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It's a change to, as the Five 0 Dev said "to attempt to make the PvE more engaging", but what's the payoff?

Or does that come a few years down the road when they next iterate NPC AI?

Having to pay MORE attention to the already terribly boring Eve PvE system... doesn't necessarily equate to more fun. I don't see how this is an improvement... although short term the exploits that come from this should be fairly grand :)

I don't really care about them "smart switching" targets, since I am the only one doing the L4s. What I care is that the mission rats start using the mods and drones I loot from them and I am not talking about those that you have given to them by default before even the mission starts. It would make the fights more interesting, having the rats remote repair, used their drones, energy neutralizers, propulsion and sensor jammers or whatever happens to be randomly given to them all in one mission. Right now running L4s in a proteus, or even a Myrm with 8 mill skill points only, is dull - agro a group, at 50-70km kill the frigs and destroyers with Iron ammo, at 30-40 kill cruisers and BC with Lead, at 15-20 - BS with antimatter. Having to face such variety will force me to equip other modules and rigs rather than having mostly of the kind that do or increase the damage.

If you think that would make the fights harder, reduce the number of the ship, and increase their bounty.

Let's see you pull heavy drones in 50km without losing anything.

He didn't answer to my bringing up heavy drones either, might be a bit embarassed by his own statement by now.

I'm seriously against any NPCs short of Concord targeting drones, until/unless you allow us to load drones directly from cans/cargo bays into the drone bay. (Fix, drones ejected from the cargo bay are no longer put in a can, but ejected into space where they can be scooped to cargo or drone bay.)

Until then, you're just further limiting the use of drone boats in PVE situations.

Did some testing on duality today.

Had my tengu alt sitting in a serpentis haven in fountain. Warped into it and tackled it on two different tests with a stilleto and a purifier. As soon as I warped in on both occasions ALL of the rats in the anomaly switched to the frigate who warped in.

In the case of the stilleto, I continued shooting the rats with the tengu. The rats eventually switched back to the tengu after about 20 seconds, and shortly switched back to the stilleto thereafter.

In the case of the purifier, the rats switched over immediately on warp in, the tengu shot no targets, and after over 2 minutes of tackling and torping ALL of the rats continued to stay aggro'd to the purifier 100% of the time.


Our corp operates on giving our newbies free T1 thrashers to go out and learn some basic PVP skills by hunting anom runners and belt ratters through the use of the dscanner. All of our PVP concerns finding ratters to shoot, we don't just roam around looking for fights, our purpose in the game is to hunt down ratters and kill them. If nobody can go out and solo ratters in small cheap ships, or a stilleto can't keep point on a target long enough for the gang to jump into system and warp to him, our corp probably won't be around anymore come winter. Please think about how these changes affect the brand of PVP we enjoy, you always talk about "farms and fields" that smaller groups should be able to come down and burn. Ratters in anoms are the farms and fields, and I think if NPC pirates had half a brain they wouldn't be shooting the group that came into their anomaly to kill the dude in the tengu wiping out their fleet.

It was a serpentis haven. The thing with serpentis rats are that you can pretty much speed tank them in smaller ships, but even with my purifier with NO dps from the tengu I was in 1/3rd shield in the first minute, fitting an MSE. If this were delve or period basis, which contain blood raiders, I would've been dead already from neuts and better tracking from lasers. We find most of our ratters in sanctums, havens, and forsaken hubs.

Many ratters use forsaken hubs now because they have no frigate rats (and thus can never be tackled) and are easily speed tanked in T3 battlecruisers, which hugely reduces the risk. Nagas in fountain are popular, as are oracles in delve and period basis.

Thank you very much for reading my posts, I've been really worried since these changes were announced.

PS: To those participating in the thread, I am not against PVE, I wish nullsec anoms gave MORE isk for MORE risk. I would love if you could make 100m+ an hour ratting in anoms, but every anom had more tackling frigates to increase the risk. I don't see why I can make between 120-150m an hour on average blitzing L4 highsec missions but not make the same amount of money running anoms.

I appreciate the amount of work you guys put in, I know from my friend White Tree many of the devs really do care about how the playerbase feels about their parts of the game being changed. I've already send a rather lengthy evemail to the CSM letting them know that changes like this can, I'm sure without being intentional, trample upon smaller professions in the game and methods of PVP/PVE that weren't considered.

I think everyone in the game can appreciate that steps are being taken to improve PVE content in EVE, since we all know how bad it is, but it is really difficult for many of us when things like ninja salvaging, solo plexing, mission flipping/baiting, and ratter hunting (the four main things I, and my alliance, do in this game) are essentially removed from "our way" to play the game.

Thanks again, keep up the good work.

1) Because they move
2) Because that is where the target is


I don't like sentries because my ship is slow, and it bothers me to either have to stay on station and kill everything before moving to the gate, or move around and have to go back for them. Plus it was the same training time for Sentries as it was for Heavies, and I never felt that Sentries were worth the time vs. the aggravation of using them. I prefer to just fit my ship with 2 or 3 Nav computers, and avoid using Warriors because at that point they turn into comedy gold because watching their brackets looks like a graphic glitch.

Thanks for setting me strait that my 74km control range is never to be used with heavies though. I kind of thought the whole point in having drones was so that I didn't have to directly chase down all the rats but could send out the drones instead, but all this time I should be sitting on some sentries because that's the way.

I find heavies demolish cruisers with a Target Painter, and rarely have difficulty with frigates. True, Lights deal with frigates more quickly, but often I'd rather just let the heavies deal with the frigates of incoming waves rather than recalling, deploying, re-recalling, redeploying....

This change will have me using mediums more often, in all likelyhood. I'm still not going to like sentries, and the mediums will be fast enough to use at a distance, I hope.

In the end, this will make the most fiddly, frustrating weapon system in the game even more fiddly and frustrating. Drones will need a major upgrade to go along with this, and it's absolutly horrifying to me to think that they appear to think it's all going to be fine. I guess for most folks it is a minor problem to be dealt with, but for those of us that started as Gallente Special Forces and just kept on training drones, it's going to be a nightmare.

I use the weapons I use because it suits me and my playstyle. If it's OK for those guys to like hunting essentially defenseless PvE boats and ruin any chance for 'bears having fun in that area, it's OK for me to like using mobile drones in suboptimal conditions just because the immobile ones bug me.

Yes, it can be done faster, better, more efficiently, etc...

I like putting out my drones and setting a course for the gate as I blast away with my 4 425mm rails. I do occasionally swap in an afterburner for a Nav Comp, but a Microwarp won't fit, and I like my guns. Afterburner on a Domi is still slow, and I'd still hate standing still for sentries or having to go back for them. I'm not a passive, afk domi drone pilot, I just like the way they play.

Even as much as I like drones, I've been eyeballing a Megathron lately to lose my dependance on them, because of how fiddly and annoying they are to use. This change virtually insures that I won't use anything but hordes of lights to clear frigates, and I just hope it does not interfere with my unskilled/low skilled friends being able to come with me into missions.