Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Well, being as it has a chance to be popular, and little things are preventing it being as popular as it could be.

And once things quieten down we should see the reduction of rapid fit varieties, as it is a paper dps scenario, good sometimes, usually not.
It would be nice for it then to have a role.

Of course it could be a massive OmGPawn Mobile, just like all the others we were warned about which aren't.
If it is wildly out of balance then that could be dialled back in a considered manner.

Or pre disable the rattlesnakes drone abilities, give massive boost to an underused unpopular weapons system, and frighten the players, or have them drooling.

Sure the new rattler will kill a cruiser in 0.x Ms faster, very nice, could we have the rest of the ship though too please.

Is it not a better idea to find a place where both benefit from this rebalance? Drone users and missile users too?
And how on earth did it get so polarised? We asked to retain drone control range and to look a little at the superdrone concept, possibly retaining the bonuses for smaller drones. That's enough overall to give it a use for all.

There's no need to win the thread for any poster, everyone is allowed to have an opinion, and everyone is allowed an input, even if you violently disagree, give people a chancto speak and actually listen to what is being asked for.

What everyone seems to be forgetting is that the new Rat will still be able to field a flight of lights that will still be able to deal with pesky frigates that get too close for comfort. Yes those lights will be (marginally) weaker than before, but they will be backed up by a superior missile based weapon system. It is of course up to the pilot how to fit their ship, but if we use use RHML these can already greatly assist with dealing with most frigates, with the post to damage only fast interceptors are likely to cause real trouble. The superdrone concept doesn't stop us using light or medium drones, it just doesn't give them huge buffs and doesn't need to.

Why do you still think it's a "droneboat"? It quite clearly does not fit that mold.

*Snip* Removed reply to a deleted post. ISD Ezwal.

Realistic changes are ones like dropping the fifth launcher in exchange for a greater drone bonus to distinguish the drones more from the Dominix and to give it the freedom to fit a second DLA. Or asking for more CPU to avoid a fitting mod on a ship that uses damage mods inefficiently - citing a specific fit is useful here.

*Snip* Removed reply to a deleted post. ISD Ezwal.

There are various tweaks that CCP rise can do to make this ship appeal to a wider base, I agree with pretty much everything in this post, apart that I personally do not think the bonus to lights and mediums would be that much of a real world issue, but your ideas are more elegant and probably better to be implemented.

It is very clearly in my opinion too designed to use undersized launchers, that is not a bad thing unless the implementation does not allow CCP to produce a ship with wide uses and desirability. It is not impossible to achieve this, but if users say I want the missiles all the missiles and you can have NOTHING! Then it is very hard to reach a resolution. Thankfully ships are not designed on the forum, only suggestions noted.

Not sure I follow this. Your first sentence suggests a Rattlesnake with five launchers, a large drone bay and a standard 10%/level bonus - essentially the same as today, but with an extra launcher. But that clearly isn't a realistic request because the superdrone thing isn't going away, so I may have misunderstood your idea.

You can't look at the superdrone bonus in isolation, not can you expect to use the same magnitude of bonus across different ships and automatically expect to get "balance". I'm not sure where you get the "extra 60% damage" thing from anyway - the Worm has 8 effective drones, the Gila has 12 and the Rattlesnake has 7.5. So the concept of "balance already established" is meaningless.

If you want to argue that the proposed Rattlesnake is too missiley and not droney enough, that's fine. But I think asking for ten effective drones and 7.5 effective launchers on a very tanky ship is not going to get very far. I'm quite sympathetic to the idea of cutting a launcher for a bigger drone bonus, though. It helps the CPU problem too.

He already made changes so it will appeal to a wider audience.
I farm guristas null sigs and so frequently get RS BPC.
I also sometimes run high sec missions.
I PVP a lot.
I use a Navy raven to mission and have never even seen the point in using a RS in any environment.
I stopped selling my RS and Gila hulls the second i saw the worm changes.
After the proposed changes go live i will use all 3 gurista hulls for the first time. In PVE and PVP.
I am the wider audience.
The new versions are flat out better.
Sniping ships with a tank bonus and sub par dps never made sense.
Brawling / mid range dps monsters with a tank bonus does make sense and the RS will replace my navy raven for missioning.

I always wanted to fly a RS but until the proposed changes go live there is no point to doing so apart from to look pretty.

*Snip* Removed reply to a deleted post. ISD Ezwal.

It's a what if scenario. If superdrones had not been conceived of, would you have considered that setup as balanced? Existing ships suggest it would be, notably the Navy Dominix, though it's not the only ship in the Gallente line to give full standard bonus to both hybrids and drones.



Current best frigate drone platform has 5 light drones. Proposed Worm will have 8. That is a 60% increase in DPS.
Current Bonused flight of mediums is 7.5 drones, Proposed Gila has 12, again a 60% bonus.

Those 2 hulls establish compensating the relative vulnerability and inflexibility added by the superdrone concept with a performance and HP increase-- and sets it at 60%.

I am not looking at the superdrone bonus in isolation. If I was, I would be holding ground at nothing less than 12 effective sentries--but the point of the limited launcher slots on the smaller hulls made sense to me, so I accept a weakening of the established superdrone bonus in deference to enhanced missile ability as a fair compromise.

I am looking at the superdrone bonus in comparison to the bonus given to just about every single other drone bonus in the game except the Gallente frigates. That standard sets the balance for drones overall. The two lighter Gurista hulls establishes the baseline of where superdrones should be relative to regular drones. The only divergences are the Rattlesnake bonus breaking even(and thus being an overall nerf due to the vulnerabilities of the superdrone concept), and the bonus of the Worm being only slightly higher than the Gallente Frigate bonuses on HP(7.5 vs 8), but DPS is 60% (5 vs. 8).

I am not arguing that the Rattlesnake is too missile focused, rather that while it is possible to trade the missile damage for application for fitting smaller launchers, and possibly even a good idea given CPU constraints, it should not be further enforced by nerfing the drone system. There comes a point where one choice is so much better than another that the choice itself becomes meaningless. Just because you can fit full size launchers, if the entire ship is warped to discourage it you don't really have a meaningful choice anymore.

So what do you want from the Rattlesnake, Mike?

Are you missing out the fact that the Gila gets those OP supermediums for it's loss of Heavy full flight?
It gets similar dps numbers (a bit lower today than 7.5 Heavies), but on faster and better tracking drones.

Or just ignoring this, because the numbers are shiny?