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So, I don't spend a lot of time in wormholes, but I'm told that sleeper rats like to change targets when new things enter a site.

If I'm cruising around in a PvP ship trying to gank ratters, am I now going to get lit up by the rats the second I warp into somebody's site to tackle them? Because if this is the case it's going to literally ruin ratter-hunting (and help protect bots, for that matter).

I believe it's emergent gameplay, and they'll just tell you to take more people on your roams.

Unintended Consequence #28123 identified and filed sir!

Ok you said no pods but if a rat cynos in a super carrier rat when I am doing an escalation I will shat myself :P

I say this because I read some comments on reddit. people are being negative and giving bad advice to new prospects.

For the missioner perspective... This change shouldn't really hurt you.

For the Noobs, The changes to cruisers basically fully negate these changes, and will make level IV's possible for low skilled accounts, whereas, they would be able to hop in logi cruisers and act as a platform allowing the higher skilled people to fit dps.

These changes seem to be put into play because of the re-work to cruisers. IMO. no one should complain, because it is ccp thinking ahead of themselves... hopefully. Without these changes, people could run trial accounts in T1 logi cruisers, blitzing sites and so on. (Granted, one could triple box and theorhettically do the same.)

I hope this increases the prices from low/null sites to compare to WH delving to a degree.

Yah... I'm guessing it's going to be DoA until sometime next week. And it's nearly midnight in Iceland now, so I can't imagine any Dev's waking up in the middle of the night / middle of the weekend to get the test server up for us.



Not all the rats will aggress the SB, but every single rat that swaps to the SB will continue killing the SB until he warps out.



It's an excellent policy to have, and the tears from PvP'ers who get popped by 'bears when most of the PLEX turns it's guns on them, and continues to kill them while ignoring the missioner... will be grand ^_^



Running L4's in a T1 Cruiser? Huh. Should be fascinating to see, wonder if it'll go over any better than running L4's in a T3 BC.

Yah, read that as well... but T1 cruiser's won't have T2 cruiser tanks... and will end up tanking / holding aggro off everything because they've tuned repping aggro to be the amongst the highest. Except for RR drones... which apparently don't have aggro (according to CCP), is boggled...



Was confused... people can currently solo L4's in a BS and take as many trial account friends as they want, for an ever-decreasing pool of pretty terrible mission rewards (INB4 someone points out that high-sec accounts for the most ISK earned, with roughly 85% of the server population living there).



Was... more confused. not sure why fewer drone boats would impact low-sec prices... but it may eventually increase the prices for Cap / SCap fittings with the difficulty in tanking the DED 10/10 sites.

Note for Drone Boats. Look under the New Destroyers in Features & Ideas.
CCP are proposing a damage buff for your Drone Aug units.



Just so you don't all miss it and rage that your not getting any kind of compensations.

Which would be welcome because drones do rather apathetic damage as is... except, since your drones will be out less often and you'll be micro-managing everything more... it's probably a barely break even feature.

Also, I think most people are more concerned with the terrible terrible Drone Interface... less the fact that their drones do bad DPS. I mean, we're used to terribad drone DPS, and used to simply ignoring our drones for most missions that don't include triggers the drones will throw themselves at first... the idea of ripping our drones back every 30 seconds or so is just poor management for something that should be vaguely artistically intelligent.



Actually, more importantly and more likely to happen MUCH more often with this change... drones returning to your drone bays deal 0 damage as well.

Let's see if I can keep from ranting


Please try a mission that is not so easy, again rats that are not the most... easy?
1) They spawn in neat small waves, each wave is easy-as-hell (and the bonus room is predictable, but let's ignore it)
2) They don't use debiliating EWAR

How to ramp up the challenge rating?
Try a room like World's collide, both side on Gurista/Serpentis (they have a few more interesting ones, like The Attack Serpentis - once in a while you get full room aggro in it even though you didn't shoot nor with guns or drones the ones that should give it), the results may or may not be different than with angel's.

For added testing bonus, pretend you have been successfully Jammed twice (up to 40 seconds?) or Dampened down to to 9km targeting range and 40 sec lock time.
It will happen for some unlucky folks every once in a while, so should be tested for what happens then, right?

You may want to start by taking care of the frigate rats so you can warp out in case of an emergency. But you cannot command which target to hit, they may be 15km away, and tripple-webbed(do I remember right rat EWAR has no stacking penalty) +scram on your drones if they are unlucky. Game mechanics on sig size and hostility (you did nothing, targeted nothing) makes it more part of design, and not luck...
Anyways, any drone targeted in such fashion will NOT make it back. Once they jump onto the next, it will be just as dead as the previous one. And you loose half a mill every time, without a chance to interact.

Sentries are fair enough, the one that gets shot at you recall, and then continue with a release. Ofc with each drone agressed, you loose 20% of your dps for a while, but it aint so bad, a tracking disruptor would be just as bad for your guns.

Heavy Drones: Let's say one flies a ship 175/125 dronespace, and uses heavies (lack of skill, not wanting to sit still). With the sig bloom the heavies get moving back, attacking a rat that shoots from 50km, if they also get their friend's attention, it will be pretty unlikely that they make it back in one piece.


Keeping drones alive with repairs and "heal agro":
Repair range is limited, cruiser-sized opponents may orbit up to 30km while medium reppers have a range of 6km. Large ones go up to 55km, repair range is under 10km on T2s. Should they make it back so far, they are "as good as inside" the drone bay anyways, so it's irrelevant.
Sentries can be repped just fine, that is if you are willing to use less guns and drone range controls, takes up targeting slots Assuming no Jam/Damp when you release them back..


Travel time of drones will be much more of a factor in dps / mission completition time.
Every time I recall the little guys that were out at 25-50km, the round trip time will be dps loss (for the sake of showing realistic scenarios, let's say I fly a Myrm in a L3, or heavies in an Armageddon while moving towars gates in The Score).
It's like a reloading for guns. Except that my "guns" may be broken, the proces may take longer, or be more frequently needed, and recalling one might just get agro on two others.


Constantly juggling the ones that have agro sounds... not like my idea of fun.
Also a huge loss of dps and concentration
And increase in drone travel speed, health, and an immunity to EWAR (which solve SOME of the problems) would screw up the PvP side of things. Or can they be made rat EWAR-immune?


Someone before mentioned that the destroyer-hull frigate rats can take light drones out with two salvoes, so even if they don't get EWARed, it's quite possible to instantly loose a drone if 3 of those agress it at the same time, before one has time to react?
That would be just plain bad.

Because anyone who is not a drone fanatic like myself has long since stopped using them, and fanatics are unreasonable anyways? ...I for one think I'll be using the time till the winter expansion to train up something like T2 ACs and use a Mach/Vargur from now on. About twice the damage than my sentry drones with two amps, and no annoying micro-management.
Until those get nerfed as well, then time to train something new!


Not (just) droneship-minded closing lines
Mid-slot EWAR as "tanking":
So let me get this straight... I'm going to fit a module that has "Taunt" written over it, so the "dps" little guys can go nuts (drones or newbs in smaller/undertanked ships)?
Except that there is no "taunt meter", and they may or may not still shoot at my drones/friends? Who are possibly outside rep range (or forcing them in tight patterns, possibly outside their gun's optimal), so hostile EWAR is my only choice?
And as far as game lore goes, why would I fit a module that slightly reduces the capabilities of only ONE hostile ship, when there are a dozen others just like him coming bearing down on me? Would make a lot more sense to boost my own ship, so vastly outnumbered.

Saying that one should fit modules for dealing with agro on unintended friendlies when without the AI acting the way it does wouldn't make that much sense, doesn't sounds like a nice gameplay mechanic to me.

Hope the change will be done along with a player-approvedly improved drone interface.


It will be interesting to hear how bounty payouts per tick and total a day will change for a particular setup (Dominix), and not just for the player masses in overall.
Got such detailed statistics as well?