Saturday, December 11, 2010

Incursion Rocket improvements - An EFT Analysis of my Claw vs Flycatcher fight

So last night I had a run in with a Flycatcher. A while ago I solo'd a flycatcher with a Rifter, so I thought that my Claw would provide for a good fight, but one that I would win. I was wrong. In short, thanks to the rocket boost from Incursion, rockets are now significantly more powerful then before.

Fortunatly my enemy in that fight managed to loose his ship soon afterwords, and the loss was posted to battleclinic.com, so I have his likely fit. Lets have a look:

[Flycatcher, hydra flycatcher]
Ballistic Control System II

Catalyzed Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
Medium Shield Extender II
Invulnerability Field II
Stasis Webifier II
Warp Scrambler II

75mm Gatling Rail II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
75mm Gatling Rail II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Rocket Launcher II, Caldari Navy Thorn Rocket
Rocket Launcher II, Caldari Navy Thorn Rocket
Rocket Launcher II, Caldari Navy Thorn Rocket
Rocket Launcher II, Caldari Navy Thorn Rocket
Rocket Launcher II, Caldari Navy Thorn Rocket
Rocket Launcher II, Caldari Navy Thorn Rocket

Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Warhead Calefaction Catalyst II

That is a nasty little ship! No wonder my Claw had difficulty. Tech II rigs even. Lets feed it into EFT and see what difference the new rocket boost made.

 Here is the image from EFT before the Incursion patch:
Here is the image from EFT after the Incursion patch with the boost to rockets:



As you can see we have gone from a firepower of 225 DPS to 235 DPS. Is that all? Did CCP fail again to provide a meaningful boost. Not quite. The problem with rockets was not their DPS, rather it was the fact that the velocity of the target could significantly affect their damage. In other words, they were least effective against the very same fast frigate sized ships they were targetting. The main change to rockets was a nearly two-fold increase in their explosion velocity, making them very effective against small fast ships like my Claw. Lets have a look.

Here is the damage graph for that fly-catcher before Incursion:
And here is the damage post-Incursion:

There is an increase from 132 DPS to 179 DPS!. That is 35% increase.

Once resistances against armour are taken into account there is a 91 DPS vs 67 DPS. Since my armour repairer can heal about 17 HP per second the net damage is 74 DPS vs 50 DPS. This means that effectively he was able to chew threw my armour buffer 50% faster than before.

So capsuleers beware of rocket Kestrals and Flycatchers. They no longer suck!

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