Ships & Modules

During last year we see increasing proliferation of sentry based fleet doctrines ranging in size form Vexors all the way up to slowcat blobs.

Main advantage of those sentry based ships is perfect alpha completely controlled by FC without any input from rest of the fleet pilots, other then assigning drones to FC. Additional advantages are free high slots that can be loaded with neutralisers, smartboms, remoter reps or other utilities. Drawback is reduced mobility after drones are deployed, and potential of losing drones (take note both are mostly insignificant for slowcats as they have bad mobility anyway, and enormous drone bay easily holds sufficient number of replacement drones)

I can see 2 potential problems in overall metagame and balance of those fleet doctrines.

First is reduced significance of line fleet members. Typically they already do not pilot their ships but instead are just anchored, or aligned to celestial as instructed by FC. They often already make no target selection decisions but only follow broadcast from FC. Problem is sentry ships additionally reduce even those two limited activities by line members. Ships in those fleets mostly stand still and often have no target broadcasts to follow or DPS to apply on their own. Depending on what is in highs slots they might or might not have something to do, but mostly it is fair to say those fleets tend to be less interesting game experience for your average grunt

Second problem is perfect alpha and how it balances with remote reps. Thing with remote reps is they tend to be very binary, they either can save whole fleet, or if enemy has sufficient alpha, or just row DPS, they can become completely irrelevant. What perfect alpha of assigned drones does in this game of DPS/alpha/reps might be problematic.

So my question is do drone assistance mechanic need rebalancing, and do you find sentry drone based fleet as fun as other types of fleet?

Feedback form Ytterbium, Fozz and Rise and is also welcome, if they have any.

Before nerfing sentry drones, are there any fleet tactics to counter them? Perhaps a role for a wing or squad to specifically hunt down and eliminate sentry drones may counter their effectiveness. Or some, as yet undiscovered, type of doctrine may expose a weakness in the sentry drone doctrine.

The nice part about the sandbox is that you can try to adapt to what the other guys are doing. I just think that this trail should be exhausted before bringing out the nerf bat.

Bring a larger fleet.

Close proximity drones - smartbomb them to hell

Sentrys - counter snipe them

considering how useless other drones are, its nice to see useful drones for a change. i recently started doing lvl 4 missions, the first ones i've done after the big drone nerf. losing ogre II left and right and having to go restock over and over again is giving me a headache. i've already started training missiles now. i've also been considering training sentry drones since you can scoop them up when the npcs start focus firing on them. sentry drones seems to be the gallente's last hope considering they suck at everything else that doesnt involve suicide ganking.

It sounds like your fleet is too composed of a given type of ship/type (be they armor or shield). There are different tactics that should be employed in a drone rich environment, part of which should be your own drone wing. Utilizing tactics that do not allow the other fleet to engage the central blob without suffering greater damage from snipers and your drone wing (s).

Once damage projection shifts the the tactic shifts to centralize damage either onto the swarm or onto the main fleet.

Seems more like a tactical issue TBH.


.... course I am a self-accepted sucky FC.

if you are going to do that you might as well brick tank a bunch of domis, stick MJD on them and send them with large bombs into them.

oh yeah forgot phoon was cheap now as well.

Bomb them. And if they simply recall their drones then hey, they still aren't shooting you.

Think some of you are missing the point OP is trying to make. It's not about sentry drones. He's pretty much just complaining about drones being able to be assigned. And it actually is a legit point.

The sentry drone doctrine does remove a certain amount of the "incompetence factor" of fleet members. Players in the fleet don't have to target, don't have to manage their weapons, don't really have to do anything. They can go into the other room, make a sandwich, catch up on whatever game is playing, and poke their head in every so often to see if the FC won the fight or not. Yes, that's a bit of an exaggeration. But it still doesn't require much input from the fleet member. He can do plenty of other things while "fighting". Like for instance, manage the other Slowcats he has running in the fleet.

It is a style of gameplay that heavily favors alts. And correspondingly favors folks who can afford multiple accounts. Which unfortunately does seem a bit like pay-to-win. Is that good or bad? Not sure. Money doth have it's privileges, and multiboxers do contribute more to CCPs bottom-line than the solo account player. But then again, some believe that the game should be about skill and not how much money you can throw at it (the typical complaint of the poor).