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For the moving it to the highslot arguement, just no. Plain no. Drones have a nasty habbit of going pop in PvP and some certain PvE enviroments. You lost all of your drones warping out? Fantastic just use your splash attack or something when you get caught in a compremising situation heading back to the nearest station/or leave the roam early.

I realize there is already a team Super Friends feedback thread, however, the changes brought on by Team Super friends are extensive, and most of the thread is hereto date dedicated just to when Sisi will go live. As such, I feel its prudent to start a new thread for concise discussion.

As it stands, the Extrinsic Damage Amplifier II (henceforth EDA) is a 12% damage bonus for non-fighter drones, on a 40tf CPU module. This is, quite frankly, terrible. In fact, its so bad that I have to question if this is just a placeholder stat.

Your bog-standard T2 damage mod has two stats:
10% Damage Bonus
10.5% Rate of Fire Bonus

Combined, this results in a 22.9% damage increase *per* module. All turret modules cost 30CPU for their T2 variant, and the BCU's cost 40cpu for their T2 variant (presumably due to the higher than average CPU output of most missile boats).

Even worse, drone boats often come with the "drone-boat" tax. They have worse fittings, and fewer slots, than comparable non-drone vessels. This fitting tax insures that drone boats don't become OP killing machines with immense tanks and damage, but it also means they often wind up very tight on fittings. A 40cpu mod is absolutely ridiculous for most drone boats to try to squeeze on.


In other words, the EDA is terrible in two directions:
1) It provides half the damage bonus of regular damage modules
2) It costs 33% more fitting than standard damage modules, on top of the CPU limited nature of drone ships.

Perhaps the greatest insult, however, is that drones are already a low-damage platform. For all intents and purposes, drone damage caps out with the 50% hull bonus on Ogre IIs at 475 dps. For Ships like the Arbitrator line, that caps out with Hammerhead IIs at 238 dps. Even the standard 23% damage module may be too weak for them to work on these hulls as a competitive fitting option. We won't know until these are at least buffed to 23% and fits are played around with, but Domi's can do a *lot* more damage with guns than 475 dps. If we are to fit drone damage mods over regular old damage mods, they need to be pulling their weight in the opportunity-cost comparison.


To start balance testing, the EDA needs to be brought down to 30 CPU and 23% total DPS modifier. As it stands, the single 12% damage module will find use ONLY on ships with the following parameters:

1) Can deploy a full set of heavy or sentry drones
2) Cannot fit battleship class weapons

That limits the EDA's *entire* potential usefulness to select Ishtar and Gila fits, and maaaybe a few Domi's that completely forsake any turrets at all (such as ambulance, neut, or herd domis). Every other ship, including ships like the Curse, can get much better bang for their buck just fitting regular weapons (like Railguns or HMLs) and/or regular damage mods.

edit:

I agreed with Shish so much below I wanted to add this to the OP. EDA's in the lowslot are going to be a balancing nightmare, as many Drone ships rely on a strict lowslot allotment to tank, while others like the Dominix could potentially "double dip" Damage Mods and wind up with 1500+ DPS in shield-gank configurations. EDA's should be moved to become a highslot module in addition to the above changes to create fitting tension with the ship. As a high slot item, they can take advatnage of the utility highs many drone ships are given, while counter balancing against the need for neuts, turrets, and missile launchers for other sources of DPS.

Drone Control Units - EDA's elder brother - are also highslots, making this a much more natural feel than lowslot EDAs. It also creates natural tension when fitting those highslots as Drone Link Augmenters are also up there. Would you like neuts, smartbombs, cloaks, more damaging drones or longer range drones? That's some good opportunity cost decisions to make that simply don't exist in the lows.

Oh well, that ends it then.

Good module anyway, just not easy to adapt to.

A lot of fits will change to accomodate this.

Looking at the Blueprint requirements, I'm thinking that the tech II version is an excellent opportunity to help add some demand to the depressed PI commodity market. CCP could add Guidance Systems or Transmitters to the build requirements. or for a comedy option the otherwise useless 'Elite Drone AI'

Rattlesnake with these as high slot.....

..... yes please :D

+7 EDA? woot? that will make the drone range very limited ( 65km ), I'd really love 1200 dps on my rattle but the range is unacceptable, I would go something like 1 t2 cruise missile, 2x drone link augmentor and then rest EDA's

What we truly need is making Drone Control Units usable on all ships.
Having DCU in high slots and drone damage mods in low slots would be equal to turrets or missiles.
Obviously DCU will have to be rebalanced to add drone bandwith and capacity as well.

Their are high slot damage mods, they are called turrets/missiles. granted they don't give bonuses to damage, they are more direct, but the goal is is same, kill enemies faster than if you didn't have them.

I mean I won't mind if they added "drone guns" a module that launched a tiny drone to shoot at your enemies, I just want something to put in my high slots that's useful without sinking a bunch of points into another skill tree.