On the Scylla upcomming balance changes

Upcoming balance stuff

So CCP recently posted a dev blog outlining the upcoming balance changes for Scylla. You can find it here: http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/balance-changes-coming-in-scylla/

The tl;dr version of it is: Ishtar nerf, Skynet kill, T3 hp nerf, med rail nerf.

Whats happening?

First up is the Ishtar. CCP decided to split the heavy drone damage bonus and the sentry damage bonus. Giving the Ishtar a 5%/lvl damage bonus for sentries instead of a 10%/lvl. In reality this means that you go from 700 dps to 580 dps with Garde IIs for example. There is nothing here about the other problems the ishtar have such has having insane fitting space because you don't need or fit guns. Or being super hard to catch because you can either fit a oversized afterburner or many neuts in the high slots. All in all it's a good start and will def do its job to make sure the ship looks balanced on the damage dealt graphs...

After that we have the T3 Cruiser hp nerfs. Tengu is getting 5%/level of hp instead of 10% and the Proteus and Legion will get 7.5% / level. There are also some super small changes to sig resolution that most likely wont have as big of an impact. The increased buffer for the active tanked subs is really nice and I like that change a lot. It's not often we see active tanked ships used on the battlefield anymore apart from the usual ancillary tanked stuff I guess. I don't even know what to say about the passive regeneration bonus for Tengus I guess the carebears gotta have something. 

I do not think this is enough at all. The Ehp to dps ratio of t3 cruisers is currently insane. They also scale incredible with links and I honestly do not think its ok for a cruiser to tank more then a battleship while having less sig then a destroyer and aligning like a destroyer. With a tiny bit of "pimp" (deadspace resistance hardeners are not even expensive these days). You'll easily hit 200k ehp and I've seen fits approach 500k ehp for a cruiser. If you want a super tanky medium weapons platform I'd rather see command ships. I also think that the loki should have gotten some ehp nerfs with the others. While the ship isn't hitting the 500k ehp of proteuses or tengus it can still get over 200k ehp. It is more of a support ship though and uses a inferior weapons platform so who knows maybe Lokis will rise or not. I will hold on with more extreme indepth shit here because ccp said they are working on reworking all the subsystems and are obviously not done.

Skynet is being removed... Oh boy I think you already knew how happy I am about this. I read the eveo forums and see the hordes of people that I see skynetting every day (CALLOUT: DARKNESS. alliance you all suck). Using a Nyx to farm havens with a Thanatos is way to much easy mode. I definitely agree with CCPs choice of removing assigning. I'm not sure removing warp drives will be a good thing though. I thought it was when we first got shown the things since right now a method of handling skynet is to trap fighters in long warps. But then I read a bit on Reddit and forums and I kinda agree with the fact that removing warping fighters remove some flavor. I would love scrams or points to stop them from warping though so you can get some kills. Or maybe that's why they got a scan res nerf because fighters fit stabs now :). I've already posted a blog post about Skynet and I am happy that ccp understood that this gameplay is not really good for the health of the game. Read more here: http://gorsking.blogspot.se/2015/02/fuck-skynet.html

For the rail nerf.

The dev blog says this "rails show a pretty significant advantage in damage done over beams, arties and heavy missiles, as you can see below:"

This graph shows the popularity of the different long range weapon types in the game. You can see the fall of hmls after they got removed from the game and the rise of rails as they got buffed a bit. You might wonder why beams are not doing more damage in pvp. I also used to wonder that beams are extremely strong at the moment then I realized that there are not many good platforms that use beams and there are many ships that can overlap the range of beams using pulses + scorch. Especially at the medium sized level where it really only is the Legion, Phantasm and Absolution. Compared to say Rails who have good platforms even at t1 ship level with the Moa and Thorax. Both contributing highly to the usage and this making the weapon seem like it is doing more damage in pvp because its better when its in reality just easier to get on cheaper ships. With that said I think the rail nerf probably was a bit necessary. I will need some testing here for sure before I can yay or nay it. It definitely helps artillery a bit. A weapons class I haven't talked much about.

Medium arties could find its way back with the general t3 nerfs. Arty Lokis could be a thing. I've already flown arty Rutpures and Arty Cynabal is probably one of my favorite ships to fly at the moment. The Muninn probably still needs another mid. The problem with arties is that on the medium sized level their range isn't that great and the dps isn't that great that you want to stay far away. It is pretty badass when you one shot a approaching interceptor though :p

Let's move on to the thing that triggered me to write this blogpost and the thing I saved for the last.

The tiny text about Battleships and Battlecruisers. Let's split this up for BC and BS since both have some separate problems and some don't have anything to do in the game at the moment.

Here is the Graph CCP posted for starters.

Battleships

I'll start with the battleships since I think they are the easiest to comment about. CCPs only argument for these ships being fine is currently a graph showing the damage dealt for many of these battleships. Looking at the graph we see a clear over representation of Caldari. I wonder why... Oh that's right Cruise Ravens is a actual fleet comp that nc. uses. I don't know how effective they feel it is but we have one major alliance using it as a fleet concept bumping the damage way up. There is also the little problem where a battleship does 2-3 times more damage then a cruiser. But let's not waste all the graph talk for battleships we need some for battlecruisers as well.

Battleships today are plagued by low warpspeeds and slow align. They are individually strong ships though and every battleship is able to bring a lot of dps to the field and use large weapons for some really good ranges. The warpspeed problem is mostly countered by warpspeed rigs. That's the nice part with battleships they are still going to be decently tanky and fit all the strong utility things like heavy neuts or smartbombs with one or two hyperspatial rigs increasing their warpspeed to something manageable. A great change CCP made for the battleships is the -50% cap for the mwd. It really helped diversify some battleship fits and the heavy cap injector while really good isn't that mandatory anymore and it opens up for MJDs, random ewar like painters or just straight up more tank.

Every time a battleship enters the field you have to make a lot of new tactical choices. First off you need to decide if its worth it or not to go within point range. Battleships be able to hit this far most of the time and you go into the heavy neut range something that will end bad if you stay for to long. The second choice and a bit more active one is to watch out for the MJD effect and go in for scram if you want to actually hold your target at all. 

Battleships have clear weaknesses and are with few exceptions really weak to frigs. They are large and slow and easily kept down with Ewar as well. In general more agile ships and better pilots will be able to drift in and out of the dangerzone where battleships do damage to slowly take them down.

In general I think battleships are in a OK spot. Pirate battleships are actually in a great spot in some cases and I would def recommend everyone to get a Machariel they are awesome!

Battlecruisers...

I don't even know where to start. Like medium autocannons I ask what is the point of these ships at the moment? Especially the combat battlecruisers. I honestly don't think a warp speed change is everything that's needed here. But let's start with that. I feel like battlecruisers don't have the luxury that battleship have with fitting warpspeed rigs at all. They neither have the fitting or can actually sacrifice two or even one rig slot.

I know this is probably a tiny tiny buff for starters for warpspeed but I would want the battlecruiser warpspeed to be upped to 2.7 so there is a nice even 10% decrease in warpspeed for both destroyers and bcs. It might seem minor but I think everyone who has done pvp knows what huge difference even half a second might make when warping.

Something that certainly didn't help was overnerfing the cane and drake. These ships were overused yes but really the drake fleets was never good. They were easy to fly and the goon perma mwd drake was a perfect example of this you basically had 1 button to push. There really was no need for CCP to remove the drake from the game along with heavy missile launchers just because a lot of people used them. Mostly because they are easy to use.

The thing battlecruisers and destroyer have over the normal ship classes is a role bonus. The destroyer have a actual useful rolebonus that helps them in combat. Battlecruisers have some shit that helps them fit links. This is a old dream that obviously doesn't work anymore. Fitting links on a bc is a relic of old we have better things now. I would really like to see something better here like a straight up damage bonus.

Something another player Prometheus Exenthal has suggested is to give battlecruisers a new special microwarp drive module that allows them to both mwd and mjd around. While this is a cool idea im not sure I like it as it will further make long points useless. And it doesn't solve the problem where battlecruisers don't actually project damage on the field or bring anything useful on the field while being super slow. I mean a Raven is faster then a Drake at the moment...

The blog ended with what they are going for next. Bombers (season 2), Supers, ECM and missiles were listed so who knows maybe we will finally see missiles actually be good or most likely just see light missiles get nerfed because they are used a lot in pvp.  Apparently they want to shake up the combat meta but I don't see how any of this will change the speedy small meta.

This post probably went a bit to bitter at the end but I got triggered hard by the bs/bc stuff. I don't think I can even say how happy I am that ccp killed skynet. They have my permission to do some "bad" things to the game now :p

Live Love Hate Links

Links

A lot of people will probably hate me for this or try to call me out for being a hypocrite or some shit because they think I am one of the biggest abusers of links. The truth is that I don't even have a link alt anymore. I've never even liked the link mechanic as it provides way to much of a hidden advantage. I feel like they provide a unnecessary barrier of entry for many players who are looking into pvping in certain parts of space.

I think that it is creating a unhealthy system where people feel like they must have a link alt in order to compete. The whole practice of using links have become more and more risk free and we already see 100mn mwd claymores/sleipnirs as link platforms providing strong boosts while moving at 7k m/s.

Another thing I don't like with links is how they made ranges shorter in eve. By increasing the speed of every single ship and web ranges they helped put medium autocannons in a really bad spot because they can't really do damage without being in linked heated web range.

Stats

This is what the different links provide. Percentage bonuses (t3/command ship)

Armor links
Faster local and remote repair cycles (24.75% / 25.875%)
More armor resistance (24.75% / 25.875%)
Less cap need for local and remote armor repairs (24.75% / 25.875%)

Skirmish links
Less signature radius 33%  / 34.5%
More speed 28.875% / 30.188%
Longer point and web range 33% / 34.5%

Info links
Makes pretty much every ewar more powerful
More range on ewar modules
More lockrange and Eccm strength

Shield links
Faster local and remote shield repair cycles (24.75% / 25.875%)
More shield resistance (24.75% / 25.875%)
Less cap for Local and remote shield repairs (24.75% / 25.875%)

fc what shall we do?

There are many solutions to the abusing of links suggested from many people. Let's go over some of the more commonly suggested ones.

1. Make links easier to probe down, Give links aggro timer and stop eccm from helping with the unprobability and lock them down while linking

This will kind of keep links as they are right now. Giving links a aggro timer is something I think ccp should have done a long time ago. There is simply no way you are killing a command ship linking from a station. However this won't fix most of the problems I have with links such as the fact that they are hidden until the fight starts. Locking links down could be a interesting choice. Derth Ramir suggested that activating links should launch a bubble around you and you need to stay within to apply your link bonuses. This could be pretty awesome if we do something about needing to have virtues to even probe them down.

2. Remove links refund sp accept this horrible misstake

I don't really like removing content thats heavily (ab)used. While ccp has shown that they can and will remove stuff that's not used I am not convinced that this is the right way with links. I'd rather not remove something that could add great depth to battles and is actually a decent force multiplier.

3. Put links on grid

This is the final and most suggested thing and the one I support the most with some modifications. The general cries from anyone doing solo/small gang pvp is that blobs will only be able to have links instead of both sides. This is kind of true at the moment since links often require a dedicated ship to provide links from that can not really participate in actual pvp. On the other hand this is one of the problem with the min / maxers of eve that they must have a perfect 6 link tengu with a mind link because nothing else is good enough. The problem here is how eve handles grids and they might split up randomly or your link alt might just go off grid especially in bigger fights.

In order to put links on grid I really feel like we would need more ships to be able to provide links on grid. A T2 destroyer for links for example would be really cool. I also feel like you shouldn't be so reliant on the mindlink implants and I wouldn't mind removing those and I can not understand why ccp decided to add faction versions.

Some other suggestions I have read was moving the point range link to info links instead of skirmish. I feel like this could be a bit interesting but like I said it wouldn't be nearly as effective with the faction mindlinks.

I feel like many smaller gang corps have grown dependent on links and feel like they deserve to be able to beat fleets 5 times their size. I know for a fact that these groups wont attack a bigger fleet that can use its numbers and a actual fleet comp to 100% hardcounter you. No matter how good you are at piloting numbers should always be one of the things ccp looks at for balancing. One pilot = one ship. And this is a MMO after all.

In an ideal world I think that those of us who chooses to go solo or super small gang pvp (<5 ppl) does it for the rush for doing something that's harder where every single mistake or fuck up could mean that your entire fleet is dead. Not having a helping hand letting your ship stay at a spot where you are safe from the enemy fleet.

AutoCannons....

Autocannons

What are the uses for their role? Historically autocannons was able to project damage far out and on hulls that are fast and able to control the fight but also be fragile. They used to have a bigger gap versus blasters for range and be more competitive with scorch on strong platforms such as the cane and Vagabond/Cynabal. Since the tiericide these platforms are much less competitive because of the buffs on other weapon systems and ships.
The speed on some Minmatar ships is still really fast compared to competition but they don't do a good job of being able to really capitalize off that speed because of applied damage / tank. The distances in eve has become smaller as ships are balanced to be faster and faster and because the point/scram range have increased due to interceptors, recons, ships like the Orthrus and Skirmish links you need to stay further away then 24 km these days to really be able to kite well. 

Ammo choices

The autocannons have selectable damage but it only applies to faction ammo, there are only two types of faction ammo used. The Phased plasma, EMP, Fusion group and the rarely used Depleted uranium/Titanium sabot group that increase tracking (although it has seen some increase with the Svipul. Maybe people are catching on that dps isn't everything. The tracking ammo don't offer a very broad damage selection and are actually both fairly similar. The high damage group have a significant drawback to optimal based hulls because they all give -50% optimal. The optimal bonus penalty doesn't hurt autocannons much because they are mostly based on falloff. The rest of the ammo types are rarely ever used and could easily be removed/balanced. You also can't take advantage of ammo selection nearly as well because of the long reload time.

Locus vs Ambit rigs

Currently you have two different rigs to increase range on weapons. The Locus and the Ambit rigs. Right now both give 15/20% to optimal/falloff. Take in mind that you need more falloff then optimal if you want to project damage well. Since damage drops off very rapidly at longer ranges. After taking a hard hit from the tracking enhancer nerf range rigs were left unchanged. A T2 locus rig gives 20% optimal, that's more then a officer tracking computer. Locus rigs is one of the reason lasers are so good at projecting damage and I am actually really surprised to not see them higher on the damage done in pvp graphs that ccp has shown me. That might be because of how laser ships don't really fit in with todays meta game despite having one of the strongest weapon systems in the game. But that's a topic for another blog post.

Where are autocannons good and where should they be good?

Autocannons currently do more damage the closer you are due to how fast damage drops off in falloff. This creates a problem where the only spot where medium autocannons out damage say lasers is within 10km and by then you in scram web range where blasters do more damage. For a Omen vs Rupture (standard fits) with scorch/barrage you start winning DPS at about 6.5km and don't lose any damage from range until 20km where the Rupture is only doing 86 DPS. The Omen also has a bigger drone bay and can take better advantage of locus rigs. In a perfect world It would be nice if the rupture could take advantage until around 10km or so as opposed to falling off heavily ~30% of the way through. Pulses can also switch damage to close range ammo if the fight gets faster losing a few cycles vs the rupture that has to wait 11-13 seconds to change ammo. This gives lasers a huge flexibility and better applied damage up time.

The new buff to autocannon falloff will help a bit with projection but the raw damage is still lacking. I think that the buff will be great for large autocannon platforms such as the Machariel and Tornado. These ships have extremely strong falloff bonuses ontop of being able to fit large autocannons. It's only when you go up to large autocannons you end up with a respectable enough range to skirmish. For medium hulls there really are no great ships that can kite. You have the Cynabal and Vagabond I guess and I have to agree the Cynabal is decently usefull and extremly fun to fly but it's just not up to par with the other pirate cruisers or even kite faction cruisers. The dps is just so bad at longer ranges.


(Green = Harbinger, Red = Barrage, Blue = EMP)
Here is another graph for you guys showing the problem. The hurricane starts out damaging a harbinger at under web scram range. The problem is that if you are within this range blasters outshine you hard. and really 

Optimal vs Falloff bonus

Giving a Minmatar ship a optimal bonus is useless for half of the projectile weapons and that limits the use of the ship. A falloff bonus on the other hand is still useful on ships that fit artillery. This is one of the biggest problem with the Jaguar that having three guns and a optimal range bonus isn't up to par compared to other AFs. I don't feel the fittings, bonuses and slot layout synergize very well on this ship. And then you need to keep in mind that the most popular ammo type for auto cannons have a optimal range penalty but no falloff penalty. This gives falloff bonused ships an advantage when using Emp/PP/Fusion. 

Solutions?

I think that boosting the raw damage on autocannons and rebalancing the ammo choices would be a good thing for autocannons. The falloff buff is a nice first step for projection but they are still going to lack damage at range. Fixing some platforms such as the Jaguar and Muninn(+1mid pls) would also work. I think people overvalue the ability to select damage a lot. Almost all ships will plug their resistance hole and Barrage is usually the best choice. Although ccp did a great job with the ac buff but I don't agree that barrage needed a range nerf. Another good thing to look at is the speed creep and making sure ships can actually take advantage of their windows of opportunity where your damage is at a peak. 

And who knows maybe this is just be me being bad and nostalgic wanting to be able to kite with my hurricane again?

And to end it with a joke. Laser hurricane vs AC hurricane dps at point range

Skynet

Skynet

I do not know why and I do not care why Assigned fighters from a safe spot is called skynet. All I do care about is how overpowered the mechanic of assigned fighters is currently. Let's go back in time and see why this has become a problem.

This dev blog was released http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/giving-drones-an-assist/ around the time that the Kronos patch was released. 

These few lines changed fighters from worthless into usable and borderline overpowered mode. Usage of drone modules on a carrier usually comes with a weakness as they take up important tank slots making your carrier very vulnerable on grid if you want to really max your drones. This is where skynet comes. Using the assign fighters mechanic a carrier is able to sit on the edge of a force field or even at a pos with the shields down ready to put them up if you enter the danger zone. This usage provides extreme power at little to 0 risk. 

Mechanics

Lets go into a bit about the drone assign mechanic. Using max number of drone control unit modules in your highslot allows each carrier or super carrier to field max 15 fighters. Assigning fighters replace your drones with the fighters from the carrier and lets you use them as your normal drones. Fighters are able to follow ship in warp and will warp from your carrier to the guy you are assigning to. You can have a max of 5 fighters assigned per pilot (Guardian Vexors and carriers/supers can have more). This means that you need a total of 3 guys to use the full power of assigned fighters. 

A interesting bug at the moment is the fact that fighters will not aggro the guy using them. The carrier who assigns the drones is the one who gets aggression. Using this allow for some pretty good gate camps using bubbles to catch people while you kill stuff with fighters jumping out in case of any danger.

The warp drive on fighters is actually not really a good thing if you want to max your damage output (or do any damage at all). One of the ways to defeat fighters is to try and trap them in a long warp where they are useless. Cycling pings when the fighters are approaching you or even yellow box you is also a way to defeat them. Killing them is technically possible as they are actually not very cheap. A single Thanatos can carry 20 fighters and a Nyx can carry 35 fighters. You have to watch out here though because they are a really dangerous weapon system and a single mistake could mean that your ship is volleyed.

Stats

Most assigned fighter fits run 5 drone control units in the highslots allowing the max number of drones. The lowslots are usually reserved for 3-4 drone damage amplifiers. a damage control and/or some omnidirectional tracking enhancers for extra tracking and range. The mid slots are usually a combo of omnidirectional tracking links, drone navigation computers and sometimes a prop mod.

The first three of these are fairly simple they provide more damage. More Speed. More tracking and both optimal and falloff.

The last module, the Omnidirectional tracking link. This module is active compared to the others that are passive and it uses scripts to buff either the tracking or range by 100% while removing the one you don't script. This is mostly used with tracking scripts with skynet fits since they don't really need links. A single omni provides 30% tracking to all fighters with the right script in. 

This is the skynet thanatos we are going to use in our example for how much these modules do for our fighters and how strong they become using all of these.

As you can see all the fighters do the same dps per 5 drones. Whats different is the volley, speed, tracking and damage profile. Tracking is what really stands out here. These fighters will track frigs easily and will easily remove entire fleets especially if your assigning ship has some webs and painters. Another thing that's really overpowered with these is the speed. This is not even the maximum speed these are able to reach. By changing the drone nav comps you can get Einherjis to almost hit 7k m/s. 

It's worth noting that the dps and volley number is per ship you assign to. A single carrier can provide fighters to 3 players increasing the dps on Einherjis to 3334 with a 20k volley for example. 

Now lets touch a subject I haven't talked about yet. Supercarriers assigning drones. These massive ships have a insane price tag with them but they have ewar immunity allowing them to easily mwd into a pos shield if you are sitting on the edge of it. Supercarriers have another type of fighter called Fighter Bomber. These are different from fighters in that they shoot missiles that use the missile damage formula instead of the damage formula. While Fighter bombers benefit from drone damage modules like any other drone. They get nothing from Omni directionals and this means that they will never be as great as normal fighters for killing smaller stuff. Fortunately for us supers can use Fighters as well and they can pack way more of them and they get a nice 100% bonus to damage. 15 super Templars will be able to dish out 6668 dps with 40k volleys for example and that's using t2 drone damage amps.

When you see fighters in space there is no way of knowing if they are super carrier or normal carrier fighters unless you manage to get a dscan and even then it's not certain. The difference between getting one shotted from a skynet Nyx and taking no damage from a ratting Thanatos is pretty big and not a gamble you want to take.

Tackling a ratting Thanatos only to find out the hard way that he has Nyx fighters

Field testing

In order to fully understand how broken this is and to come up with good ways to fix it, I had to try it out. I had to join the dark side and learn more. My alliance mates have a couple of carriers setup in a lowsec system and we all got into fast tackle and Hyenas in order to hold our targets down. The results were although hilarious obviously broken.

http://yoloswag.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=26557096

This is just one of many similar battle reports where entire fleets and people passing by got removed by 10k dps and 60k volleys. It felt really unfair because we had such a extreme power at a place where it was 100% safe.

Final thoughts

I think that Skynet as a mechanic has to go. It provides a unfair advantage at no risk at all. Such a power should be associated with a lot of risk. A quick and simple fix that would help would be to remove the warp drives from fighters entirely while keeping the assign mechanic. This way you won't be able to project damage from another grid and it's also a buff since trapping fighters in long warp will no longer be a thing. There will be some tears from capital pilots and people using assigned fighters to rat with but all I can say is fuck em. I don't want to keep a mechanic that's not counter able other then not fighting and ruins the fun in pvp with Nyx alpha strikes from 30 au away. Besides it's not like they weren't able to rat before the fighter buff.

Svipul Theorycrafting yo

So this is my first blog post and I figured I might as well write about the Svipul that was released yesterday. The Svipul is a new Tactical destroyer. Like the Confessor that was released for the Amarr it has 3 different modes. Defensive, Sharpshooter and Propulsion mode. Having different modes gives you the ability to change your ship depending on the situation. Mode swapping creates a interesting way to increase the skill cap and a good pilot will not stay in one mode all the time. Let's go over the stats:

• 10% damage 
• 10% optimal range
• 5% heat reduction
• 95% less cpu on probe launchers

      DEFENSIVE MODE

• 33% shield resistance
• 33% armor resistance
• 66% MWD sig reduction

     PROPULSION MODE

• 66% Velocity bonus
• 33% Agility bonus

     SHARPSHOOTER MODE

• 33% Projectile Tracking bonus
• 100% Scan resolution
• 100% Targeting range
• 100% Sensor strength

The first thing here that sticks out is that this ship gets a optimal range bonus while being a projectile weapon platform. This bonus while not bad is not really optimal either. A 200mm auto cannon have a base of 1.5km optimal when loaded. On this ship a 200mm ac will have 2.3 km optimal. Not really a whole lot. 

This range will be even further reduced if you plan on using one of the major ammo types used for auto cannons. EMP, Fusion and Phased plasma all give a -50% optimal bonus. Making our auto cannons have 1.1km optimal. Something that many people don't even care about usually with auto cannons but here it's directly harming our ships bonus by reducing it. However a optimal bonus will work great with artillery. Boosting a 250mm arty to 9.1+11 with EMP or a 280mm arty to 11+11km. 

Given that the ship has a optimal bonus I would most likely opt for carrying Depleted Uranium and Titanium Sabot as extra/default ammo for the artillery versions of this ship. Both these ammo types give no penalty to optimal range and they offer 20% increased tracking while lowering the dps a bit.

So in short a optimal range bonus doesn't really give much for auto cannons but it will work really good with artillery and you should look into the non standard ammo types such as Titanium Sabot and Depleted Uranium.

Defensive mode

33% Shield and Armor resistance

66% MWD sig reduction. 

This is a extremely strong mode for auto cannon versions of this ship that brawl. Defensive mode allows this ship to have around 7k effective hp with a damage control alone. Giving both shield and armor will allow for some cool things like dual tanked versions of this ship. I think that one of the standard fits will be a ancillary shield booster and armor repairer version. 

The mwd sig bonus is nice but most of the time these will be artillery fitted and even with a tracking bonus you are in a bad spot if someone gets a orbit 500 + scram web on you. I would probably be more likely to fit a 10mn Afterburner like so many Confessors do. The ship has the fitting for it and the 10mn ab will make the ship way more forgiving letting you disengage from fights going bad. Another advantage with the 10mn ab is that you are always going to be able to pull range to a spot where your guns can track way better.

Propulsion mode

66% Velocity bonus
33% Agility bonus

Propulsion mode gives our ship a massive 66% speed bonus. Boosting a 10mn afterburner up to 2600 m/s (3700 m/s heated) or a 1mn mwd up to 2900 m/s (4100 m/s heated). This is one of the best modes for general kiteing. Since the ship doesn't have the range bonus tied in with Sharpshooter mode. The agility part is really helpful for Svipul fits that use a over sized prop mod.  Using this mode and a 10mn ab on the Svipul lets you bring your align time down to around 10 seconds. This is about as fast as a t1 cruiser.

Another interesting thing about propulsion mode is that swapping from it to another mode lowers your maximum velocity. Clever use of mode swapping will allow your Svipul to instantly warp away if you swap from speed mode to any other mode after initiating warp. The confessor is also able to use the same trick.

Sharpshooter mode

33% Projectile Tracking bonus
100% Scan resolution
100% Targeting range
100% Sensor strength

Let's start with the more simple bonuses this mode gives.
100% scan res is a great bonus and makes this mode a good mode to be in for the first part of a fight giving you a chance to get one or even two extra volleys in before you are locked. People fighting in faction warfare plexes would want to use this first for example.

100% Targeting range. This isn't such a great bonus since the ship already has 50km lock range and due to how projectiles work with falloff you don't really want to be super far away anyway. It might have some rare case uses where you are damped down but really most of the time damps are so strong it's not even going to matter.

100% sensor strength. This bonus is actually really strong. This mode bumps the ladar strength up to 26.4. For comparison a Vagabond only has 25 sensor strength. Being able to fight ecm ships is always nice and arty variants of this ship might be able to snipe out Griffins and Kitsunes really fast.

And finally the big bonus in sharpshooter: 33% tracking. I actually don't think this is a super useful bonus. The ship has 4 mids and most of the time a 10mn ab letting you pilot your way to increased tracking. Having 4 mids allow things like 10mn ab + dual web + long point and under dual web anything will track unless you are tracking disrupted to shit.

Stats

Let's go over some of the other things the confessor have.

This is a unfitted Svipul in Defensive mode. As you can see it has a a lot of fittings. Almost a 100pg will make it really easy to fit especially if you opt for auto cannons instead of arties. The base ehp is a bit higher then most assault frigs in defensive mode but actually lower in the other modes. The ship has a generous locking range that is more then enough. 

Fits

The part you have all been waiting for I guess. I have over 10 different fits saved up in eft and I will share some of the ones I think will be standard or variations of will be standard. In general I think the theme will be oversized ab and dual tanks. MWD versions will still be flyable and I think a mwd arty version will work good. 

(all fits are unlinked and I tried to keep the modules to max t2 or cheap faction)

[Svipul, DUAL TANK ACS 10MN AB]

Small Ancillary Armor Repairer, Nanite Repair Paste

Gyrostabilizer II

Gyrostabilizer II

Damage Control II 

Experimental 10MN Afterburner I

Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I

Medium Ancillary Shield Booster, Navy Cap Booster 50

Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I 

200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S

200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S

200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S

[empty high slot]

200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S

200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S

200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S 

Small Anti-Kinetic Screen Reinforcer II

Small Auxiliary Nano Pump II

Small Polycarbon Engine Housing II

This is a fairly standard brawl fit utilizing both a ancillary shield booster and armor repairer. This fit tanks around 200 dps in both armor and shield. You have the full scram + web tackle and will be able to close range quickly with a oversized afterburner. This ship heats over 420 dps and I feel its a good mix between tank and dps. The rigs are as always personal preference. I feel like there is no best way of rigging a ship. Sometimes you want more tank sometimes you want more dps or range. On this ship I went with more tank and some agility for the afterburner.

Here is a microwarp drive version of the same fit:

[Svipul, PLATE DUAL TANK]
Damage Control II
Gyrostabilizer II
400mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Small Ancillary Armor Repairer, Nanite Repair Paste 

Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Medium Ancillary Shield Booster, Navy Cap Booster 50
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I 

200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
Rocket Launcher II, Caldari Navy Mjolnir Rocket 

Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Projectile Burst Aerator I

By skipping the oversized ab and going to a normal micro warp drive we free up a ton of powergrid. The grid is used for additional tank giving this ship a insane 11k buffer on top of the dual active tank. You will easily be able to get in a reload or two on your reppers with this fit. The dps is a tiny bit lower but a rocket launcher tries to compensate a bit. You will be able to heat up to 412 dps just a tiny bit short of 420 dps. There is some flexibility with the rigs here as well some people might go dual ambit rigs for even more auto cannon range helping you against scram kiters.

Thats it for the auto cannon fits. Let's go in to the artillery versions. Arties will be able to fully utilize the optimal bonus and provide great alpha strike.

[Svipul, 250mm ARTY 10MN SAAR DUAL WEB]
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Damage Control II
Small Ancillary Armor Repairer, Nanite Repair Paste 

Experimental 10MN Afterburner I
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
Warp Disruptor II 

250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
[empty high slot]
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S 

Small Ancillary Current Router II
Small Polycarbon Engine Housing II
Small Projectile Locus Coordinator I

This is like a tankier version of a 10mn ab thrasher that has dual web. You will pretty much destroy any frig in the game 1v1 with this. There is no way of any brawl ship in the same class getting close to this without dying. As soon as you enter dual web range the arties will get perfect tracking more or less and even if you get scrammed its not a problem since you have a oversized afterburner. You can heat to 338 dps with a 1432 volley damage on it using emp. For those of us who wants to kite a bit more we can swap into depleted uranium and get a tracking bonus as well as increasing our range to 21+11 km. Let's go into fleet fits a bit more. While I don't think the Svipul will be as used for larger kite fleets as the Confessor it's still going to be a bit useful.

[Svipul, MWD ARTIES]
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Internal Force Field Array I
Vigor Compact Micro Auxiliary Power Core 

Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
Medium Azeotropic Ward Salubrity I
Dread Guristas Warp Disruptor
'Langour' Drive Disruptor I 

280mm Howitzer Artillery II, Republic Fleet EMP S
280mm Howitzer Artillery II, Republic Fleet EMP S
280mm Howitzer Artillery II, Republic Fleet EMP S
Expanded Probe Launcher II, Core Scanner Probe I /OFFLINE
280mm Howitzer Artillery II, Republic Fleet EMP S
280mm Howitzer Artillery II, Republic Fleet EMP S
280mm Howitzer Artillery II, Republic Fleet EMP S 

Small Projectile Locus Coordinator II
Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Projectile Locus Coordinator II

This fit is extremly tight on CPU but it allows for a full rack of 280mm arties. You do have to make a lot of sacrifices with low meta modules and I would probably just go all out and buy a republic fleet warp disruptor or a 3% cpu in order to be able to make it a bit better. The arties will get 32km optimal with depleted uranium and 211 dps with 1323 volley. Downgrading to 250mm will lose you a bit of range but the increased fitting will allow for a 10mn ab.

[Svipul, 250mm 10MN]
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Small Ancillary Armor Repairer, Nanite Repair Paste
Internal Force Field Array I 

Experimental 10MN Afterburner I
Dread Guristas Warp Disruptor
Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I 

250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, Republic Fleet Depleted Uranium S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, Republic Fleet Depleted Uranium S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, Republic Fleet Depleted Uranium S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, Republic Fleet Depleted Uranium S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, Republic Fleet Depleted Uranium S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, Republic Fleet Depleted Uranium S
[empty high slot] 

Small Ancillary Current Router II
Small Projectile Locus Coordinator II
Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I

Like I said I don't feel that the long point kite Svipuls will hold up against a confessor at all while doing super long range kiting. I think they are way better at brawling and will out brawl any frig or destroyer in eve.  This should be able to handle swarms of interceptors or other fast frigs though given the good tracking and range.

Ultraviolet vs Depleted Uranium

Multifreq vs EMP

Aurora vs Depleted uranium

Here are some dps graphs of the confessor vs the svipul shooting different ammo at a untanked target. It is difficult comparing these two since the Confessor is able to instantly swap ammo and range. The benefit a kiting svipul has over a Confessor is not being forced into sharpshooter mode for extra range but even then I feel like the confessor is the clear winner here for kiting t3 destroyers. 

There are many variations and fits I haven't gone over and I feel like the svipul is a really versatile ship much more so then the Confessor. I have found over 10 fits that actually could work and there are fits I haven't gone over here that will be able to fill a role. You can for example fit a 10mn mwd and have enough agility to actually be able to keep a point at stuff while going 10k m/s. Or you can do stuff like dual armor tank with cap booster or dual masb tanks. There is even some fun passive regen fits you can do with purger rigs and stuff.


So this was my first blog post I will probably write more theorycrafting posts, General CSM posts and battle reports here.