Ships & Modules

First, a health warning: This is about PVP, not PVE. I will make sweeping generalisations in this post, for the sake of brevity. If you have found a niche use for any of the drone types that I have said are useless, then good for you - but they're still underpowered.

Combat drones are very poorly balanced. Besides sentries, there is only ever a need to choose between three kinds of drones for any given drone bay size:

- Minmatar drones, for mobility (i.e. Warriors for killing tacklers)
- Gallente drones, for max damage
- ECM drones, because your mother didn't love you as a child

(The subject of ECM drones versus other EWar drones has been done to death, so lets leave that topic to the threads that are dedicated to it.)

Amarr and Caldari combat drones (except their sentries) are just useless. Neither of them do the most damage, or track the best, or are the most mobile. There is no reason to pick them over Gallente or Minmatar drones in any situation.

Even this one-dimensional choice disappears when you want to use your drones for their most common use: killing interceptors. Speed is the deciding factor in this role, and Warriors (Minmatar) are by far the best for the job. Hobgoblins (Gallente) and Hornets (Caldari) can't catch an interceptor doing 5km/s, even with max skills. Acolytes (Amarr) can catch them, and keep up - only just - but they do less damage and have worse tracking than their Minmatar counterparts. Compared to Acolytes, Warriors are faster, do more damage, and have better tracking. For anti-tackle, it's a no-brainer.

Should all light drones be given a speed buff, so that more of them can catch and kill interceptors?
Should Minmatar drones do less DPS than other drones, to balance their superior speed and tracking?
Should Minmatar drones even be the best tracking, given that blasters now track better than autocannons?
Should all drone stats be completely redesigned from scratch?

And what about fighters and fighter bombers? Different races of drones do different amounts of DPS, but all fighters and all fighter bombers do identical DPS (on paper). Because of this there is usually no reason to use any fighter besides Einherjis due to their better speed and better tracking (except ratting).

Should fighter and FB DPS vary as part of their balancing (as it does currently with drones), or should DPS for drones be changed to be uniform across the races (as with fighters/FBs)?

Discuss.

Simple Solution.

Minmatar do Explosive which is strong against Armor, Amarr do EM which is strong against Shield. No one uses Amarr because they have worse dmg and speed.

Gal are Therm which is stronger against Shield, Caldari use Kin which is strong against Armor but for targets above Frigs you are better off with Galente because they can keep speed and track fine while doing more dmg.

So give EM Drones the same stats as EXP Drones and Kin Drones the same stats as Therm.

That way it becomes a choice of what Dmg Type you need instead of Minmatar Speed Gallente Dmg.

Not counting Sentries of course.

I like what you say.

Nobody in his mind will buy caldari drones. This is anti Caldari! State drone exports can't tolerate it!

Now I propose to make every race's drone worthwhile. Make gallente drones extremely slow? Give caldari drones extreme shield recharge? Boost ammar drones anti drone abilty, i.e. maximum tracking?

Thermal is best average DMG type for drones. ECM drones seem to be broken along with ECM mechanics. Webbign drones are stacking penalized, so are TD and TP, only cap and ECM drones aren't.

Other drones have no merit. Give some advantage to them and you start seeing them. Boost Energy Neutralizer drone cap penalty, better yet make gallente drone bonused ships affect not only DAMAGE but other properties such as TD penalty, SD penalty, TP sig gain and rest.

This will stimulate e-war drones over regular damage drones.

Differentiate more between drone manufacturers. Give racial incline - this will make all types of combat drones more practical.

There seems to be a fair amount of complaining about the "inferior" drones lately. Seeing as how this is coming totally out of the blue I can't help but think this is an effort on behalf of some T2 BPO holders. Unfortunately, the effort is also fairly well justified - the only useful drones are Minmatar and Gallente drones.

However, there's some deep flaws both with your observations and with your suggested conclusion. You keep talking about tracking like its a meaningful statistic for drones - and furthermore your solution seems predicated on it. Lets just be clear - it isn't. All drones have tracking so high that its near meaningless to talk about its effect on DPS. The important statistics are raw speed and raw DPS.

TBH, I am more in favor of polarizing drones along the sliding scale - two drones that are good DPS, two that are good speed.

-Liang

Lets look at this realistically:
- Nobody has ever really made an organized effort to complain about this.
- The skill difference between training one type of drone over the other is extraordinarily small.
- The low barrier for entry means that the only real reason for systematic complaining about this is academic or economic.

I think I'm very well justified in thinking that T2 BPO holders are driving this line of complaint - no matter how well justified it is.



So if you don't know enough about the game to independently verify that tracking is pretty much meaningless when discussing drones, what makes you think that we should trust your other opinions about drones? Take a look yourself:
Here's the tracking of an Ogre II - the worst tracking drone in the game: 0.36 rad/sec
Here's the tracking of a 200mm AC II: 0.315 rad/sec

Again: tracking is pretty meaningless because all drones have absolutely fantastic tracking.



A few comments:
- We don't have "racial" drone types. Its a mistake to think of them that way. The barrier for entry for any particular drone is incredibly small. If anything, you should think of all drones as being Gallente or perhaps Amarr.
- The reason that we have two sets of "useless" drones is because they just don't fall in useful spots on the DPS / Speed curve. Moving them to useful spots on that curve would eliminate that problem and give us more diversity in drones not less. *zomg*.
- The idea of making entirely new mechanics to solve the drone issue is pretty overkill and still unlikely to solve the actual problem. Chances are we're still going to see "DPS" and "Speed" as the primary motivators - or it might just be that one of the new mechanics overrides everything and we end up with three sets of useless drones.

Again: I'm not opposed to boosting the poorly performing drones ... but I just haven't seen anything besides the 2/2 split that made much sense.

-Liang

No, it really really doesn't. Look at it this way: 3 rad/sec means that your drone has to orbit the object in question 1.5 times per second in order to generate a 50% chance to miss. Now take a look at those orbit numbers again and remember how far out they're orbiting.

Again: tracking just isn't a meaningful statistic for drones because the tracking on all of them is so incredibly high.

-Liang

Ed: Also, if you read the link you posted, you'd see that it doesn't directly involve transversal at all - its all about angular velocity over turret tracking.

Let's be clear. I have no economic interest in drone statistics being adjusted whatsoever. And I'm curious as to where the rest of this 'organised effort' is. I see plenty of threads complaining about the imbalance between ECM drones and other EWar types, but if you think that could be motivated by the economic interests of T2 BPO holders, then you're clearly brain damaged.

Maybe I enjoy academic arguments, or maybe I'm trying to make a useful argument about how to add a little more depth to the most widely used weapon system in the game.

Anyway, putting your first irrelevant ad hominem to one side, lets move onto your next one.

You are confusing the positive (what is) with the normative (what ought to be) in my argument. It really doesn't matter whether or not drone tracking is a significant variable at present, because when I was talking about tracking, I was talking about how it ought to be.

While we're on the subject, you are just wrong on tracking. The quality of a hit is influenced by both the tracking speed of the weapon and the angular velocity of the target, even when the angular velocity is significantly less than the tracking speed. If tracking worked the way you seem to think it does, every shot by a drone would be a wrecking hit. That is quite obviously not the case.

Regardless, varying tracking was merely one suggestion of many. It's hardly the linchpin from which this whole discussion hangs. If there is a better variable that you can suggest instead of tracking, then I'm all metaphorical ears. But I would have thought it would be pretty obvious that for the variables to add meaningful specialisations to each 'race' of drone, the differences would have to be significant enough to be noticeable. That is not any kind of endorsement of the status quo range of drone tracking speeds, or any other range of variables in drones as they are currently.

As for your 'few comments'
- You are right that the link between drones and their supposed race of origin is tenuous at present, but it needn't be. If each race's drones could supplement the design of their particular ships, then the game would be richer for it. While it's unlikely that we could ever get to the point where Caldari drones could be as natural a choice in a Drake's drone bay as HMLs are in its highslots, it's not a bad analogy to have in mind. There should be synergies between each race's ships and 'their' drones.

- As you admit, that existing DPS/speed curve (it wouldn't even be a curve if Amarr and Minmatar drones' damage modifiers weren't mixed up) renders two races' drones obsolete. So why are you so wedded to that discredited model? If it makes the middle-ground obsolete now, it will make the new duplicates of the extremes obsolete if you simply polarise them.

At present, the HP, tracking and whatever else of every drone are merely functions of its DPS. The exact same problem applies to hybrid ammo and laser crystals, which is why all the options in between the max dps and max range types are hardly used. All the variables are functions of one another, so there can only ever be two extremes, and therefore two options that users gravitate towards.

For an example of what drones could be, look at projectile ammo. In any given situation, the decision about which ammo to use is multifaceted: You have range, tracking and damage type to consider. Lets make drones more like projectile ammo, and less like hybrid charges and crystals.

- Tracking speed and hitpoints are not 'entirely new mechanics'. There is already variation in those stats between the drone 'races', but the differences are not pronounced enough for them to even register as secondary considerations. As long as all the variables can be laid out on one single axis, there will only ever be two favoured types of combat drone.

Liang, aren't you accidentally proving the other guy's point with tracking being a potential balancing factor? If 3 rad/sec is 1.5 orbits per second for 50% miss, then .03 rad/sec is .015 orbits per second (or roughly one orbit per minute) for 50% miss. You can keep going until the drones are missing quite badly against stationary targets, unless they are changing their orbit (which is restricted based on their range,) or changing their speed (which is sophisticated and thus unlikely behavior to expect from drones.)

If you make the fastest drones severely tracking-handicapped, they can actually only hit targets going close to their speed. If the target is not going fast enough, the drones orbit too fast to track. If you actually did this with proper math, couldn't you just make different sets of drones with different speed engagement profiles (and inverse damage profiles,) so that having the wrong drones is actually a possibility, and making large drone bays for different types of drones more meaningful?

There have been more threads on this "drone imbalance" in the last month than there have been in the previous five years. To me, that speaks of an organized effort by someone with something to gain. Given the incredibly low barrier to entry skill-wise, I can only assume that its an economic interest.



You keep talking about what ought to be without first understanding what is. Your blatant misunderstanding of what is means that I feel no particular obligation to listen to you prattle on about how we should redesign the entire system to match your view of how things should be. Furthermore, your opinion as stated would mean that we nerf drone tracking to the point that it actually becomes meaningful - and this would constitute a HUGE AND DRAMATIC nerf to drones.

Absolutely unacceptable.



Go take a look at that graph again. All drones are on the absolute upper edge of it - the difference in hit quality is very minor. Also, they would not be all wrecking shots. Please L2Math. BTW, you have no idea how much effort it was to convince Eve-O about the way the tracking formula actually worked. And yes, it was me that carried that particular fight to Eve-O. You trying to lecture me on an incorrect application of the formula is pretty goddamn funny.



No, I disagree to the utmost that there should be synergies between each race's ships and their drones. Saying that a Caldari ship should field Caldari drones and a Gallente ship should field Gallente drones is just utter hogwash and totally wrong. Drones are a secondary system, and the only thing that's "racial" about them is their damage types. And yes, that's the way it "ought" to be.



A few more comments:
- It would still be a curve. L2Math.
- It is the simplest, non-nerf, least change model that allows for all drones to be useful. Your assertion that there would only be two useful drones is simply wrong.
- I'm not wedded to a "discredited" model - though you certainly seem to be given you don't even understand the way things are.
- The realistic options for projectile ammo are "RF EMP/PP/Fusion" and "Barrage". The middle tier ammos are still useless.

-Liang

Money quote highlighted. EVE might be a game that lends itself to numerical analysis, but numbers alone do not constitute balance.