Player Features and Ideas Discussion

ACTUAL DRONE BOATS

i dont' mean a domi, which can field 5 sentry or heavy drones on top of it's turrets, or whatever other ships are out there that can field 5 heavy drones.

What I mean is a battleship, or orca sized hull that is a PURE drone boat. No turrets, not launchers, nothing....just pure drones.

Can fit drone control units, but only has 5 high slots and no turret or missile hard points. With a band width of 125, meaning it can field 5 sentry or heavy drones if needed, but 10 light or medium drones.
Slight bonus to medium and light drone damage
Slight bonus to drone velocity
large drone control range bonus (maybe at max skills up to 150km)

It would be allowed in high sec, but required to use jump gates(no jump drive).

Not sure if it would be considered a sub cap, or a battleship class, and i'm not sure whether it should be allowed in missions or not.

Little bit of math.

in a domi with all skills lvl 5, you get 475 dps with 10 hammerhead II drones.
So the damage output of the drones would need to be buffed and put it, i would say, in the 700 dps, which is conservative when you figure that marauders and most pirate ships can do over 1k dps.

Give them somewhat large drone bays to compensate for the possible loss of drones, since all their dps relies on drones.

If you decide to make these faction vessels, then each faction mini carrier get a bonus to that faction's specific drones in order to get their 700 dps.

So in order to get 700 dps
Amarr mini carrier - bonus to em drone damage
Gallente mini - bonus to therm
Caldari mini - bonus to kinetic
Minmatar mini - bonus to exposive

With the bonuses labelled out this way it keeps these boats from being omni damaging, thus relying on their specific damage type to be effective (maybe 550 dps without their specific drones - 700 with). This would possibly make them somewhat tankable.

They're able to field 10 medium drones. This way if they're used in pvp all of their damage isn't applied into just 5 drones.

There drone bay also wouldn't have to be that large considering light and medium drones don't occupy that much bay, so put them maybe in the 500m3 range or maybe more.

If they're decided to be a battleship class, then they would have tank ability related to that of a battleship.
They would still require tracking modules for their drones in order to make the damage more effective, the same as turrets need tracking, and missiles need target painters, so they wouldn't be able to fit a solid tank ship.

The one consideration is towards armor/shield/ewar drones, so the options are either don't allow them to be put in the ship, limit these types of drones to 5 as well, or give the mini carriers a penalty towards these types of drones.

So you would have 4 different types, one for each race, each one having a specific damage type bonus (gallente less effective bonus cause thermal is the most versatile damage type), which means there's not one individual ship flying around pwning everything with drones.

Skills to fly
bs's lvl 5
Drones lvl 5
and whatever other skills might be needed
(race) Sub carriers level 1 (not sure that's a good name for them but you get the point)

however, we could also add a 5th... an industrial...a drone exhumer

Skills to fly
Exhumers lvl 5
drones lvl 5
mining lvl 5
maybe some other skills
industrial sub carriers lvl 1

Can only field 5 medium combat drones, but up to 10 mining drones, with large bonuses towards mining drone cargo capacity, yield, velocity, and control range, with a warp drive so you can mine the belt from max lock distance.
Mines the same amount as a hulk, but does it with drones and can fit more tank than the hulk for low/null/wh mining.
Because we all know the hulk is still a pretty weak ship when in pvp....Just look at hulkagedon and the resent Icecapades.

The only bonus this ship has over the hulk is tank, and the distance to which it can mine from.

So this gives us 5 new ships, which is assentially one entirely new class, and a balanced class because it's not a one ship does all class due to the racial bonuses and limitations on shield, armor, and e-war drones.

Any thoughts?

Variaty is the spice of life.

Why frigs?
Why cruisers?
Why bs's?
Why industrials?
Why mining ships?
Why noctis?
Why titans?
Why carriers?

My point is, none of the ships in game are a neccessity unless they're designed to take out another ship, however, that other ship wasn't a neccesity.

So the real question is, Why not?

Again, that falls back on what i said just a second ago.

The only reason there are ships designed to fill a role is to give variaty.

You could take every ship in game and give them all the same abilities and what not and you wouldn't need ships designed to fill a specific role.

However, in order to give variaty, ships were given specific roles and niches.

The role it fills is simply allowing players to have a ACTUAL drone boat that isn't a carrier.

So it's role is a high sec carrier.

Designed to allow players to control more than 5 drones without having to get into a carrier or super carrier.

Whats wrong with a Vexor? or a Myrmidon? and of course the Dominix?
The Gallente race is the drone users, just as Amarr have lasers and Caldari have EW.
If you just start adding ships for the sake of giving drone boats to all the races you will begin to work against eve's story and racial qualities.

Also a ship with pure drones would be at a loss with no high slots. It certainly wouldn't have the tank of a carrier and all it would take is some smart bombs to kill the drones and leave the ship defenseless.... I couldn't see this working out.

Drone boat doesn't mean I can field a crap ton of drones at once as you say 10. It means I can hold a lot of drones in my bay and get special bonuses toward their damage or abilities. As soon as you field more than 5 drones your either a carrier or a Guardian Vexor.

"Variety" is not the reason for ships with different roles, its simply something that happens as a result.

Ships are given specific roles so that we can have a "rock, paper, scissor" feel to Eve on a much more complex level.

Adding a bunch of drone ships fills no role other than....a ship with a lot of drones. That is not a traditional "role."

Really, this is you once again trying to accommodate the bears of high sec, this time with a compromise ship: a mini carrier.

If high sec players want higher end content like carriers (i.e. ships with lots of drones and other cool features) they can poke their heads out of high sec and go for it. Adding this "compromise" is silly.