Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is probably better than my idea of increasing sentry bandwidth. Go with this.

Simply removing bonus damage isn't enough. Something has to be done to affect an ishtar's damage application, engagement flexibility, excessive grid, or any combination of the three. The changes, as is, are countered simply by bringing a few more people.

How do you not ******* see that DPS is not the bloody ******* problem. For **** sake do you even look at how the ship is used and why is it OP or do you simply wing it as you go.

DPS change only makes Ishtar meh for solo pvp and pve. As for fleets at some point DPS is useless you could have 300 DPS and if you have the numbers it does not matter. Ishtars problem is ******* trageting range and drone control range not having to sacrifice tank or speed. With this change all you have to do is add few more Ishtars to your fleet.

This makes no sense especially considering the size of the avg. Ishtar fleet. Tengus and Machariels were hard counter to Ishtars but they could not sustain the fight because they bleed out logistic ships so fast and this is for that exact reason the targeting/control range.

So with this pointless change you have achieved nothing. NOTHING.. No other ship in HAC class can combat the Ishtar at it's range/speed/sig combination and no other T3 can do it other than Tengu and even Tengu can only do it until Ishtars wipe all their logi off the field which due to targeting/control range is BLOODY ******* EASY.

1. Reduce Ishtars base targeting range
2. Reduce Ishtars drone control range
3. - 30 CPU
4. + Either small sig increase or small base velocity decrease

And that would BALANCE the Ishtar. It would remain a good SOLO PVP and PVE ship and in fleets you could now actually use few more doctrines against it.

With those changes you still use the Ishtar as you do right now however you would have a hole in your Tank which means Harpies, Murder crows, Eagles, Tengus, Machs could all take you on.

And if you wanted to retain the Tank you would have to come in closer and fight at closer ranges which means you could use Legions, Lokis, Proteus, Zealots even battleship doctrines against them.

And this way it would depend on your tactics and FC's skills and members skills.

Seriously how can you do a good job with a Tengu and then fail so hopelessly with Ishtar.

well this wasn't the 5 m/s nerf to its speed i was expecting but it's still clearly a "terrified of making too big a change that there's no chance of it going far enough" change (like the last ishtar nerf). at least it's a little bigger than the last one.

Ishtars even using heavies and sentries doesn't make a lot of sense. Every other had uses cruiser class weapons, but the ishtar gets battleship size drones?

Why not give them bonuses to medium and lights, without the massive hp boost the Gila uses?

Actually, this is not a bad idea.

I'd rephrase it as make drone link augmentors ineffective on sentries.

Drone control range seems misapplied towards stationary drones. A reduction to the effect of (Advanced) Drone Avionics to sentries would also help.

As a part of an Alliance that has been using Ishtars in the meta game for quite awhile now, I can honestly say that the damage nerf is still not far enough to stop this ship from being too much.

The fact of the matter is this, the only true tactic to this ship is drop and scoot. As long as you are far outside the enemies optimal range, you have little to nothing to fear outside of poor FC moves and potentially bombers. The bombs issue is easily avoided, as all you have to do is spread drones a good deal out and only end up losing a small handful per run, instead of the entire cloud. Shooting drones 1 by 1 is still not even close to effective, and is ultimately never a go-to.

The fact is, even with the changes to Bouncers compounding this, range and tracking on sentry drones is still too high on a cruiser class ship. You're getting Battleship DPS and application on a ship that moves marginally faster in a cap stable environment, and can more easily control a field. Simply put, is it the elephant in the room with a giant sore thumb that sticks out, but this elephant does 1500m/s and hits harder than a speeding train. It's time to fix it.

-Remove the Range Bonus. This ship should not be able to sit further out than a Battleship and apply greater DPS in such a fashion.
-Remove one mid. Don't add a low. Removing one mid to the low will only make it so people will just move a Tracking Link to the Low instead, keeping the shield buffer alive. Don't give that option.
-Reduce the Bay, or balance sentries to take more room and BW, and adjust other ship bays to compensate.

it's too late anyway. Rise thinks the DPS has to be nerfed so that's what he's going to do. Especially because everybody is telling him the application bonus is the problem, because now he feels like he has to prove people that he was right.

Make ewar that hits a ship, affect it's bonuses to its drones.

Tracking disruption, ECM, and Sensor Dampening.

Stop being lazy developers with just nerfing stats. Give us the ability to use the already in game tools of EWAR to counter drone ships.

TDs should affect the drones tracking and optimal range. ECM should prevent the drones from targeting. SDs should affect the drones targeting range. EWAR needs to carry over to the drones.

Damage Projection was never the real issue with the Ishtar, the Ishtar itself could have 0 damage bonus to sentries, and it would still get used just as much as it currently is.

The problem with the Ishtar, is its ability to move around quickly, and pretty much not give a crap about its sentries, drop, shoot, and stay alive. Throw gang bonus onto them, and they become pretty stupid.

What needs to happen to the Ishtar, is again another nerf to its speed, push up the sig a tiny bit more. drop the locking range slightly, and whack that drone bay, possibly drop it to 225-250m3.

The above changes would make it still viable in PVE, and still make it fairly good in small gang, but make it nicely counterable for large gang warfare.