EVE General Discussion

• Battleship NPCs will go for large drones.

Not true, i just tested it.
Machariel with 4 heavy drones ( Republic Fleet Berserker ) and only frigs + cruisers on field.
My drones were aggroed instantly so ccp please check your patch, heavy drones should only get aggro from BS's.

Battleships will go for large drones, but everything else will too

Again not true, my hobgoblins were also targeted by battleships.

Instead of nerfing our drones, they should have just given NPCs drone of their own. Not like EoM doesn't use enough Arbitrators, after all. That would have made things more challenging for everyone equally, not just the drone captains.

This is just incredible ignorance. EVE is not about PVE. Heavies are wonderful in close range combat. And I fully agree with Tippia and others who say that sentries have always been better for PVE.

Embrace the sentries, they are simply put magnificient weapons of destruction, that allow many interesting tactics in PVP as well.

Also, about your EWAR comment, yes you can use a web on your drone boat, and especially target painter. These increase your applied damage, which is pretty much the most important thing. Web and paint a target, and watch it get ripped to pieces by your drones. Paint a far away target and watch your sentries hit better.

And they draw aggro. You can even control your drones with a painter.

So both is best, right? :)

Painter does indeed have a very long cycle, in our PVE application, sleeper harvesting with sentry Domis, one cycle is normally enough. Also, very handy when your highs are full of RR and cap transfers, and you got a ton of drones assigned to you.

I shall remember to fit guns to my carrier next time i do lvl 5. WTF was i thinking, I mean just because 2 Target painters a heavy neut and an ecm burst STILL wasn't enough threat generation to keep my FIGHTERS from popping, I just should fit guns to that damn Thanny.

Stupid me..

Was the intention to change the way NPCs work, but somehow in a way that players don't have to change anything?

Don't get me wrong, resistance is the default human reaction to changes and it's ok. But consider the possibility that the eventual goal of CCP for pve is to change it completely, and this is just the beginning? Maybe soloable L5s in carriers with invulnerable drones is "broken" in their vision?

Maybe the customer feedback from group pve in wormholes and incursions has been very positive, and they have come to the conclusion that bringing players together for pve leads to social bonding, stronger customer satisfaction and increased subscriptions, and they want to expand the concept of co-operative gameplay and make it available for wider audience, because it fits so perfectly in an MMO largely dependent on lively group dynamics.

Consider for a moment that the purpose of the change is to nerf the use of drone boats (specifically carriers) for running anoms.

I've not lost a single drone from my mission Domi to the new AI. Paying attention is a remarkable thing