Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ti there!

There was much complaining about the drake being too strong. In response, heavy missiles were nerfed. Result? The Drake is still my favourite lvl4 battlecruiser. In my opinion, the heavy nerf may have been somewhat justified, it just didn't target the Drakes main source of power.

To do lvl 4 missions comfortably, you should have a ~400 dps tank. I can fit an Abaddon with a ~440 DPS active tank while still doing decent damage (~520 DPS). My SNI has a ~420 DPS tank while doing ~600 DPS with cruise missiles, and everybody knows how poor they are. Values are taken from EVE HQ with T2 fittings. Both ships are comfortable in lvl 4 missions.

My Drake only deals ~380 DPS, but tanks ~ 560. Tactic is: Pull everthing in sight, destroy tack... nah just destroy anything. How can that be?

My battleships use six (Abaddon) and seven (SNI) slots to improve the tank. Nice to see the Abaddons resistance bonus here. Both are actively tanked. That means they're using cap to tank damage. The Abaddon lasts quite long, in excess of ten minutes, since it uses three slots plus three rigs for cap stability. The SNI only lasts a little more than four minutes since it sacrifices some cap stability for increased damage output, using one slot and three rigs for cap stability.

The Drake is passively tanked. Missiles don't use cap, too. No AB, so shield hardeners and damage control are the only cap users in that fitting. It uses 9(!) slots and 3 rigs to improve the tank and no slot for cap stability. Admittedly that fitting is a little bit tank-centric, but it works fine. In my opinion, that is the true source of the Drakes power: The ability to use more of its slots for tanking than other ships doing the same job.

Additionally, while cruisers recharge their shilds in 1250 seconds and battleships in 2500, battlecruisers recharge in 1400 seconds. That's very close to cruiser values.

The Drake were in line with other battlecruisers if it could fit a comparable tank like those ships while dealing about the same damage. I can't comfortably fly a Prophecy or Harbinger in a lvl 4 mission, so that may be a good target.

If I replave both shield power relays with ballistic control systems, my Drake would end up at ~320 DPS tank and 490 DPS damage output. Tank is still quite strong compared to the ~220 DPS tank of a Harbinger and damage output is ... well the Harb lands at ~380 DPS. However, damage output is less of a problem in that case. I'll need to last long enough to shoot down all the ships, that's why the tank is the bigger part af any problem anybody may find.

All of this was written with PvE in mind, specifically lvl 4 missions and, to a lesser extent, ratting/plexing. Would be nice if an experienced PvP player could add that perspective.

My proposal to "fix" the Drake:
- Leave heavy missiles where they are.
- Remove Shield power relays from the game.
- Set (all) battlecruiser shield recharge times to 1600 seconds.
- Examine other low slot shield tanking enhancers (power diagnostoc systems), they may still unbalance the Drake.

Of course, if these changes are applied, the Drake would be a totally dull ship.

Go to M&C or S&M and tell how good are those fit. Maybe they give you some pointers about ship fitting.