Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Uhm, I don't know your math, but you mean either 300% or 72km.....

Despite that, if ever CCP would implement that you can be sure that it will be as a trade...
By this I mean they "give" us a higher bonus but they will "take" something for that...
Maybe remove the TB bonus from the hull and add it as 200% to the active Bastion module. I would be ok with that...

Edit: But I still don't see why we need a higher bonus in the first place....

wait a dedicated salvage ship is better at salvaging? what madness is this!?

It is... And it would continue to be even if the Golem had the same tractor bonus.

Flip it on it's head. You are the one proposing a change. To be worth even the dev time to go in and flip those numbers, you must find a compelling reason of some sort.

They are saying no because their vision of what a marauder is and what it takes to be balanced is different from yours. You must now convince them that your idea of what it should be is correct, or address their points and sooth their concerns about it obsoleting the noctis and further crashing the market on salvage. Insulting them, or saying you don't understand why there are worries about buffing everything to fit your ideas of how it should work, will entrench the opposition and errode your credibility. As the initiator of an idea, you need to be persuasive if the issue isn't a glaring problem and/or have a lot of people who have built up trust in your ideas being good.

With the introduction of the MTU, having a tractor beam range bonus on a marauder doesn't sound as enticing as it once did and at this point, I would rather a salvaging bonus.

The introduction of the MTU has sort of made the bonus on the Marauders somewhat redundant if not useless. But the problem the OP is describing is using the 3 utility highs as pure income boosters, and not survivability boosts like cynos, smartbombs or nuets, is sorta of useless.

The reason it is useless is that MTU's can usually keep up with wrecks unless there is 1 specific wreck needing to be scooped.

I am training into the Golem and I would rather use my drone bandwidth for salvage drones than for the extra bit of damage gotten from lights. But the problem with that is that Salvage drones suck since there is only one version of them and they are T1 and have horrid salvage chance. I made a seperate post regarding this but I think more sizes should be added with T2 versions for each size.

I mentioned earlier that if a new cruiser/bc sized tractor beam was introduced that when bonused with the marauder/t3/noctis could reach out to 100km+ and quickly bring in a single wreck then it would warrant a high slot.

These 2 changes, more salvage drone types and larger tractor beam would make Marauders better mission runners and ratters. Because as it stands the only place marauders seem to be on top is high sec mission running, carriers/t3/drone boats in low/null are way better at doing missions and ratting for equal or less isk investment.

I think right now in my Rattlesnake doing Gurista Havens/Sanctums I make 30-35mil a tick then on top of that I can get a faction spawn or escalations. With each site I drop an MTU and get about 5mil worth of loot which conservatively bumps my effective tick up to 35-40mil.

I don't understand why I would choose to use a Marauder (Golem). Faction fit golem gets 1k Damage, and the benefit of selectable damage. My Rattlesnake get 1.5k Damage. Now Im lucky in my case as Kinetic is best for Gurista but even without that the Rattlesnake would still clear any site the Golem could but faster.

There needs to be an extra PvE bonus that allowed a bit extra income. And being able to have salvage drones that automatically salvage all your wrecks as the MTU sucks in the loot could net a decent amount of ISK especially if the salvaging could keep up with you.

Sry if this post is a bit chaotic. I don't have any experience with L5's but if anyone with experience in them can give better information then what I read then thank you.

TL;DR

My main point is this....

Buff and Add Bigger Salvage Drones.

Large Tractor Beam that reaches out 150km when bonused.

Swap the Tractor Beam bonus for Salvage Drone Success Chance.

Honestly, if we buffer Marauders any more it would relegate most other battleships to the dust bin. Not to mention making the Noctis completely obsolete.

You're giving a tractor bonus way too much credit.
That alone would not kill the use of other BSs and wouldn't kill the Noctis either.

Does your rattlesnake have a huge cargo hold that can haul everything almost all L4s drop as loot or salvage (please dont claim it does because my golem has more than twice your cargo hold and even i have to sometimes leave loot behind because it doesnt fit into my cargo hold)?

Does your rattlesnake have 4 utility highs?

Finally, and most importantly, should the measure of every mission ship be ISK per hour and should their ISK per hour be the same when the Golem is much easier to mission in because park-kill everything-while triple salvaging-leave is how it is flown with near zero need to manage drones?

The answer is no because easy comes at a cost in efficency like it should in a balanced game.

As to your buffs I see your point on salvage drones but 150km plus tractors is unnecessary as the noctis can cover the 25 km or so of even remote salvage in like 10 seconds, which doesnt count as inefficiency since you should be tractoring / salvaging as you move and doing the same with the remote wrecks as you burn to the next gate.

Impotantly, the noctis can currently grab almost all wrecks without even moving from warp in point.

I'm saying introduce a Large tractor Beam that reaches out unbonused to 55km and bonused (like on a noctis to 150km) This would allow the Marauder bonus of tractorbeam range to be swapped for a salvage drone bonus while still being able to fit a tractor beam that reaches out to what a small currently does. The Large TB would have higher PGU fittings req.

Being self sufficient is the biggest and most unique strength of the marauders so why would you balance it around the noctis. When you can add 2 things that make it not a efficient or fast as the noctis but capable of similar salvaging.

I said in my post a Marauder with 5 Salvage Drone I should be able to salvage every wreck it comes across. With a Large Tractor Beam it should be able to scoop anything 50km out, and it would have 2 Utility highs for Cynos, SB, Nuets.

The goal is not to outshine the noctis in salvaging, but to be able to salvage your mission/ratting sites without the need of the noctis but not as quickly as the noctis.

Which means that Marauders should get a bonus that allows salvage drones to get up to 21-30% success chance, enough for all wreck types... Or they should change the function of Salvage Drones so when more than 1 is placed on a single wreck the access chance in increased... Or they should add T2 and Medium/Large Salvage Drones that have increased salvage chance.

I think most will agree that the 25/50 bandwidth is really only useful in going after frigates, where as being able to put a flight of salvage drones out that can go thru the field while you rat would be a nice utility and headache reliever.