% less DP) Eradicator has D-grade tank, but B-grade mobility and S-grade firepower. And so on, I'm not making a card game here so don't take these ratings too seriously but you get the overall idea. Hell, even Falcon beats Eagle at this game because while it may have D-grade tank and firepower at least it has A-grade mobility and a substantially lower DP cost - it has its own specialization/niche.

Since Eagle is supposed to NOT have a specialization/niche and be a jack of all trades then the firepower and mobility need to be brought up to B-rank at least. The mobility is simplest because it's just increasing one number, I still say it should be base speed 60(and 90 for Falcon to keep the "Falcon is 2/3 of an Eagle" theme going) A 20% increase is substantial and will go a long way combined with Maneouvering Jets.

The firepower is the tricky one because the problem is not really raw stats but mount configuration. First of all, since Eagle is not very mobile nor it has great tank, you generally want to fit it for long range. But because it's a full-sized cruiser with generous flux dissipation(even in current version of the game with base 600 it's really a lot) you don't want to waste mounts on "budget" weapons like Heavy Mortars or Arbalest Autocannons. So all three forward ballistic mounts will have weapon range of 800(if you fit Heavy Autocannons) or 1000(HVD/Mauler)

But then the question is, what will you put in the three medium energy mounts? If you fit Heavy Autocannons in front then you need 1000 range energy weapons to even match the range of the Heavy Autocannon(and where do you get explosive damage from then?) because the medium mounts are so far back. And if you fit HVD/Maulers then you need 1000 range beams and Advanced Optics hullmod to match the range of HVD/Maulers.

And, well, there are only two options when it comes to 1000 range medium energy (beam) weapons - the Graviton Beam which does almost nothing(and, again, it's a "budget" weapon - something you don't care about on an Eagle) and the Ion Beam. A third option is coming but from what I understand it's going to essentially be a PD weapon for capitals.

I did play with Eagles equipped with two Ion Beams and the results were... disappointing. Yes, you can quite literally "turn off" the entire enemy ship, but then what? In a fleet combat the disabled ship will simply retreat and another one will take its place. Even in the best case scenario where you are slowly grinding the enemy down this creates a fight that lasts stupidly long because you're slowly chewing through all of enemy ships simultaneously, when in reality you want to kill them quickly and one by one. In non-best case scenario the uneven distribution of enemy ships causes them to eventually "break out" through your anemic Eagles and start killing them one by one.

Here's a red hot take: even if you were to increase Eagle's base flux dissipation to 1000 it would not matter and they would still die to that 366k Hegemony bounty. It doesn't matter how much dissipation a ship has if it simply has no weapons capable of taking advantage of it in the first place.

IMO to fix the Eagle while still keeping it Eagle-ish you have to a) boost the base speed and b) do what people suggested long ago and simply swap the position of medium energy and ballistic mounts, i.e. put energy in the front and ballistics in the back. This drastically increases the variety of energy weapons you can put on the ship because you no longer have to worry about range as much, it keeps the mixed weapon types and it stops the ship from becoming a sniper boat(like it kind of does when fit with HVD/Maulers/Advanced Optics beams)

[Grievous69]

Bad test above. Hope I saved the time and effort for someone at least

EDIT: Someone will probably get mad at me without an explanation so have this: Eagle is one of the worst ships in the game to "spam", due to almost non existent missile power and weak finishing potential.

[FooF]

Yeah, I think that’s a bad faith experiment. Eagles aren’t good at taking on things bigger than themselves so a a capital or two will wreck them. You also need to post what the loadouts were because that is a huge part of the debate. If I’m interpreting Alex correctly, there’s no plan to switch the Ballistic and Energy Mounts and the mismatched ranges is a feature not a bug. The Eagle’s layout ain’t changing…

I’m not going to deny that I’d prefer a speed increase over more flux but even at 60 base speed, the Eagle doesn’t have finishing power. Even if it could dart in and out, it doesn’t have a lot of options for dealing damage opportunistically. Lack of missiles is one reason, lack of range on Energies is another.

An indirect buff to the Eagle would be to make High Scatter Amplifier better. The medium Energies are basically limited to Gravitons and Ions at standard Ballistic ranges, or to use them for PD. Phase Lances with 700 range would also help the Eagle a lot.

[Harmful Mechanic]

I, too, am playing around with the proposed changes in a mini-mod, and here's my take:

1) upping base speed to 60 is probably a good idea,
2) controversially... if you want to change a slot? Make the centerline medium Energy a large.

Having a single large Energy slot gives you the option of HIL/Grav Beam or Tach Lance fits. It makes an Autopulse Laser attractive. I can even imagine fits where it wouldn't be completely stupid to use a Plasma Cannon.

This might be too much overlap with the Champion, but I think it feels pretty good. Does it 'fix' the ship? Maybe. It's definitely more varied and fun.

[Hiruma Kai]

This also separates the Eagle from the Falcon somewhat. Honestly, I think the Falcon is fine for its cost. The Eagle gains a premium on flux stats now for the (significant) loss of speed. 75% more flux for 43% more DP isn’t bad. It’s the Champion that now looks relatively anemic, but Ludd knows it doesn’t need a buff!

Playing around with it, it doesn't actually feel that much better than the Falcons in terms of flux.  With actual builds, I often put on max vents for both the Falcon (non-pirate) and Eagle.  Falcons, being cruiser tier, benefit a lot from the fact you can dump 30 OP into vents.

Falcon: 14 DP, 7000 capacity, 400+300=700 dissipation
125 OP - 30 OP (Vents) - 15 OP (ITU) = 80 OP
500 capacity/DP, 50 dissipation/DP, 5.7 OP per DP

Eagle: 20 DP, 11000 capacity, 700+300 = 1000 dissipation
155 OP - 30 OP (Vents) - 15 OP (ITU) = 110 OP
550 capacity/DP, 50 dissipation/DP, 5.5 OP per DP

Eagle has a slight edge in capacity if nothing is spent on capacitors, dead even in flux dissipation at max vents, and behind on free OP assuming a simple ITU build.  And and at base, the Falcon is still significantly faster.

So, assuming a common build type where flux vents are maxed, it's 43% more DP for 43% more flux dissipation, and maybe 37.5% more OP, which doesn't sound nearly as good.  More hullmods favors the Eagle, but then converting them to s-mods favor the Falcons (at a the price of more story points).

If you wanted 75% more flux in actual practice for 43% more DP, then you'd want 925 baseline flux dissipation, going up to 1225 at max vents.  Which kinda sounds high, since that's nearly Odyssey tier flux dissipation.  I suppose it would let you run kinetics and a heavy blaster without a problem though.

[Wyvern]

Hm, for outright weapon mount adjustments... yeah, I think large energy would be too close to the Champion. But maybe a large ballistic in place of the center medium ballistic (and probably the forwardmost small energy - you'd have to have the gun set back into the hull a bit to look right, I think).

Plus, there are very very few ships around right now with large ballistic hardpoints; I think it's just the Dominator and the Mudskipper Mk II?

[Grievous69]

I fully believe Alex made the right change. Eagle suddenly having a large mount would go against its very unique design. If you're so keen on adding large mounts, help the poor high tech cruisers.

Invictus will also have large ballistics on hardpoints.

[intrinsic_parity]

If eagle got a large energy mount, I would personally replace all three medium energy slots with it. Maybe upgrade the center small energy to medium also or something, but just changing one of the mediums to large is not a good idea IMO. Partially because alex determines OP numbers based on mounts (so that would be a hidden OP boost as well), and also because I don't think the eagle can use a large energy and two mediums along with all the other mounts, and I think over-mounted ships are bad design. Honestly, I'm not totally against it, but it feels a bit weird. I think 3x HVD + Tac Lance could be a pretty scary loadout and probably too good for 20DP.

I also am interested the alternative I've seen suggested before of converting some number of medium energy slots in medium synergy slots so that the eagle can wield more missiles firepower.

I do agree that speed is probably the more fundamental issue though. The eagle can either kite with long range ballistics, or press with short range energy weapons, and both of those strategies sort of require sufficient speed to maintain desired range bands. Even if the dissipation improvements make the agressive short range loadouts viable from a flux perspective (I am not sure they are enough), the lack of speed will still make that difficult.

[ForestFighters]

The eagle definitely has the speed and shields right now to do a long-range kite build.
The problem is it is never going to kill anything doing that as it has limited missiles and needs at least 2 ballistics to pressure shields, leaving only 1 ballistic and some beams to do the rest of the damage.
The eagle doesn't have the speed to close in to use its energy weapons after its ballistics have raised the enemy flux, so all it is going to do is EMP and maybe some mauler hits.
... which you could have just done with a Falcon for 6 less DP.

If the Eagle's role is a line holding kiter, the Falcon is always going to be doing about the same but much cheaper. The Falcon also gets to bully smaller ships much easier with its speed.

[Thaago]

Re: the discussion of weaponry above: phase lances are my 'go to' weapon for eagles and non-kiting falcons. They are relatively flux efficient, have great burst, good enough anti-armor (500 shot size effective), double as great anti-fighter/frigate weapons, and can have their range boosted to 800 with advanced optics (and advanced optics boosts the humble PD laser quite significantly!). 3 of them was a little too flux hungry before, but I wonder if with the new flux stats they could handle them?

[intrinsic_parity]

I don't agree that phase lances are reasonably flux efficient. 1.2 flux/damage is very much mediocre at best, and honestly kinda low-key bad, even for an energy weapon. Not to mention soft flux makes it effectively much less efficient against shields (which the AI absolutely loves to fire it into).

I do not mind them as a pure anti armor/hull weapon, but the AI will not use them that way.

[Candesce]

I don't agree that phase lances are reasonably flux efficient. 1.2 flux/damage is very much mediocre at best, and honestly kinda low-key bad, even for an energy weapon.

They do have perfect accuracy. That's not to be dismissed, when it comes to flux efficiency.

Soft flux is a bigger issue, but Phase Lances have enough punch against armor that you can skip out on HE and go pure kinetic with your ballistics.

[Thaago]

I think that when backed by kinetics their soft flux isn't a problem: they have high enough burst that a high flux enemy has no choice but to overload or take the shot on the armor/hull. If the enemy takes the shot and then shuts off weapons to let their flux go down... thats not really a problem in many cases. If they aren't firing then the eagle wins by default.

The main issue is the same as always: speed. When faced with an enemy tough enough to tank a phase lance burst or two, but fast enough to get away cleanly from the Eagle, is when the soft flux matters.

[Edit] In terms of flux efficiency, they are quite efficient for their anti-armor/hull capabilities of 500 shot size. They are far more efficient than the heavy blaster, more efficient than the tachyon lance, just slightly less efficient than the plasma cannon (which has 1.1) and HIL (1.0 with a 2x armor multiplier, but 2.0 vs shields). Compared to the pulse laser (100 shot size, 1.0 f/d) they have more efficient anti-armor performance for any armor over 26, IE for any armor and for any hull where the residual armor is 26 or more -> 500 base armor or higher effectively. A pulse laser hits minimum damage vs 566 armor: ineffective as a weapon vs any heavy destroyer or cruiser grade armor. A phase lance hits minimum vs 2833, and the damage being spread over multiple ticks helps a bit too, making it a moderately effective anti-armor weapon against cruisers and even capitals.

Compared to any HE options they are more efficient vs shields, albeit with the downside of soft flux (but thats what kinetics are for!).

[intrinsic_parity]

My issue with phase lance is not with the armor performance (although the DPS is a little uninspiring). It's with the shield performance, because the AI will auto fire them and firing them into shields is worse for you than the opponent (builds up more flux in your own ship than the enemy). It's fine if you are bullying weaker ships with less capacity, but not for 'punching up'. If the AI just treated them as a strike weapon instead of a generalist weapon, I would be much happier using them.