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Sure.
Heck, even my oppinion changed somewhat from time to time in this thread, and even moreso how I expressed myself.

I do seem to recall someone mentioning in some topic how they did I think the very same site you mention, and how it was a lot harder, but they enjoyed it.
Too bad he didn't say how they did it, how many went in, and how none of them is in any way affiliated with CCP or any EVE group positively interested in these changes.

Uh-oh... I'm starting to sound like Pirannha?

I ratted anoms for a few hours today with a grip of sentry carriers and I see approximately ****-all came of tuning the aggro of elite cruisers.

I lost a total of 417 Garde IIs. That's four hundred and seventeen, not a typo.

Pretty much all of them to elite cruisers.

The elite cruisers immediately target a carrier's sentries, all of the elite cruiser target switches are to other sentries, and the damage from elite cruisers is so effective against sentries that they die from focus fire before it's practical to notice and react. That some whack-a-mole bullshit with the clusterfuck of a drone UI would be the only way to manage the aggro (because they seem to respond to nothing else other than the target disappearing) is complete ****.

On the whole this change, even if it didn't exacerbate a dozen different bugs (random split aggro, random aggro on untrackable targets due to the spastic cycling of ewar, and so on) in the drone AI, and wasn't so poorly tuned one wonders about the additive package of the particularly influential brand of gasoline whoever green-lighted this must be huffing, would be a goddamned abomination. But the fact is, it's so broken and buggy and off the charts poorly balanced you should be researching forms of ritual suicide so that you might approach the repentance due for inflicting it in its current form not ill-prepared.

We would like to introduce you all to Tiberizzle. The spergiest of all spergs. Savor it.

So what you're saying is that rats target drones, especially when you keep throwing more at them. Good to know.

Other people would have learned the lesson after 1, 2 or maybe 100 drones.

M8 just wait until your bot provider patches for micromanaging drones

While I wouldn't put it so abrasively as this, and would certainly not go so far as to suggest suicide, or even accuse anyone of huffing various petroleum products, I must agree with this evaluation. This AI change, as things stand, is an enormous nerf to drones, which are (especially conventional drones) barely practical as it is, as a weapon in general, nevermind a primary weapon.

The damage to drones now inevitably incurred, especially hull, is expensive to repair, and the drones themselves may need to be replaced, which is a significant expense if you're running Tech 2 drones. This becomes a real problem when using medium and heavy drones at long range, as they are very big targets, and lack the speed to return before incurring significant damage, or death. On top of this, it becomes difficult to manage drones when doing other things, such as salvaging, or using other weapons, when they may randomly start taking damage without warning.

All in all, the AI improvement seems like yet another monumental nerf to drones, particularly of the conventional type, which are already barely practical. As such, I believe that drones have never been more in need of an overhaul as now. They need a better means of management, first off, perhaps a way to know when drones are getting aggro/taking damage and which are, a way for them to shake, or at least resist taking damage, through evasive measures, or at least a way to pull them more quickly and efficiently than right clicking, as soon as you see they're taking damage, among other things.

In the mean time, perhaps reducing the effectiveness of NPCs against drones, or their affinity for killing them, would be a good temporary measure, to prevent them from being completely useless while further updates are in the works.







And for the record, he already stated he was in a carrier. A carrier can't do anything besides throw drones, they don't have anything else.

It did make the thread vastly more interesting.

Also... 28 PLEX packages for sale for Retribution, so folks can easily replace all those pesky CCP caused losses.

durp

TL;DR

I really wished we could get more interesting missions scripts when we also get patches that make current PvE missions simply harder with no other change.

Long bit:

I'm new (I mention that quite a bit) and overall, I have not minded the _idea_ itself behind any of the changes in the patches, but I see the issues they cause - to me anyway - based on how I have played parts of the game already.

New AI that kills drones more? Well, I don't mind too much, but the issue is not that I now have to deal with a more intelligent AI, but I have to deal with a more intelligent AI that also cheats all the time.

As far as missions, my brain immidiately started thinking of missions with "you are likely to warp in to a spot that will aggro entire room in your face" or say "trigger not well defined, hell might break loose", or "after killing trigger, lots of stuff will spawn right on your hull and headbutt you" or "heavy damp from 150km, good luck targeting anything" or another fav with Damsel in distress, when you blow up the Pleasure Garden, the Smartbomb-like blast wave does NOT Hurt the NPC's, but only you, and there's many more.

If the game dumps my ship smack in the middle of something that can ONLY be survived with a large tank (say room 3 in Worlds Collide, as 3 out of 4 times I'm landed in with full aggro and everything in range) and I've been webbed and scrammed, if now, on top of that, my attempt to just kill two lousy scramming frigs in order to get the hell out means a 50/50 chance the drones die before finishing their job, why would I accept that mission anymore? On the test server I got a CNR to hull attempting to kill those scram frigs so I could warp out.

The new AI isn't really the problem. The problem is the mission script that just puts the ship in pretty impossible odds (tested WC with a Drake rated 660 vs Angels, and they _just_ broke that tank after a full aggro warp-in), the new AI just causes a mess with current missions scripts.

To me, if missions were/had:

* Partial completion triggers, say multiple objectives - some sort of do already, say AA extra room - we could decide how much risk/reward we want, and lower SP players could just complete smaller parts.
* Unpredictable spawns (make Eve survival a LOT less useful for example)
* Lower standing penalty for failures, so we would try anyway rather then cherry-pick missions. We could still make attempts, get partial bounties for effort, but lose extra bonus payouts, and only a little agent standing. This would happen with "unpredictable spawns" as a mission could get unexpected reinforcements, just like a real life battle might. Stronger players might be able to deal with that, and more ISK to them at that, but other players might have to pull out.
* Treat players more as intruders to be turned and kept away from the objective, rather then just something that has to be destroyed at all costs, with some room based timers (so you cant just try and try over a period of hours).
* Allow some slight scalability for extra players on grid, so that bringing mates caused some additional things to appear, I understand that Sleeper sites do that? That way mission stays fun with extra players.

If CCP gave out a basic "EVE MIission scripting primer" and told players, "here, design some missions based on this script mechanics" I reckon we would get some great missions, and PvE might actually attract more new carebears to shoot at.