EVE General Discussion

Dominix: still remains a popular ship. It is fairly good, except for the drone mechanics themselves, which are terribly outdated. While we are not certain when this can be tackled, it definitely has high priority on our to-do list.

OK, I'll bite.

Do you feel that drone boats are just fine as they are right now?

If you feel they are fine, how do you explain the following:

-Drone boats do not appear in top #20 most used ship, nor have they to my knowledge in the past 3-5 years. They underperform in most situations, and are seldom used. Which is basically the very definition of something that needs a comprehensive review.

-Drone boats are in considerably less demand than turret and missile boats, and cheaper because supply far outshines the demand. Case in point, Navy Domi recently dropped from 500 mil to 300 mil (cheapest faction BS?).

-Drones take 2-5x more clicks to use (launch and attack and watch their HP) than firing all turrets/missiles (grouped, 1 click).

-Drones are the only weapon system without overheat mechanic to it allowing to boost its effectiveness.

-Drones are the only weapon system without appropriate rigs (there's sentry damage rigs, but no heavy/medium/light damage rigs).

-Drones are the only weapon system without appropriate implants (there's implants for turrets and missiles and scanning and mining...but not drones). This was brought up by CSM as far back as Jan '10, and still nothing.

-Sentry drones still bugged, they don't require nor benefit from racial drone specialization, when all other T2 weapons including other drones do require and benefit from such skills.

-Drones have insane stats, a heavy drone has 100 sig radius, while a ship carrying 3 of them has a sig radius of 120? And fast shield-tanked drones have the same sig radius as slow armor-tanked drones?

-Drones of T2 type have the exact same resist profile as T1, when it should be better (which could be the root cause of many current complaints).

-Ships capable of being drone boats OR turret boats are outfitted as turret boats 99% of the time, why, if drones are fine? (see Proteus)

I could go on with these issues, but there doesn't seem to be a point.

All of this working as intended? Seriously?

There are more important issues to fix, like nullsec, capital ships and POSes. A drone revamp is much needed, but not at the expense of those features.

I must admit I have never seen so many pod flyers upset about one item from an update, read the vibes CCP please.

Really?

Because EVERY expansion has the same result, a load of people scream about some changes that mean they can't carry on as they were before the expansion while a whole stack of others just kinda shrug and get on with ****.

Personally, I dislike that some of the old cosmos ded sites have been removed, I love those sites but I'll just adapt and do something else.

Signed.

Personally, I would like to see drone boats being able to launch more than 5 drones. Why? Simple: variety and balance.

Look at the Drake. It has missiles, and can launch 5 unbonused drones. This works out to about 90% of DPS of the setup coming from missiles, and 10% from drones (if that, probably lower). So a Drake can replace those drones with ECM drones, at a loss of 10% DPS, and be somewhat flexible and unpredictable.

Now look at Myrm. It has unbonused turrets, but bonused drones. Damage split is closer to 50/50. We can argue specifics later. So, if I wanted to deploy ECM drones, on a Myrm, I could do it. But it would cost me a loss of 50% of my DPS! As a result, a drone boat is theoretically more flexible, but in practice nobody in their right mind would do it, the DPS penalty is just too heavy.

Sooo, my suggestion would be to allow drone control units on subcaps. Make the cost (high slots, PG/CPU) such that you can't fit too many. But aim at allowing an average drone boat deploy between 10-15 drones. Total DPS on the ship would be the same, you'd just be losing turrets and replacing them with more drones, as an option.

This would allow the Myrmidon to field 10 Hobgoblin II's, which I wouldn't mind sacrificing a turret (or few) for the ability to do. Would actually make the Guardian Vexor worthwhile again.