Missions & Complexes

Now you have pointed this out yes.

Once the EWAR timer is over you're still under the effects of the TD.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong (seriously, correct me), but the comment that TPing a BS is useless seems odd off. Let's say that a Sansha battleship has a signature radius of 350, and my pulse lasers have a signature of 400. By painting the battleship, I've just increased my damage output by 14.3%, right? I can't think of a single gunnery skill that can give that kind of return in short order. Personally, I fit 2x TPs on my anomaly-running Paladin so that I can switch targets quickly without waiting on the TP to finish cycling. Especially in the case that you're a new player, I can't think of a better way to get your damage up so quickly.

Has anyone looked into this?

Because I would like to point out that as a semicasual and newbieish player, this was the single thing that turned me off the most from this game.

I played a year ago on a caldari ship, and eventually got into a Raven, and had a blast! The targetting lock thingy that their rats did was annoying but ultimately it would drop off and you could go on your way pumping them full of missiles.

Tracking disruption is a different beast. Never have I been more stressed out and frustrated by a game mechanic.

I don't think this makes the game harder in anyway, just really really confusing.

After asking my long time playing friend what to do, he suggested a few options.

1. Let drones take care of it. I leveled my drones to 5, and pumped drone interfacing and am now trying to get up to tech 2 drones. This works really well, after I took a week off to train for it. Let me emphasize that...I took a week off of level 3 missions just to finish one. I know I could've dumped it after a while, but this sat badly with me and I hope you can understand the frustration here.

My drones eventually could take down elite frigates, and I was happy!

...and then elite cruisers come into play. Light drones no longer do any damage to those, and I'm not skilled enough for sentries yet. Another week of waiting.

2. Tracking computer. For a low skilled pilot as many of you know, getting a cap stable or near cap stable amarr ship is already a nontrivial feat. To have to take out a cap recharger usually means having to skill up (another week...for one mission...) or dropping a heat sink/hardener, or hoping you can kill it before your cap dries. None of which are easy choices.

Compare this to my raven, kestrel, drake, etc. I didn't need to change anything to run any mission at all.

Anyway, it turns out a tracking computer isn't even a fix. As far as I can tell tracking computers on beams is still almost not worth it to try to hit tracking disruption. On max range, I can, on a harbinger with medium beams. However, on an armageddon with large beams, no way at all.

Also, the fact that my range is now almost kaput, means I have to fit low damage crystals to try to hit them, all the while their bship friends are happily pounding away at my hull.

3. Get in close for pulses. Um...I tried this. I fit a tracking computer, mega pulses...and tried to chase down an elite cruiser with it. It turns out my range had been pooped on until it was 14km + 4. On a LARGE GUN. I don't think I need to explain how futile this was.

I'm not a very skilled player, and I conceed I may have gotten in my battleship a bit early. But I will say, that this amarran mission and ship progression, from my omen to my harbinger to my armageddon, tracking disruption would always ruin my day. My friend can attest to the number of emails I sent him cursing and almost quitting the game over how unfair the tracking disruption seems.

Regardless of what happens, i think it needs to be addressed, if not changed, at least give a new player some options to deal with them, other than bum rush them and hope for the best, or wait a week to train up new skills just to deal with ONE thing. Mostly...it was just so depressing to get into a brand new ship, fit it with shiny guns, EFT for an hour or so trying to fit everything, a big smile on your face, and then just get shut down on your first mission.

A suggestion maybe would be to make them not also lower optimal and falloff. Thats just...adding insult to injury.

Or make them have a chance to fall off, or make them not have 1000000000km range, so you can have a chance of sniping them before its all over.

Thanks for your time reading, and I really hope how to deal with this gets addressed!

Confirming that after the patch even when i am not TDed on screen my guns are still being affected by the tracking the disruption.

They might as well of called this patch The "Switch to missile boat patch". Sure lets promote people using drones to kill off the stuff TDing my guns.... OH WAIT all my drones get instalocked and shot at.

Maybe im the only one who is actually pretty pissed off at how much this one screw up has screwed up my experience in eve.

This is pathetic CCP.

TD is definitely insane, and I think the 80-90 km range is too far (perhaps about 50 km?).

However, you can still solo these rooms if you use a MJD and snipe the TD boats from long range.

I managed 3-4 of the Amarr Epic Arc sansha missions yesterday, where there's a lot of these TD boats, and when I used a close-range pulse-laser Abbadon fit, I could hit nothing, but with a long-range Apoc sniper (204 dps at 146 km), they were no problem at all.

Of course, it was much more fun and easier when a friend in a heavy active shield tanked raven took aggro.

The bigger the range the less tracking you need....Im more worried about breaking tanks with 204 DPS to be honest.

Just did a sansha lvl 4 and while the TD wasn't too bad (after a cycle it did stop, and not just for 5 secs), there is definitely a glitch as far as TD deactivating but still affecting you is concerned. It seemed limited to sansha bs, cruisers would deactivate normally, but the bs wouldn't stop TD'ing me until destroyed, even though it's cycle had finished

The whole point of this topic is to criticize the PERMANENT tracking disruption. If you have rats that stop disrupting you, then there's absolutely no problem.

Also, if you're talking micro jump drive ranges, 50-100km I suppose, then you're not being disrupted that seriously. If you get a proper spawn with 8-10 ships perma disrupting you, range will always be <20km, at that range hitting rats with Tachyons or Mega Beams is difficult without td, impossible with that amount of tracking disruption.

forgot and undocked a rail vulture for sansha smuggler interception...

left in disgust, docked, and fit heavy missiles to it... still demotivated.

it has been a while since I used a golem.

//woke up with new motivation and raep'd with the golem. go missiles

http://i.imgur.com/6Rmn8.jpg

room 3 @ 14:19
http://i.imgur.com/u4avI.jpg

9 minutes later:
http://i.imgur.com/uK0BG.jpg

not cut off completely, i still see the occasional missile from a navy megathron every now and then