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Slightly off for a weird tangent, but tried smartbombing since I happened to have a dread gurista large one I didnt take to the market yet.
Took 6 cycles on a sole ship to take rid of the six orbiting gurista (so appropiate damage) rats I deemed worthy of fiery (erm... kinetic) DOOOM.
(Those were the ones that didn't orbit 500meters outside the faction mod's range, while webbing and scramming me down to 5.1 m/s.)

So the torp didnt target/attack during those ~3 cycles it should have taken.

Running anoms and lvl 5 missions should also be checked using subcaps with fighters assigned from a carrier that's sitting at a safe.

Brought to you by the same team doing this 'fix'.



I mentioned right? Same team?

Sadly we'll probably have to wait until the server's come back up (someday we hope?) else the answer may be something akin to:

"We ran the first room of the Score, L4, in a Tengu with fighter assistance. It was fairly easy, but we lost two fighters to rat aggro. We're okay with this."

You should allow people to move drones from their cargo bay to their drone bay so they don't have to fly back to station to load more drones all the time...

Harden the **** up?

Cross posting this here from the other thread. What I should have done was posted this here and put a link on the other thread. Sorry.

[quote]
Hey guys!

So if you don't know who I am I am the guy that is making this change. Just to be clear the dev blog about this can be found over here and the feedback thread for it can be found here.

I have been attempting to follow that feedback thread primarily and I apologize for not reading this thread and commenting on it sooner. I would prefer if you had additional feedback that you posted it in the feedback thread above.

Now, down to business. I have read a good portion of the thread, if I don't answer your question directly sorry. I will however try and answer as many questions as possible.

I have read a few posts stating that devs don't play the game, or that we don't play a specific area of the game such as high sec PvE, or null sec PvE. I can't even begin to tell you how wrong you are. Just in the game design department alone we have people who play both of those areas and much more. This is also not a change we just willy nilly said "well we have nothing else to do so let’s throw darts at a board and pick something random." This is a change we really feel is needed and really believe in.

As most of this thread is focused on the concerns of drone users let’s start with them. I don't think I made this entirely clear when I posted the dev blog, but one of the factors that go into an NPC picking a target is the sig radius of both the NPC and the target. The NPC prefer to shoot things matching their own sig radius. This means that if you are in a BS with drones, the cruiser and BS sized NPCs will much prefer to target you while the frigates will probably prefer to switch to your drones. In other words; even when the NPC decide to shoot your drones they don't die nearly as quickly as when you accidentally kill the wrong trigger and a whole new wave spawns shooting your drones. Is that a buff to drones? I don’t know, but it sure is a change.

I also don't think I made it entirely clear as to how much threat generation matters to this new NPC. One of the really cool things you can do is take two ships with less tank than is currently required, when one tank is failing do something to generate a lot of threat and have the NPC switch to you. I know, this whole concept of managing aggro is new to EVE but other games have been doing it for a long time. With how smart you guys are, I have faith you will quickly come up with ways to beat the new AI far faster than we can.

One of the things I have been doing is using a flight of light drones to kill the frigate NPC and then going with sentry or heavy drones because once the light drones are dead the cruisers and BS basically don't care about drones. Also, a smart bomb is nice for dealing with large numbers of frigates in close.

I am actually currently of the opinion that these changes are making missions two easy in some cases. With how the NPC acted before, all you had to do was bring one tank that was good enough to tank them for the entire time. Now all you need a tank enough to survive until you get them to switch targets. I have seen people run missions/PLEX with dual rep Dominix and maybe a bit of RR on a second one. You can now do the same with 0 local rep, some RR, and replace the local reps with drone damage mods. The result? More DPS from you primary form of DPS (your drones) and this fantastic ability to control aggro.

People in wormholes and Incursions have been dealing with this new AI for some time now without much of a problem. I have seen wormhole setups that use drones be of great success. The NPC I am giving the new AI to will have a lot less hate towards drones than the ones in Incursions or wormholes. This means drone setups should be even more viable than in either wormholes or Incursions.

So drone users, please hold on for just a bit and as soon as our test server is up with these changes I will let you know. Once you have had a chance to test it, died/failed miserably, and tried a new setup I would love some feedback.

To give you an example of how these changes have made things too easy in my opinion. I tanked the final room of The Maze, specifically the citadel torpedo launcher that does something like 180k EM damage, with a single flight of light drones. o_O That will probably change, but my point stands. There are plenty of options still out there for drone users.

Admittedly for those that solo missions in a ship that has no drones this change means nothing at all. It has the largest impact on drone users and groups of players.

Think about this. If we had this AI in from the beginning and came to you and said "hey, we want to swap the AI out to something that will pick the first target it sees and never changes" I am pretty sure we would be laughed at... a lot.

Are there going to be people that die to this change? Yea, especially to that crazy citadel torpedo launcher that exists at the end of The Maze and other anomalies. Just like how peopled died to it when we first introduced it. What I advise is that players take extreme care when they are doing any PvE content in which they previously did with more than one ship and/or with drones. Don't trust the guides online, don't trust what you know. Approach it as new content.

If you are aware of any specific content in which you fear will be unplayable after this changes please bring it to my attention. I am playing through and testing as much content as I can get my hangs on.

What other things are being brought up as concerns?

Null sec ganks of people running PvE content. This does have an effect on that no doubt. To be honest yes this means you will no longer be able to do this solo in a stealth bomber. I however just tested it and was able to tank six frigate NPC in my nemesis long enough for another character to jump into the system and warp 73au. I might be wrong but with the...

I was not referring to Level 4 Missions.

Please can you check anomalies like Forsaken Hubs which are frequently run with a subcap and fighter support..

Thanks

@CCP Foxfour

Have you considered scaling loot for the need for more people in high end DED plex sites?

For example, the Maze and it's massive missile launcher requires a specific setup ship that can tank that thing as if you use low buffered cruisers, you get pretty much 1 shot due to the webs.Considering we'll need to bring more due to the change in the AI, please consider encouraging more people to work together.

This is kind of a two part question:

1. Has the Maze been tested so that we can still run a 'tank' in it?
2. Can some loot scaling be added so that everyone gets an overseers artifact or something?

Or perhaps the rats have been pounding on the ratter with no luck, so switch to an easier target to take something down before they die? Pretty sure players will do the same thing if they don't have a shot of winning, they'll try and take down whatever they can.