Test Server Feedback

After extensively using the Vargur and the Paladin on the test server yesterday and today, here's my insight on how the ship handles.

I feel like the ships have decent to above average sustainability. However, in order to survive, using Bastion is somewhat required, but out of Bastion they feel a bit on the weak side. For a T2 hull, the Vargur in particular lacks a lot of buffer - adding that to the vulnerability out of Bastion, and their fleet usage seems a bit limited (no RR allowed in Bastion, low tank out of Bastion).

Actually, no RR in Bastion feels like a good thing, coupled with the MJD, flying one feels quite tactical. A proper positioning is harder to achieve and the ship gets easily punished if a mistake is done. Bastion+MJD cooldown give a 1 to 2 minutes of complete inability to escape from an incoming ship.

Bastion mode works rather well. Not being able to move is cool, as the ship becomes a stationary long range platform. However, Bastion stacking with other range mods puts the bonus to shame, adding little to nothing in real usage. The extra resists are nice, but they'd be better be native of the hull...proper T2 resists on the hull, and a bonus to buffer. The rep bonus is extremely useful, and works well with the lack of RR and ewar immunity (marauders are way too easy to jam, particularly annoying against Guristas for mission runners).

My main issue is that the ship feels a bit on the useless side outside of Bastion. They're powerful, but the slow speed, the slow align and speed up, coupled with a small buffer, regular resists and delay on the MJD, puts them on the "screw up and die" side of things. It's not a bad thing to be hard to fly, but not unforgiving.

The current ship bonuses feel rather good. Most seem geared towards snipers, which is only a good thing. Only thing would be give us the ability to chose the range of the jump with the MJD, like 10-30-50-70-100. Marauder chasing marauder feels like who can click the MJD faster, cycle Bastion to rep, get out, jump, rinse and repeat. Mostly, the only change would be to either make them less sluggish or give them a larger base buffer (or proper T2 resists instead and Bastion giving the buffer).

Also the dronebay should be a bit larger 50/50 on a Vargur feels a bit too slow.

Every T2 combat ship has T2 resists. Command ships and T3 ships have T2 resists, AF, HIC, HAC, and so forth. Why should a combat T2 ship not have any T2 resists like a marauder? Makes no sense. At least bastion mode should have T2 resists.

With a moderate tank and a DCU II (yes even on armor ships) you can achieve an amazing resist profile while in Bastion.

And in this thread they already mentioned the drones and the scan res is actually not bad. I think I had 130ish (golem) on Sisi. With a sig amp on live my SNI doesn't even have 100. Sensor strength is less, but scan res is actually pretty good and since bastion mode makes you ewar immune the sensor strength penalty is balanced IMHO.

You mean you never set "return to dronebay" as a keybinding option? Wow.

Personally with both salvage drones existing, and the new deployable "tractor and loot all" module, I'm struggling to justify using my target slots on salvaging and tractoring myself when I can be shooting more things at once (especially with how fast long range boosted blasters are chewing through NPCs)

If the tractor bonus went tomorrow in favour of a deployable structure cargo bay, I wouldn't be upset. I'd just throw up two passive targeting modules for the extra number of target slots (already have a Drone Link in the third high for longer range on my salvagers) and carry on regardless.



So you have to pay attention in missions to maximise your efficiency, something that CCP has been pushing for the last year since they changed NPC AI to kill off the AFK domi mission runners.

The thing with the Kronos is while it's easy to drain (though you can comfortably fit a cap booster on it) it doesn't require a great deal of output. Beyond the guns and maybe a tracking computer in the midslots (and if you want to really be anal about it, the Damage Control II of "eff all cap use") you don't have any active modules running on a consistent basis. The LAR only needs pulsing every so often now thanks to the high resists and extreme amounts of repair per cycle.

The Vargur definitely seems the weakest of the bunch though, it just seems to lack.. something, maybe a midslot.

The point is the hull should not be gimped outside of Bastion mode. If T2 resists on the hull mean weaker resists or no resist bonus from Bastion, so be it. But they should not be entirely reliant on one (Partly broken due to DC mechanics) super mod. They should actually be functional ships the rest of the time, and currently they are not.

Those drone masteries tell you to get Amarr Drone Specialisation V.

That's probably one of the last skills I will ever train as long as Amarr combat drones remain as useless as they are now.

Thank fricking god. That's all I got to say about that.

Bandwidth you can lower, but we NEED NEED NEED room for two light flights, one salvage flight. There''s no question.

Oh I agree on that. Drone UI has time and again been brought up and it's one of those things that will essentially require a large overhaul when the time and resources are available it seems.

For now, what limited binds we have and the menu wheel is likely all we're going to see before next year at least.