Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Tracking nerfs and sig radius changes would also work. Though TBH making LML explosion radius better doesn't lean that way.

-Liang

I think you missed the tormentor with this philosophy, it only has 10/10. Any chance to increase it while you are balancing stuff?

I still like the idea of small sentry drones that can move with the ship that launched them. I'm pretty sure that's what it will take to get a drone boat to not suck at sniping, especially a frig.

It's simply what would be balanced for the ship itself. Generally the Gallente extra dronebay improves as the the ships get larger and more advanced but that's not in stone.
I can say for instance that I'm going to be introducing an entirely new ratio for that list before the end of the week. Sorry in advance.

Oh I really like the ship, but it doesn't fit any established bandwidth/dronebay ratio that's all.

Balance is fine and dandy, but consider the logistics of flying a drone(ish) ship where you essentially have one set of drones. Because currently you get 1.5 sets.

If anything happens, anything at all, and you lose that one flight, you are done. Finito. Go back to base and restock. You are out of the fleet, you are out of the gang. By the time you go back, reload, and fly back, the gang will have moved on and you'll spend 40 mins playing catch-up. I know because I've done it.

And it can be anything. The drones, which have unbuffed HP by the way, die ludicrously easy. Direct fire, other drones (perhaps from a ship where drones are only a small percentage of overall DPS), smartbombs, what have you. Heck, I could be forced to warp out without having time for the drones to slowly work their way back. In any of these scenarios that's the end of the roam for me. I gotta pack up and go home and get some new drones, or hope to god there's some for sale somewhere in a nearby system. Which doesn't really work during a roam in hostile space in FW as I can't dock in enemy stations anyhow.

See the issue?

Balance is good and all, but remember that real, non-insane people are going to try to use this boat at some point. Maybe. And this kind of stuff will drive them bananas. And this is just icing, on top of an otherwise giant drone cake (poor UI, bad AI, destructible, can't overheat for more damage/faster travel/more range, slowest damage projection of any weapon system, etc., etc).

Thats only true if you are both orbiting each other and have identical tracking. In the case of say, a dual prop SFI webbed by a frigate, the SFI is going to be heating its ab away from the frigate in an attempt to drop transversal as much as possible, and the web is going to make this less effective.

The main problem with the Vigil as is are the problems with target painters.

The problems with target painters are ttwofold:

1) Signature is a mostly irrelevant factor for damage application in most fleets. Even for fleets where it is actually very important (vs. Tengu, AHAC), the signature bonus of a TP is very weak, with 3 TPs having the same effect as one single web.

2) Compared to other ewar, TP does not scale. "Another Griffin" is always welcome and, outside of coordination, will actually support the fleet. TPs go to primary, and beyond 3-4 of them, they have zero effect. Rookies will be better off bringing other ships than TPs. Especially as, because of 1), in fleets where TPs are actually important, they are more likely to be on bigger ships and flown by experienced pilots.


I'm not sure what to do about 2). But for 1), it would be great if TPs could give a 150% increase in signature instead of 37.5%. That would be equivalent to a 60% web, per TP. TPs have longer range than webs, but do not actually slow down the target, which sounds like a good tradeoff.

So, if you give the Vigil (and other TP boats) a 15-20% bonus for TP effectiveness per level, you make the ship actually very useful, because the TP effect will then be quite pronounced.

How about we make the effective range of webs around 10 km and we increase the effective range of target painters to, say, 45 km with perhaps a 90 km falloff?

Two questions/remarks related to a stat left unchanged: sensor strength.

(1) How is sensor strength decided on? Is it racial or based on other factors? Vigil has lower sensor strength than the crucifier, but the typhoon has higher sensor strength than the armageddon for instance.
(2) Compared to battleship, these frigates also have interesting increments. For instance the domi and scorpion have high sensor strengths (22, 23), whereas the armageddon and typhoon have low sensor strengths (17, 18). For the frigates the increment is just +2 each time.