Turret and Launcher Reference Chart

Edit: An updated version of this chart has been published!

you can find it here

It's useful to be able to recognise the weapons on a ship simply by looking at it - it lets you figure out roughly what someone's fit might be before you actually engage them, and can help you decide the best way to proceed in a fight. Recognising the difference between blasters and railguns, or medium and small guns on a cruiser, is likely to have a significant difference on the range you want to engage at or even whether you want to take the fight at all. Even different calibre guns within the same class can give you an idea of what other modules your opponent might be fitting (for example a rupture with 425mm autocannons will almost always be shield fit, while dual 180mm autocannons suggests a heavy armour tank).

To help with identifying weapons visually, I put together a chart of all the subcapital turret and launcher models. Have a browse through it, and then try looking at a few ships in space and see if you can figure out what they're fitting!

Update: Some people have asked about printing it to put on the wall. If you want to try it, here's a high resolution version which should look much better in print.

Faction Warfare - First Impressions

As some of you might be aware (or at the very least might have guessed based on some of my recent posts), I've spent the last couple of weeks trying out Faction Warfare. I'm not done with it by any means, but I feel like I've seen enough to at least post my initial thoughts.

Based on the current state of play I decided to join the Amarr; I figured that joining the underdogs was likely to present both the greater challenge and a larger number of targets, and so far that's proving to be correct. I also decided to go into FW solo, signing up under my own corp rather than joining one of the established groups - obviously this is going to change my FW experience considerably, but I expect it'll be a better baseline for a new PVPer signing up to FW.

Faction Warfare, LP, and the Metagame

There's an interesting post over at @Gamerchick42 regarding the metagame of FW. While I recommend reading that whole post, I can summarise it with a few basic facts:

• You do not gain any LP for defending a system in FW.
• You do gain LP for capturing a system in FW.
• Purely from an LP perspective, it actually makes sense to allow your opponent to conquer a system rather than defending it (which you receive no LP for) and then capture it again once it's taken (which you do receive LP for), providing you're confident that you can take it back.
• A faction which currently has high warzone control will gain far more isk for a given amount of LP - and thus, a given number of systems taken - than a faction which has lower warzone control.

Susan's conclusion is that it's in the interests of the minmatar militia (which currently has tier four warzone control out of a maximum five) to allow the amarr (who have tier one warzone control) to take systems from them and then to take them back later - this generates large amounts of LP for the minmatar, and while it also gives LP to the amarr their lower warzone control score means that the resulting income is far lower.

On the surface this might read like a reformulation of the old 'we didn't want those systems anyway' argument (and given Susan's recent move towards propaganda-heavy posting I'm sure that's partly the intention), however the logic is sound - if LP is your primary concern, then this strategy would maximise your income.

Let's look at a few possible applications of this. Please bear in mind that I don't personally endorse any of these behaviours, since I believe they would make FW less fun for all involved parties. I do however think they make for an interesting discussion.

Know Your Enemy - Assault Frigates

Assault Ships (more commonly referred to as Assault Frigates to avoid confusion with their larger relatives) are the real heavyweights of the t2 frigate line. In terms of sheer staying power, no other frigate even comes close to this class - with full t2 racial resists and significantly buffed HP, it's not unusual for an assault frigate to tank twice the amount that its t1 counterpart would be able to. This defensive capability is backed up by some of the most impressive damage outputs to be found among all of the frigate classes, making assault ships some of the most challenging smaller ships to fight.