Ships & Modules

The Gila is definately living up to promise, I am using faction drones, and they rip through everything. They seem to hold up very well to damage and so long as they don't get webbed, you are fine, even then they seem to kill the webber ok and get out on their own.

This is a good ship and congratulations to CCP Rise and Fozzie.

The rattlesnake though is a different story, I lost 3 geckos the first day, heavies are not good enough to launch while there is anything to target them. On battleships when everything else is cleared, they are fine. 275% to damage is no replacement for a flight of 5.
Losing a DLA to use the new launcher, does not make for a pleasant experience, I seemed to be waiting way way more for things to get into range. MJD around to try to get range is not advisable as one ends up waiting again for cap to recharge, or MjD timer, before getting back to gate, plus waiting again to jump through to ensure you can actually use it again. Not fitting the launcher to fit the second DLA makes the ship even worse, as it then has all the downsides with none of the benefits.

One REALLY notices the loss of light drone bonuses, whilst other ships also have unbonused lights, they have a drone bay that carries spares, if one does this then one loses a set of sentries or heavies that really need spares.

In short, the buff to damage is good, but there is a lot of waiting around in missions that was not there before, there is a lot of micromanagement, due to the changes, and it is just "less Fun"
( I really mean a pain in the arse, but trying to be polite)

If the rattlesnake had only lost 3/4 of it's range bonus,
kept it's bonus on smaller drones, and kept it's drone bay ( in other words left drones alone).
And gained the same missile DPS increase without adding launchers, then it would have been a good pirate ship.

I am in favour of Hero drones, unfortunately the concept stops at mediums. Heavy drones replacing all the smaller drones, just doesn't work........
A rattlesnake with an 750% damage and hitpoint bonus to all drones and a 25mbps bandwidth would have been a very different and fascinating ship. If you are going to reduce drones they need a Massive boost to hitpoints otherwise it is simply just a few more seconds watching them to die.
As it is I have relegated mine to the back of the Hangar. for me it is a worse ship than before in spite of what appears on paper to be an improvement.
Hopefully the next rebalance whenever that is will at least make it as good as before, and god, it did need some love, but clearly that is never going to happen.

But look at the good side, gankers and gatecamps have a pirate ship now. It will work quite well at a preset range, when boosted up the wazoo, with something to deal with the frigates, and web and paint things to allow the rattler to apply full damage, good job *sarcasm*

Such a shame for everyone else though.

It is hard to believe that the same people are responsible for designing both ships.

I don't do a whole lot of PvE, but I have done about 10 missions in the rattlesnake since patch day.

Frankly I can't relate at all to the OP.

I think the new iteration of the ship is fantastic.

I'm pulling nearly 1,100 DPS. With a simple tech II fit. It's already enough for missions without any bling.

As far as a "flight of 5 better than a 275% bonus....."

Two heavy drones x 275% to damage and hit points equals 5 and a half drones.

Im pretty sure 5.5 > than 5

It's 7.5 "effective" droned. 275% bonus to two = 2+5.5. Same as the 50% bonus to 5 was before.

But you can no longer assign individual sentries to frigs to kill them without too much overkill = time added. Heavy drone flight time = time added. Shorter range on drones = having to wait to get in range = time added.

The rattlesnake is a great boat for EFT warriors. Easy to get high numbers. For people who actually play the game...notsomuch.

I understand when CCP modify drone bandwidth of ship, they want to control how many drones you can deploy in the field but when it comes to nerf drone bay size I don't follow their vision. The drone aggro mechanic doesn't work in the favor of carrying exact no. of drones you can use, because when you start losing them your dps basically cripples.

*Snip* Please refrain from personal attacks. ISD Ezwal.

I usually dont have to deploy anything but sentries and compared to Before the change, the RS is a complete beast..

Well, I see you have abandoned the official thread, and have decided to drumbeat in here instead. And look, you have another contrived situation to try and fool people.

Folks, don't fall for his bullshit. The Rattlesnake loses very little compared to before. The OP is only here because he was laughed out of F&I.

His complaints about range in PVE are based on using the wrong weapon system. Cruise missiles reach farther than the ship's lock range. Even if you give up a DLA to fit 4 Cruise launchers and snipe with sentry drones, the only difference in the ship is that you have damage bonused missiles, where before you didn't. Net gain in dps, and a damned big one at that.

As for drone survivability, in F&I he got caught out for contriving a situation where his drones would be taking far more damage than normal during a mission. Basically he was tossing out heavies at the very start of a mission room, letting them die, and then coming to the forums to cry about how the super drone bonus isn't good enough.

All the while deliberately ignoring the long established practice of shooting down smaller rats with sentry drones from a distance.

Take anything he says with a heap of salt. His agenda is obvious for all to see.

Not sure where the debate is. If I have 5 non-elite frigs targeted and 5 sentries deployed, I can spend an extra few seconds doing individual targets and have them all dead in ~10 seconds. If I have to put all my sentries on each, you're looking at easily ~25-30 seconds to kill all 5 due to rate of fire on sentries. It's a little better if I can split them 50/50 but still not as good as before.

Another strategy I used was having four of the drones on one target (bs/cruiser) and 1 on a frig. That has also now been nerfed, since you can only split the damage 50/50, you end up over killing the frig and doing less damage to the cruiser/BS/whatever.

Considering how awful the UI is for controlling drones are you absolutely sure you actually had it faster trying to control them individually? You had to click a target, right click the sentry, select "attack" from the dropdown, rinse repeat. If you insist I'll just take your word for it I guess, but yeah. A new drone interface would be really nice right about now.

*Snip* Please refrain from personal attacks. ISD Ezwal.

The new Rattler is ******* amazing, its a complete utter powerhouse.




(also how good a ship is at lvl 4 missions is utterly irrelevant because lvl 4 missions are easy as balls and you can do them efficiently in just about anything)

I agree that the UI needs improvement, but I am afraid that I find myself apathetic to your other claim.

Especially since locktime is the major factor in killing frigate rats, it really isn't that important in regards to the assignment. Either way you can kill them faster than you can lock new ones, so that caps your timeframe on it anyway.