EVE General Discussion

Sarcastic : This must all be lies because I distinctly read 'they tested it and only lost two drones doing a lot of L4s'

For solo L4 runner the selection of feasible ships just got extremely limited and extremely expensive.

or you could just turn the garden at your home into a petting zoo using the family pets for some happy snapz to raise some money to buy lots of PLEX like CCP want us mission runners to do.

I didn't do it for very long. Was just one of many experiments during years of mission running.

Only mentioned it to demonstrate it was possible. I'm sure there's lots of people out there who abused it.

All that SP in drones wasted. Can I get it back?

No. You can still use your drones just fine, only they will be instantly popped. Working as intended.

how sweet

Dual armor reppers, with the mid slots full of cap chargers, make lots of battleships into L4 running machines. I have a Hyperion with a ridiculous tank.

I used shields starting out, and The Mael was even my first L4 battleship, but as soon as i trained up armor tanking i never looked back. Shields are more suited for PvP because they can absorb lots of damage fast, but are harder to get stable, which doesn't really matter so much if everyone is dead before cap runs out.

I blow up fighters orbiting my megathron with blasters. For the close range missions just swap to pulse.

Sounds like CCP has a lot of work ahead of them, then...

I"m seeing a lot of the "just adapt because :wormholes:" argument being tossed around, and it's really the laziest troll to employ for people who are seriously concerned about the drone situation.

The logic of this implies that anything that should be suffered in one part of the game should be suffered elsewhere without consideration for the different roles that Somewhere A and Somewhere B have in the game. It also utterly disregards the disparity in the basket of benefits available from Somewhere A and Somewhere B. Now, if the challenges of A should be just like B, then either the rewards should also be identical, or one area--either A or B--is unnecessary.

More importantly, we're talking about a weapons system that is, at least on several ships, intended to be its primary weapon system. Now, drones already suffer the disadvantage that they are destructible at all. The only other primary weapon with this disadvantage (to a lesser extent) is missiles, which can take damage from well-timed smartbombs or defender missiles. The issue at hand, of course, is that the degree to which the weakness of this primary weapon system is now being exploited by the NPC AI renders it useless for its intended function. I imagine if every NPC were given smartbombs that automatically destroyed all incoming missiles, the rage would be overwhelming.

The disdain for those who are concerned about their primary weapon being nerfed all to hell stems entirely from the fact that the weapon system in question only excels in one major use: lazy-mode missioning. It's not the fastest, most efficient ISK / hour way to mission, but it's certainly one of the least stressful. Some people play games to de-stress--you know, relax. Maybe you aren't one of them. Lots of things in the game are designed for you; drones probably aren't one of them.

Personally, I'd really like to see a dev respond to this matter. It seems to me from the reports here that the new AI is not performing as advertised. Having read the features on CCP's page for Retribution, I noticed that the dev said he lost 2 drones over 9 L4 missions in his testing. Now, with that being the bar, I'd say that even if it were functioning as advertised, that's still a dramatic nerf. A competent droneship pilot might lose 2 drones in a hundred missions (on a bad sample of 100). If any other weapon saw a nerf by a factor of more than 10, the outrage from the turret-monkeys would be even louder.

Anyone care to have a serious conversation about this problem?