Player Features and Ideas Discussion

People are already mad at losing a free high for a DLA because they can't snipe in their tank bonused BS.

I personally would be in favor of your idea.

I'm sure heavies will be better after the buff, but they are terrible if you are fighting anything fast or if you are PVEing anything but angles. Sentries help with sanity. I use heavies in my Ishtar and only in my Ishtar.

Wait. Didn't you want it to be just a missile boat a couple days ago? I would honestly be fine with it as anything but an only heavy drone platform.

Just to mention current Rattle iteration won't be bad at all. I use RHMLs on mine as is and in PVE it will mean that you one shot any frigate that gets past your sentries. I'm pretty excited to fit this like my Fleet 'Phoon.

To fall in line with the other Garista ships it would have to be two heavy drones. But as a Rat pilot I'm actually not averse to the idea of only seeing the super drone bonus on heavies and not for sentries. It would reinforce the brawler feel for the entire Garista line and also allow the bonus to possibly be raised closer to that seen for the Worm and Gila. With sentry drones getting the current bonus it already seems too close to being a balance issue. If only heavy drones get the bonus Rat pilots could have a more potent super drone, but one that would be more situational and require more work to use than having both heavy and sentry drones.

I also feel if Rats are discouraged from using sentry drones it will give the battleship a really nice unique flavour for a drone hybrid. I could also see some more interesting fits being developed than those that are likely with the current proposed sentry and heavy bonus. After all with the tank available a few cookie cutter fits are likely to appear for high dps drones with some long range cruise missiles or short range rapids or possibly torpedos that can simply sit there and fairly easily deal with any opponent. If we only have buffed heavy drones then a range of fits will have to be developed to be able to follow the drones into combat so they can be recalled quickly when needed, launchers to takes down smaller hulls and other EWAR boosts to balance the fit. In my personal opinion, a Rat that maybe more balanced, more challenging and more enjoyable to fit, fly and fight with.

This has been discussed at length.

The Gila makes huge gains in application of near battleship levels of damage in exchange for full battleship damage at battleship levels of application, and loses a bit of application on the lower end to the loss of bonused light drones, as well as the increased vunerability inherent in concentrating all your drone power into just 2 drones.

As has also been discussed, leaving the Rattlesnake bonus at 7.5 is a direct nerf to the system. Leaving it as a standard drone bonus would be terrifying to smaller craft, as would simply re-bonusing the smaller drones to make up for the loss of flexibility imposed by the superdrone bonus.

The Worm is greaty improved by the superdrone bonus, as is the Gila. The Rattlesnake pays the full cost, but gains few of the benefits without an increase in performance and HP of the superdrones over the standard drone bonus. The missile bonus is no stronger than any other ship that splits bonuses with drones. The nearest equivalent is the Navy Domi, which sports 6 turrets with a 25% bonus (6*1.25=7.5) vs (5*1.5=7.5), while the bonuses on the Amarr line are harder to quantify as they apply to Ewar. Thus no compromise is needed in the missiles for the ship to enjoy the equivalent to a full drone bonus with it's launchers.

The 60% increase in size appropriate drones was established in the bonuses on the lighter hulls already. The Rattlesnake bonus is the outlier, and that should be corrected.

I take it then your beef was with the DPS, and not with their effective HP? Sentries will indeed have stout passive shields with a 500% HP bonus.

Forum tried to eat my post.
Might have been better that way, but remembered my own sig
Yupp, laying it out like this in one post makes a difference to someone who doesn't recall the last X pages.

So in short, your point is that it doesn't gain as much as the Guristas ships below compared to their weight class.

Plus there is also how weird it compares to other pirate ships, that have only one primary weapon system but heavily bonused, and also some new trick compared to their nearest navy equivalent (falloff, AB, Neut, Web).

Instead, we keep the shield resist which is the only thing it has straight ahead of a navy domi (not counting the downsizable launchers that is a fitting choice with it's own sacrifices).

Considering how I'm training away from the Rattlesnake, and that even these changes didn't make me stop that (though they got me thinking)... I'll rethink this.

Yeah, I don't think drone passive tank is ever going to be seen as a problem. But, yes, the DPS and projection from, say, 10 effective sentries and 7.5 effective launchers will be too much, so taking the drones that far would have to be in exchange for a launcher.

The Rattlesnake was the first battleship I flew (an Alliance present on my first EVEversary, almost 3 years ago).

In my humble opinion, reversing the decision to add a 5th launcher (7.5 effective launchers » 6 effective launchers), and add a bit more drone functionality and efficiency fixes nearly every complaint I've read on these 70+ pages:

• too much focus on missiles, not enough on drones for what has always been, and should remain, the epitome of Droneboats.
• lack of high slots for DLAs / Remote reppers (that IS the point of superdrones, right? To make it feasible to repair them on the fly by only having to give up 2 of your target locks and having enough time to respond to incoming damage?)
• CPU fitting problems caused by the 5th launcher and/or the drone control rig needed to compensate for the reduced DLA count
• launcher asymmetry (yes, what some have asked for the Machariel would take zero effort to not-change here)

What form the additional drone functionality should take is debatable. One could start with increasing the sentry/heavy bonus to 8 effective drones (+275% » +300%, matching the Worm). Next, adding 25m³ (175m³ » 200m³, one extra flight of light drones) drone bay back. Other improvements could be an additional locked target (7 » 8, of which you use 2 to lock your own superdrones) and a bit better scan resolution (100mm » 110mm) for locking your own drones to remote-rep. None of these improvements require additional named bonusses, they're "just numbers".

The best improvement, of course, would be eliminating the "Drone ship, therefore -1 slot" penalty that neither the Worm or the Gila seem to have (so, 20 slots like the Vindicator and the Machariel; not 19 like the Bhaalgorn and the Nightmare which have massive highslot bonusses that explain their reduced slot count). Whether to add it as a High slot (DLA, remote repper), Mid slot (tank, prop, application), or low (Dps, DC2), could be the next great debate. If we'd be so lucky, I'd vote Mid slot, for a 6/8/6 layout.

Lack of high slots isn't that bad (personal oppinion), as it still has one more free than the potato we all love.

Drone rigs are useless, it's Rigor rigs for missiles (for hitting smaller/faster targets as launchers doesn't have the Domi's luxury of rail ignoring tracking if the target is far enough) that eat the CPU. And torps. That need tripple rigors more than anything.

The point of superdrones?
Good question.
On one side, they are more immune to bombs and survive longer under focus fire.
Or maybe it's just because the more drones you have, the more server load you cause, and CCP doesn't like that. The AI introduced to missions kill them nowhere near fast enough.
Remote repairs are probably not their point. If so, the Nestor would get them instead.

Precision ammo in the RHML is still great for frigs. Really no need for rigors and flares in most cases and I try not to rig a ship for the exceptions, I would rather fit a web or painter.

I'm right with you on the missiles though. This as as close as we'll get for the next couple years.