Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hardly. Have you thought about how much dps is being applied while they sit there pounding on the drone?

You're talking like 2 or 3 times as many volleys before they start taking less damage from the drones is something inconsequential.

Almost every other ship deals with frigs with 5 unbonused small drones. The rattler is now on par in that respect. where is the disadvantage?

rattlers had to be weary of smartbombs before. if anything, they are more resistant to them now.

Neither of these concerns are credible.

In a situation where deploying heavy drones is the correct choice (rather than sentries), there is almost no chance of any ship being able to keep one out of optimal for any meaningful length of time, let alone destroy it before it gets there. This is because heavies are only sensibly used against slow, nearby targets which are unable to run fast enough, even while webbing the incoming drone, to stay out of range. The only case where this would work to any useful effect would involve a 90% web, and even then scoop/redeploy tactics would likely render it useless.

It is correct to say that a hit by a med or large smartbomb will destroy a volley of cruise. The problem is that the cruise volley travels the 5 km radius of a large smartbomb in about 0.7 s. With a smartbomb cycle time of 7.5 s, this means that you essentially have a <10% chance of a randomly-timed smartbomb cycle destroying the incoming volley. Over a long period of time, this equates to a <10% loss in missile applied DPS, at a not inconsiderable cap cost. The loss of the missile velocity bonus means this figure is slightly higher than it used to be (6.3%) but since almost nobody uses smartbombs in small-scale brawls for this purpose (firewalls are a fleet thing, really), this is not a concern.

Bad piloting can't be helped. If the target is 30 km away, then you should be using sentries and the heavy drone problem never arises.

that was just one example; ii was trying to explain how you can lose your drone dps before even it can start applying;

If you're doing it wrong, perhaps.

This is a significant factor on the smaller hulls where that DPS is 60% higher than normal. On the Rattlesnake it isnt a significant factor because normal drones may pop faster but they only cost 20% damage each. This is why the Rattlesnake bonus is too weak if it only breaks even. There is little benefit from the superdrone, but the full drawback still applies. The lighter Gurista hulls compensate for this with the improved DPS.

On the Rattlesnake all you gain is a slight resistance to bomb runs and smartbombs. While that may be important to nullblob fleets and some smaller gang applications, it does not make up for the drawback in most other uses of the ship. God forbid someone mentions PvE, but rats that use ECM will be nearly as bad on a Snake as they are on everyone else not a maurader.

You're trolling right?

My golem would continue to do 90 over percent of it's DPS when I'm using 5 unbonused small drone, but can the same be said about rattler? From worm to Gila to rattler they are all collecting dust in my hangar and they will continue to do so after the patch. Requirement to swap drone for frigate force me into using missile as main weapon, and sentry drone means my boat will be stationary.

Piloting new rattler will be like a new flavor of Golem, you will be a sitting duck but without the benefit of bastion, and maybe EFT warrior would rejoice with the theoretic maximum DPS they can get on EFT but without mids to support it and tank your ship, it will always be a theoretic maximum and not real would damage. Of course there will be other winners are drone assist user, new rattler sounds like a great way of bypassing drone assist nerf.

I have PvE'd extensively in guristas space. Can you please explain, as my 750 sentry DPS will remain 750 DPS now and in Summer.

Unless you're worried about a drone being jammed and I can say I've seen that precisely once in countless, untold hours of mission work.