EVE General Discussion

This just in: fighting in battleships is more fun than frigates and cruisers.

Do you not feel sufficiently challenged by your PVE? I thought the drone changes were in response to the NPC AI in missions being laughable, farmable and bottable for many years..

that means you dont really use drones or dont do pve. in a torpedo raven its easier to bot-rat years ago thanks to waves,
now drones havent just got nerfed but got rendered totally useless

Alas I am not a game dev, so I have no clue as to the true fix to the boring pve department.

But I would start with some things such as to make npc ships more closely resemble player ships, more hp , more damage, random fittings, ect, ect. The Feeling of wow I can alpha these battleships in one volley is nice and kind of a powerful feeling for the first half hour then it just seems like tediously swatting fly's in missions with 30+ npc. I would love to see a smaller but much more dangerous and competent amount of npc.

Random mission triggers would also help with the now currently robotic way we run missions.

Hell add in npc bounty hunting missions, the agent gives you a strong npc target, tells you a system and you route them out and kill them. Make the bounty do interesting stuff like randomly warping out to belts (hey loook a use for D-scan in high sec PvE) or calling in a friend for reinforcement, or even another npc bounty hunter warping to the target as you do and then give you a choice of helping them for a lower reward or blow them both the hell up for a full reward.


We need more dynamic and less static.

These are just a few thoughts and hell they still might end up just as boring. All I know is that some thing needs to change, and this little AI change was not really a step in the right direction.

Maybe they wandered into a slowcat fleet and died.

I hear a big thing is going after ratting carriers, so...

Why on earth would you buy a Domi and kit it out for lvl 4 missions now? The obvious answer is you are attempting to promote the oft cited "ADAPT" philosophy and thats okay. Nobody is going to be using Domis for lvl 4s even though it can be done. It just happens to be the slowest way to do lvl 4s now and thats fine too. This change is not going to be rolled back. Its here to stay. If all you have are drone skills, do something else while training turrets or missiles. Nobody likes having the way they do something slapped around but it happens.

As a drone boat pilot my method of "adapting" was to train Sentry Drone Interfacing 5 and look into tactics for using sentry drones, and it just finished

Admittedly a 25 day training was quite annoying but now that it's done I can't believe how good they are.

I used to rat angels with Berserker IIs as they had far higher dps than tech 1 bouncers which always took ages to kill anything. But Tech 2 bouncers can do the same amount of dps as Berserker IIs from anything up to 100km and eliminates travel time.

What initially seemed like a nerf has actually forced me to look at something I'd never previously considered and I reckon I rat about 20-30% faster now.

The only problem is if the rats get too close but I changed my AB for a Micro Jump Drive and that has basically dealt with that issue. Personally I'm quite happy now.

I test domi navy and its looks good with sentry (nightmare for ogres and othey non staionary drones), anyway this new AI featrure push meny pilots to swich to instant damage form range missile or long range ships who focusing on pure guns damage with zero drones, using a drone boat these days suck a bit in general, and this in most cases affect only drones ships.

Not good for people for chose gallente and some ammar pilots in general.

To the "it's fine, just use sentries" people:

It is NOT fine, for a number of reasons.

1. Sentries only really become usable at elite cruiser level at the earliest. This is not fine for a new player who would be doing L1-L3 missions against many elite frigs and cruisers (who target drones of all sizes). Sentries are not an option for these players yet. As such, the situation is most certainly not fine.

The only reason we don't see a lot of complaints is because A) EVE doesn't really have (m)any new players coming in, most new characters are just alts of new players. And B) those new players that do run into this issue either train something else or quietly quit the game if they're unwilling to play in a way different from which they prefer.

Which brings up an interesting point. Drones are the "pet class" or "minion master" equivalent of EVE. If it is not fun or viable for new players, that turns them off from the game. Can they train something else? Sure. But why would they want to, if they want to play a minion master class, but end up at a huge disadvantage PLUS having to do tons of extra micromanagement with absolutely zero additional payoff for the hassle?

2. Sentries aren't really drones. They're stationary deployable, destructible space turrets. They function completely differently from all other entities in "Drones" window. They require drone skills, yes, and go into a drone bay, but for all intents and purposes they are extra turrets.

Don't get me wrong. As an old-ish player myself (had T2 sentries for a long time now), yes, the change is fine. But as a new player, I would absolutely loathe these changes.

I'm usually not a big fan of cap stable fits but...

...Seeing your advice, I couldn't help but wonder how many people - who didn't read / plan ahead at the change - got caught unaware, with all drones dead in a pocket, tank stable, but no way out due to scramblers under the guns...