Ships & Modules

Before you call people dummies you should make sure of your facts. Heavy neut drones (EV-900) have a Maximum Neutralization Range of 10km, and an Optimal Range of 5km. which means they are going to have to motor out 40km to the target before they start trying to neut it AND then they are going to have to motor back +40km to the your ship before you can leave the area/system or deploy new drones. Meanwhile your drone boat is doing little or no dps since you have all 5 drones and 125m bandwidth used up in the 5 heavy nuet drones deployed trying to hit your target with a single battleship neuts worth of cap drain.....

Speaking of blinkers, if you think this is a good deal then perhaps YOU are the one not able to see past your own pre-conceptions

Interesting opinions, thanks for posting!

I have been thinking about the actual usefulness of the EWAR drones (other than ECM) recently myself with pvp, but haven't really tried them yet. I may do some testing on a couple corpies to see the effects. The painters and neuts look like they could be useful; I personally have no hang-up about "damage only!" regarding drones in pvp, so it should be interesting to experiment!

Edit: on a side note, I don't consider ships with drone bays (other than drone boats) "split system" ships. I have and always will consider the drones an added attack front on top of the main weapon system for the ship. Drones in a Drake (for example) are a great way to kill fast-moving, in-close targets while the heavies deal out the damage at-range. I consider that additive, and not a detriment to, your game play.

Using EVE-Kill's top 20 list is completely valid when analysing what is going on in EVE. While it does not represent 100% of all ship kills in EVE (only CCP doing data dumps periodically that players could download and data mine would) it represent the pvp activity of a broad number of users in many corps/alliances. People who don't like to use EVE-Kill data are usually those who actually dont like what it shows.

And what does EVE-Kills top 20 pvp ship list show?

1) All ships are gun or missile boats
2) ZERO drone centric ships
3) Low DPS support ships (Huginn & Lachesis) even make the list while drone boats do not

Lets get real please. You can dance and sing all you want, but the fact of the matter is drone boats dont work in large scale pvp (as you admit elsewhere in your post, which I will get to shortly) and thats where most of the pvp killing in EVE is going on.

Its real simple: everyone see's and knows about the clouds of drakes and hurricanes in pvp. Where are the clouds of Myrmidons? Oh thats right, there aren't any. Why? Because hordes of drakes and hurricanes are easier, cheaper, and more combat effective than their equivilant class drone ships. And the proof is that 10's of thousands of peple pvp'ing over the years have analysed and tested the ships and come to the same conclusion, which is what is reflected in the EVE-Kill top 20 list.

In MMO's with significant pvp components (DAoC, WoW arena system, etc.) the players want to win, and they vote with thier feet and use the classes/specializations/ships/abilities/mods/ammo/weapons/etc. that are perceived as the best and most powerful in pvp. And thats EXACTLY what people are doing in EVE, and thats what the top 20 list is showing us.

thats your opinion and thats fine. My opinion is that having the option on a cruiser (Ishtar or Gila) to drain battleship sized amounts of cap, with no cost to your own cap, at a range of up to 50km is an extremely useful tool





My DPS at the time i am using the neut drones would be about zero but that's irrelevant. The situation where i am using them is one were the neut effect is more preferable to DPS. I often use them when fighting Zealots or other amarr ships and after a few cycles they are capped out, unable to escape, repair or return fire - then i swap the neuts out for heavies.

Anyway your talking as if i said that neut drones are the ultimate win button which should be deployed in every engagement, I'm not so lets keep this real. All i'm saying is that they are a useful tool and i have used them in many engagements to great success.

How in the world do you figure that having litte or no dps while your using you 5 heavy nuet drones is IRRELEVANT? Seriously, what are you thinking? Why would it not be WAY better to to have a ship using a primary weapon system (gun/missiles) that can be firing while manuevering your ship into standard neut range? If the enemy is so far out of neut mod range that you need to use neut drones to fly out +40km to reach them then they can just warp away at will if they think the cap pressure is to high.

I agree with you that heavy nuet drones could be useful, but normally their optimal use would be in situaltions where you brawling up close and have your enemy web/pointed, are unleashing high dps on them, and your drones can start nueting them the instant you launch them IMO.

Again I've already explained the situation where cap warfare is preferable to DPS in earlier posts so go back and read them, its not something for every occasion but it does have its occasions especially vs amarr ships.

You seem to be hung up on the idea that the target must be far away - it dosn't. The advantage of neut drones isn't that you can neut a target 50km away, the advantage is that they can neut a target at ANYTHING between 0km and 50km.

Yes, and the other non-drone ships perform better than the drone ships, in general.

Whoa there mate, i think you are jumping to conclusions a tad quick now.


Trying to correct you on this is in all honesty a bit of a moot point, since i don't really see the reason for anyone to have viable alternatives in every bracket... but: the Cormorant is not a missile ship and the Imicus is a drone ship. The point however is still that ships are not balanced to cater to "i choose drones". Anyone who make that choice will ultimately suffer in EVE. A player who only fly missiles is as bound to get stuck with Bombers, Drakes and Tengus as a player limiting himself to drones is bound to get stuck with the Ishtar, Domi and Capitals.

It doesn't matter what initial choice you make, in the long run you will only end up shooting yourself in the foot if you limit yourself to one race, one weapon system or one tank-type. Will shooting yourself in the other foot not hurt as much? It's a rather pointless argument. Investing into drones is a useful way to spend your SP and flying the Drone boats that exist can be very effective wether we talk about PvE or PvP.



The problem is that you can't buff around logic.

Even if you break it down to the level of Drone AI (AI and UI which i think most people agree could use some attention when it comes to drones, i sincerely don't think anyone belive that drone AI and UI should be underwhelming on principle), you can never escape the fact that a more complicated mechanic will always be under more scrutiny in a complicated situation. Drones undeniably is a mechanic that involve movement, commands, hitpoints, redeployment etc. You can never escape that fact and you can't simply "buff around it".

You also have scaled balance to consider. If complicated drones are powerful in small settings while F1 HML is complicated in an overblown setting. Is the best way to buff the "Drone users" to dumb them down to F1 use, or is the best way to endorse the more complicated and smaller scaled gameplay? Most of the "malbalanced" things in the game at the moment (Drones included) will be best buffed by simply buffing alternatives to dumbed down 500-man fleets. You can't shoehorn everything into that narrow environment - no matter how large the scale of it is. That's the main problem of the current CCP approach.

At the end of the day, it is not as simple as to make a complicated system, mechanic or player action "uncomplicated".

You should also be mindful of your terminology here, since "buff" usually imply game designers raising the figures of existing items.

Compare that to having an art department and programmers redesign a UI or AI, and i'm certain no one would oppose your wishes to see those aspects improved where possible.

Would i like to see Drones dumbed down and changed to be more like missiles simply because some people want to be "pure drone users and still find a spot in a 500-man fleet to F1 with the rest of them"? Definately not.

That gameplay is once again best balanced by introducing more content at scales where Drones are not up against simple logic. If you want to buff drones, you should encourage more 1-100 man gameplay and content.

I already made that example in my previous post. AHAC Ishtars are no worse (actually better) in today's game design, it's just that the entire environment where they used to perform is dwindling away. No other HAC fare better. No other 15-50 man gang fare better and no other intricate tactic for those gangs and ships fare better.

Drone ships don't cost more per definition. Ishtars do, because they are a HAC. The best way to help them is not to imbalance any smaller scales or ruin any balance between other classes of ships either, in their strict performance sense. It's to make sure there is a better balance in cost-effect. You can't just deal with effect to balance that, especially not when the problem primarily lie in cost.

Thats not how I read it and would say its a communications issue, but its not a big deal either way... So I agree lets let it go.

/hug

Fair enough. I agree with you that in some types of pvp certain drone boats can be competitive, especially at the solo/small gang level of play. And thats one of the nice things about EVE, we are not all forced into confined and rigid instanced pvp zones with fixed formats and objectives (like WoW et al).

On the other hand though as I said in my post above the vast majority of combat kills are going on in large scale fleet fights where literally hundreds of ships can get popped in a single battle. And CCP has been and will continue to try to push people into that deep end of the pond. Just watch all their trailers for the last several years: big fleet fights, lots of caps/super caps, epic fights etc.... To me any class of ships has to be designed to be competitive in this part of the game, or your just relegated to the "whatever" leagues. Also, as CCP keeps moving the game farther along the path of EVE: Capital Ships Online, the solo and small gang warfare is going to keep shrinking in activity and scope as it becomes more and more just a small niche part of the game. Which is sad and I'm not a fan of it, but thats where CCP is taking us IMO.