Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Forgive me no, I am not blind. I am aware of the archaic and outdated view that a drone bay compensates for a slot. There's probably not much point in going into the rights or wrongs of that here.

I prefer to deal in facts.

The fact of the matter is that pre-change all HACs had 15 slots.
The fact of the matter is that the proposed Ishtar has 14 slots.
The fact of the matter is that there is no history of players complaining that the current ishtar is overpowered. In fact the vast majority of complaints about it are that it lacks enough CPU to fit a meaningful number of drone mods so it has been unable to play to its strengths.

Here we have an opportunity to rectify that, but it seems to me that the ship is being, in relation to others, nerfed.

Let's keep it polite, sir.

I don't think this is a valid argument. If a drone ship puts out combat drones it cannot also field neutraliser, ecm, web or any other kind of drone.

However, a ship that uses its guns/missiles for dps, has a utility slot AND has a (albeit smaller) drone bay is able to field DPS, EWAR and whatever the utility slot can provide.

If the ishtar was able to field 5 large drones AND 5 small ones at the same time, I think you'd have a point. But it does not.

The idea that a drone bay is worthy of a reduced number of slots comes from the very beginnings of Eve time, when there was not a limit on the number of drones you could field - you could just dump your drone bay on the field.

This worked to the advantage of ships with large drone bays so the -1 slot was justified.

Since the introduction of the limit on the number of drones fielded by a ship, small drone bays have doubled in power (the drone interfacing skill was introduced) and the comparative advantage of a large drone bay vanished. It simply became a store of spare drones rather than a soure of combined DPS and EWAR.

The -1 slot is no longer justified when current eve mechanics are considered.

I think the fact that the Ishtar can do 475 DPS before any mods are fitted to the ship probably explains why it has 1 less slot.

Considering thats more than some HACs get after 2 Damage mods and high damage ammo I don't think its unreasonable.

It's not getting any more mids or lows - it's just losing a high.
It's gaining a turret, but at the expense of the blaster dps bonus so that cancels out. But the extra turret (to recover the dps) consumes the last remaining high slot.

So in effect, the ishtar loses 2 utility slots.

In return it gets the dominix-style garde bonus and the navy vexor-style ogre speed/tracking bonus.

Viewed in isolation this might be seen as fair, but in relation to all other hac changes it's still a nerf.

This high damage comes at a very real cost, as all drone-ship pilots understand:

1. high dps drones are either very slow or stationary - so you MUST have your target webbed and scrammed (2 mid slots + cap + tank) otherwise you will do zero dps.

2. you rarely have 5 drones on the field once a fight starts - the other guy shoots them so you have to continually withdraw and relaunch them. This halves the effective dps. So that 475 is really in the region of 250.

This is why the killboards are not littered with solo-ishtar kills. It's not an easy ship to score a kill with. The changes will make it harder, when compared to other hacs to score such kills.

http://notorious.killmail.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=18897640

http://notorious.killmail.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=18897804

They are littered with dual Vexor kills though.

Edit, looks like linking does not work. Copy/paste the text to the browser.

Drop bouncers at 100k and turn the MWD on and orbit at 7k. You are now hitting with 700 dps from a freaking cruiser 100k out.
The Ishtar is getting bonuses to how most people used them.

Learn to fit Autocannons on your unbonused Hybrid hulls.

[NEW Ishtar, solo brawl]
Damage Control II
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II

Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
Warp Scrambler II
Stasis Webifier II
Stasis Webifier II
Balmer Series Tracking Disruptor I, Tracking Speed Disruption Script

Dual 180mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
Dual 180mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
Dual 180mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
Dual 180mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M

Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I

Ogre II x5

---

835 dps

They are dead before you run out of cap.

I have killed Falcons solo with Vexor while permajammed. Just bump them out of alignment and let the drones do their thing

It's a sweet fit, I'll give you that. But without an armour repairer I fear it's dead to a vagabond.

I don't know whether there's another way, but the way I counter vagas when in a slower ship is just to burn for them continuously.

Eventually they either warp out or run out of cap, at which point they're dead.

Having said that, I guess a set of gardes will keep a vaga frightened, since they now have a tracking and range bonus - are these ships on sisi yet?

I love most of these changes, especially the sensor strength increase.
I feel the deimos still needs its utility high for nos so it can brawl without its guns getting turned off.