Player Features and Ideas Discussion

what the Tempest needs is a tracking bonus. remove the damage bonus and make it a tracking bonus keep the ROF bonus. 7/6/6 slotlayout to go with this and you got yourself a great ship.

probably you intended to write "drone ships", but your slipped term exposes a slight problem with this proposal: carriers (the worst sentry offenders, worse than ishtars) are ewar immune.
we need a solution that works on carriers too.

drone _ARE_ ammo.
or do you want the simmetry to be complete and make lasers be outside their ship, have separated hp and explode when somebody looks at them funny?

rule 1: adapt or die.

I have to be honest here, I HATE the Ishtar, despite the fact I'm well skilled for it. I can't stand "minion" style gameplay in any game and EVE is no different in that regard. I like drones as a supplemental as opposed to a primary tool for the ship I fly. (Note that this is my own personal feeling and I'm not suggesting drone ships shouldn't exist, I'm just saying I personally don't like them, no matter how strong they are and find it a little frustrating that most fleets call for Ishtars as the ships of the line because there is so little that compares and I am willing to put aside my personal feelings for the benefit of my group). I'm glad to see it getting nerfed because I don't like it being practically the default ship and tbh I fly support when I can, just to not have to be in one. That being said I can't see this change significantly affecting its appeal, and on top of it all I think it's one of the ugliest hulls in the game, at least if it was pretty my dislike of it might be mitigated in some way.

The best way I can think of to sum it up is like this. Seeing the results of the HAC changes after they'd been live a few months made me think of The Justice League from DC Comics. Most of the HACs are like Batman, competent and good at what they do but forever locked in the shadow of the far superior Superman (who obsoletes every other member of the team) for any of the heavy lifting, so to speak. Well the Ishtar is Superman, does fine for damage projection and application, can be nano and shield tanked or heavy and armor tanked and all variants of it are tough to beat. The Ishtar may not be the stand out best at every conceivable combat role but as an overall package nothing else comes close.

I would really like to see other ships being competitive choices with the Ishtar and while this is a step in the right direction I think there's a few stairs left to climb. A big part of the issue though is that the highs on the Ishtar are somewhat irrelevant often being fit with small guns if any at all or downsized modules allowing a large part of the fitting to be devoted to making a really strong tank. The issue is that with drone ships there is no direct way or addressing this short of removing slots and I don't want to suggest that either.

I had a very fleeting thought at one point where I thought it'd be neat if T2 combat hulls only got T2 resist profiles on their primary tanking method which at least would probably make sense from a lore perspective, why would the Amarr bother to boost the shield resistance output of a Vengeance or Sacrilege when they are so focused on strong armor that it's just assumed the shields will fly off at the first sign of danger, presumably it takes a lot of extra effort to strengthen the shields as well as the armor. So Amarr/Gallente would get T2 resists on armor only and Caldari/Minmatar would get T2 shield resists only, but from a game perspective some of these ships are setup so they can work either way and I'd hate to see some of those variants removed as viable options because of a change like that (Minmatar particularly is rarely so clean cut). Though in the Ishtar's case it would have made shield fits unappealing since they'd have to deal with a standard T1 resistance profile on their shields so at least it could have freed up some roles where the Ishtar is clearly not boss. Would it be worth removing the unorthodox fits to get at the Ishtar?

I'm inclined to say no, but it might be possible to convince me otherwise (see stated bias above).

You could take away the control range bonus forcing fitting DLAII which are not light on CPU and potentially tweak CPU to suit.

Slots remain the same, but for extreme ranges you hammer the CPU.

(Not run numbers, might not be workable)

Battleships are in an awful place right now. Small to Medium scale (100v100 ish) battles are almost always in T3's, Hac's and Logi with assorted tackle.

BS Damage application is problematic - The dominix using sentry drones gets around this. I understand that when you are testing, undocking in a Battleship and fighting a few people doesn't get to the root of why BS's aren't being used.

BS's are slow to warp and position - this means that they almost never fight on their own terms - the enemy choses the engagement. BS size weapons have a projection advantage over smaller weapons, but T2/T3 hulls general have a range bonus on weapons, making them equally effective at longer ranges, but with massive tracking advantages.

Next is the HP Values: T3's especially can reach insane levels of EHP with a very small amount of fitting slots required. BS's don't distinguish themself enough in terms of raw HP (Either because BS HP is to low or T2/3 cruisers is too high)

Finally logistics - a packaged BS is 50,000M³ - a Packaged cruiser/T3 is 5,000M³. Especially now with the changes to Jump Fuel and reprocessing values, this NEEDS to be lowered. It's not even slightly practical for large scale fleets to be moved around in 0.0 - cruiser fleets are disposable and logistically sound. This change alone might make BS more popular. BS are supposed to be the fleet shipss, right? How come people mostly use them for PVE and jumping 1v10 into gatecamps of battlecruisers to record their latest PVP video?

P.S.

Tempest 7-5-7. 1 Utility high is enough, but that 5th Mid means ECCM, SEBO, W/E. Otherwise i'd probably just stay with the Megathron.

pretty bland, having so many ships with the same slot layout.

Regular Pest: 7-5-7, same stats as now
Fleet Pest: 8-5-7, 7 guns, 5% Damage, 10% Falloff per level.

so you add a falloff bonus, but it still has absolutely no damage at all. this is a projectiles problem and a tempest problem. I think there should be changes to both.

LEave dumb paint bonuses outside battleships. Its already very hard to convince a Cruiser pilot to bring a target painter. You would just make the tempest even worse witha TP bonus when its the battleship that LEAST bennefit from TP the target.