Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ishtar

On paper it sounds like a reasonable change but for me, you have just made me go from looking forward to flying a ship other than T3s to being completely uninterested in the SOE hulls...

You had the chance to mix things up in wormhole pvp a little with these new ships but this most recent change makes is utterly impractical. Most of the cloaky T3's will be able to out-dps this ship while having double the tank and stronger ew ability/defense.

You should have left the drones as they were and got rid of turret slots along with the stupid energy turret bonus... The only thing that justifies the stratios being such a boring, under-performing ship is if you plan to release a battle ship version.

No, with shields this cruiser hull will still manage 800 DPS at 30 km (Scorch, plus 3 DDAs and Garde IIs) from a nano Cane-style tank alongside a covert ops cloak. Lower DPS with armour being offset by a solid tank and 5 mids. Its a strong ship and a sensible change.

Nice one, CCP Rise.

Wow so the SoE ships (cruiser in particular) just went from awesome to mediocre in one fell swoop. If these are supposed to be cloaky drone based exploration ships why not keep the 125 bandwidth and remove some/all turret points? And if these are supposed to be laser based exploration ships why not just remove the drone bandwidth even more and give them better laser bonuses?

Thank you for toning it down a little, but I would suggest giving others who don't wield the mighty laser an option to use these ships.

I would change the optimal range to a tracking enhancement for all turrets, so now people can decide to use lasers, or go with another option.

But I get the reason why the laser direction.

One with actual lowslots and a tank. Also frigate-sized.

No, 800 dps doesn't matter. I can get a Vexor Navy Issue to well over 800 dps if I fit it single-mindedly, and it will apply that dps much better due to tracking bonuses. The Ishtar is even farther ahead. As of the change, the Stratios falls between the Vexor and the NVexor, with its only redeeming quality being the covops cloak.

You also have to consider that the Stratios doesn't have the high slots to fit probes, cloak, and 4 turrets without using Space Yurts.

That in my opinion makes it a weak ship for exploration, especially when you fit it for exploration.

It's not about DPS at all, it's about the covops cloak and the worry that all of a sudden you can have a fleet of Stratios appear out of nowhere and apply cruiser-level dps. Even billion-isk T3s sacrifice a lot to be able to do that.

But T3 subs can be switched. I don't want the Stratios to have to sacrifice its effectiveness at exploration permanently and would rather they directly nerf the non-exploration effectiveness of the ship, by preventing it from jumping to covert cynos, increasing the sensor calibration time on the cloak, or something like that.

PS. Do you see how annoying it is to start forum posts with No.

Please no. The argument here should be to remove the idiotic scatter mechanic altogether. It's not fun and doesn't add anything to the hacking minigame. The game play in hacking is the minigame itself (what path to choose, which node to fight, etc.).

It doesn't make sense that when you "successfully" hack a container you are then penalized by having your earned loot fly off in every direction. If that wasn't bad enough, you're already highly penalized by failing a hack with the container explosion, resulting in zero loot. So, riddle me this Batman, if there is such a severe penalty on failing the hacking game play, why, then, am I doubly penalized when I succeed?

Losing a mid slot would wreck them for exploration.

It's a AMARR/Gallente Pirate faction. It's designed around being able to sustain itself on long-lasting expeditions. It makes sense that it'd use lasers, with their literally infinite ammo, in order to be able to have sustain power.

I do think that changing it to an optimal bonus, however, does hurt the ship. Here's why: It's a ship that's supposed to have sustain potential, BUT it is designed around a cap-hungry armor tank. An armor tank typically uses cap boosters for long-lasting sustain, which then creates a dwindling resource pool, which seems contrary to the "sustain itself over the long haul" design mentality.

While the laser cap use bonus is "meh" for some pilots, in this case it makes a ton of sense. It cuts down on very energy-hungry weapons' cap use, and this in turn helps the sustain potential of the armor tank. Additionally, pilots can just use Rise's new-and-improved beams if they want long-range damage application on this ship (and the mids have plenty of room for a tracking computer, if pilots want longer optimals). Further, with the introduction of the Depot, it's a trivial matter to swap weapons from close range pulse lasers to long range beams, depending on the pilot's taste or needs at the moment.

So, overall, the cap use bonus made more sense on this ship, given its design intent, it's many free midslots, and taking into account the recently updated (and improved) beam lasers.