Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Megathrone changes are just great. Dont do anyhting more to it. PPL are just plain stupid and dont understand a thing about the game except to moan.

U get the same damn tank: 2 plates, 2 eanm, 1DC
U get 1 less low for a mag stab but u damn morons now have a rof bonus which is >>> pure dmg.
U lose a bit of dps in -25 drone bay but u get:
- Faster
- Agile
- A bit better cap situation
- And lower signature

And on top of everything u get the damn mid slot as a bonus! Better shield version or just stick 1 more damn web into it.

Hyperion and Domi are needed to be looked at a bit.

Imo Hyperion is tricky. There are 2 options imo:
- 1 less highslot with 5% of rof bonus and + 1 lowslot
- or just boost his default stats a bit. Some more armor, drone bw, speed and agility

Gallente needs some large scale battle BS and imo the new Domi can do the trick. With new bonuses it can fill the role same as the abaddon. Better sniper with sentries (smth in line with mael and rokh) and can be very good at close range too sa Abadon is.
+ the versatility that can be added into the highs if wanted.

But for the Domi to play such a role and for other drone ships to play a role in a fleet doctrine, drone interface needs to be changed and some bits more about sentries.

All other 3 races are just fine. Love the new Armagedon and Typhoon. The only thing is dont lower the res bonuses to abaddon and rokh. They are great anti blob ships, but still dont have that upper hand to deserve a nerf.

JFC! Where do you all dwell dudes, in Dumbland?
SENTRY DRONES ARE USED IN LARGE FLEET PVP!!!
Those are called slowcats! The carriers with sentries, you know! Not with fighter - their intended weapon - but sentries!
And I use them in PVE, they perform super good despite some AI change and stuff. Better than Machariel I'd say. I know that, cause I used to fly it as well.

Domis have 3 sets of sentries. Slowcats have innumerably more. Domis move. Slowcats do not. Domis have a tenth of the EHP and don't do as well repping each other.

Let me teach you about sentry drones in fleet pvp.

Sentry drones are incredibly common in pvp, from ishtar/gila fleets, prophecy fleets, domi "boot" fleets, slowcats, gatecamping domis, gatecamping carriers, etc.

So what you are telling us is that we will have to wade through another 30 pages before we get new stats to plug in?
Better get my boots on.

Domi can fill the role of a fleet BS. It can have great sniping ranges (150km with around 600 dps). It can than warp on enemy fleet and with blaster and heavies brawl with em.

The only problem is that fleets need moving, that is the biggest problem with drone boats, sentries dont follow.

Maybe it is time for CCP to look into it.

Bloody hell! You see that PL dude down here? They used those Navy Domis, with sentry drones. You warp in position, you mocro-jump off, you deploy drones, you assign them. When yellowboxed, switch on Target Breaker and GTFO. What do you say now?
I was in a fleet of sentry cruisers. Wait what? Yeah, just what you've heard.

Just "stop moving your domi" isn't really good advice. There are plenty of reasons why you should, would or have to move. EHP is very relevant for any BS platform, especially one that is immobile as you suggest!

Heavy drones are more useful in smaller scale battles where the enemies are not spread out or at long ranges. Warping on top of people with short range BS is useful but sentries are better in big battles when you don't need to worry about smaller ships.



I'm not saying that 150km with 600 dps and uber tracking isn't good. It is great. It's not fun but it's statistically great. On paper sentry domi fleets will be quite good, overpowered even.

For a short while.

Thoughts in more detail.

A note on my perspective: I mostly fly solo, and engage wartargets in highsec and basically anyone I can in lowsec. When relly bored I run L4 missions. I fly cheap fits, change my fits often and will happily engage more than one target simultaneously when solo. (Often I look for the opportunity to do so).



Dominix:
- I typically field an active armor tank here, except in the very rare case that I have active logi support. Usually 2 DDAs, 2 LARs, DCU and 2 resist modules in the lows, a prop mod, scram, two webs and a utility mod in the mid slots, and the highs can be guns, neutralisers or (rarely) logistics modules, with the guns at the smaller end of battleship guns to fit.
- At range, the boat applies enough pressure through sentries to get foes into close range. It then uses its surprisingly effective range dictation (two tech 2 webs is a ~82% slow) and rips the target apart with Ogre 2s and blasters.
- Key to this tactic is the ability to kill your foe before help arrives. This is the role blasters and the blaster bonus plays for the boat. If I've found a sucker in a lowsec belt or 12km from a highsec gate, I need to burn them down fast.

Thoughts on the overhaul:
- The sentry bonus (the new drone bonus to tracking, which is primarily a sentry bonus as even Ogre 2s track fairly well). I feel sentry drones do not promote fun gameplay. Pseudo-AFK sentry drone PVE has thankfully been undermined by the AI changes and they are now in a good place in PVE, useful but not dominant. But in my PVP experience (fleet/blob veterans may disagree) they don't perform any role overly well - serious sniping with them takes up so many slots it leaves your boat a one-trick pony and requires separate tackle.
- Oddly the sentry range bonus helps Caldari sentry drones more than anything else.
- The blaster bonus and manouverbility will, however, be missed.

My suggestions:
- Consider instead a boost to drone MWD speed. Instead of buffing the boring sentry drones, this is a significant boost to the much more active heavy drones that to me are the hallmark of this boat.
- Secondly drone survivability is an issue. Maybe also consider a boost to drone armor resistances and/or a boost to remote repair - not enough to make the Dominix even remotely viable as a logi boat, but as a way to make repairing your own drones in combat more viable. Losing a drone that is engaging a target at 20km means losing 20% of your drone DPS for a good ten to fifteen seconds.



Megathron/Hyperion

Bunching these together as like you say, they are quite similar boats, with one more mobile and the other more durable. Two suggestions, intended as an either-or.


Suggestion 1: A New Role
Here I really would like to see a new role created (which would differentiate the two) - a subcapital variation on the Dreadnought that can be fitted to deal extreme damage to structures, immobile snipers, and basically anything stupid enough not to keep some transversal against it. I'd be happy to see the Megathron remain as per your initial ideas (or with minor changes), while the Hyp gains the ability to fit a new module that gives it +150% damage, -80% tracking, +300% align time and -90% max speed. (I have NOT run numbers on these, just consider the concept not the numbers).

This would give it a new role in highsec wars (POS bashing), as a way for supcap fleets in sovereign nullsec to pose a credible threat of reinforcing a POS with a small/medium gang, would add a way for players considering the Dreadnought path to see how a Dreadnought plays before making that huge investment and learning how to move a capital ship.


Suggestion 2: Mega for fleets, Hyp for solo
As a less radical alternative role for the Hyp, you could decide 'The Mega is the fleet ship, designed around the assumption of friendly logi available, the Hyp is the small gang/solo ship with the better local tank'. One idea here would be to give the Hyp a sup-standard resist profile (so logi hate it) but give it a bigger boost from both local repairs and also equipped armor plates.

Something like this:
- Resist profile as present but with -5% to each
- Local armor rep bonus: Amount repaired +10% per Gall BS skill level
- Armor plate bonus: HP from plates increased by 15% per level of Gall BS

I stand corrected then. Still, it's rare and they used FN Dominixes. Gila/Ishtar fleets are more common, sentry cruisers don't amuse me. :)