Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Trying once again:

You are absolutely right that getting a proper warp-in requires skill, practice and knowledge of what is on grid. My questions is, if we are to follow the CCP logic of wanting to remove passive gameplay, why is this vital piece of gameplay allowed to be done on behalf of the entire fleet by one person? And the same go for warping fleet, broadcasting to fleet and getting fleet to orbit.

If active gameplay is what CCP wants, delegating the ability to do the above mentioned things to squad or wing commanders would put more requirements on more players being able to do these things, which is something that should be encouraged.

Instead, they focus on this1 single thing and decides this is apparently bad for the game due to being passive (I still can't see how assigning drones, then tackling hostile is more passive than shift-clicking and then F1), while the VAST majority of important and semi-difficult player skills are CCP happily letting 1 single individual control on behalf of 254 other players.

So yeah, drone fleets will probably be exchanged with a non-drone doctrine, great. Then we're back to shift-click + F1, which apparently is what constitutes "active gameplay" these days? Sorry, I just don't see the mad active piloting behind that.

While I know this game is balanced for PVP first and formost (as it should), this change will have a much bigger effect on large Incursion communities that run Headquarter sites than people might realize.

Is there any way that drone assists for small combat drones stay the same as it is now, while all other combat drones get a max of 50?

So there will be multiple drone bunnies.

Means there will be a slightly more clicks to assign them.....this is ridiculous guys.You are limiting an option that is completely logical because its "Passive game play"?

This is the set of rules and those not happy with it just need to deal with it.

Stop nerfing the game or at least make a poll to see what the community really thinks.

Even I would shut up if the majority speaks against my thoughts,but some arbitrary CCP rule is just outrageous to some degree.

N3 tears best tears

50 drones is just fine.

It will not impact PvE or small PvP, and hopefully will make disapear Madness like the use of 38 000 drones in a single system, like we have seen in the last B-R battle.

Imagine B-R with few drones and 2000 real players and a RF node, it would probably have worked smoothly.

I look forward to the next large battle in thèses conditions!

Thanks CCP for this improvement.

Hah, can you imagine B-R or HED with AoE DD's? What a ******* nightmare for both sides.

edit: These changes are good, down with drone doctrines.

This is the biggest thing to take away from all of this.

Rise,

Players like drone assist because it 'works' during large fleet fights. As in, I asist drones, drone master locks target, drone master activates offensive module on the target, the drones fire at the target (repeatedly even).

Players dislike fighting against drone assist fleets because the alternatives (turrets, missiles) do not work correctly during large fleet fights. We lock a target, we attempt to activate our offensive modules. If the module activates, it doesn't cycle properly. Should we wish to deactivate the module, it doesn't deactivate properly. The experience is so poor that 200 naglfars get destroyed by 200 archons, when the stats are greatly in the naglfar's favor (we can demonstrate this wherever tidi is not present).

As much as I dislike drone assist, there are a couple part of your argument that I cannot wrap my head around. You insist that drone-assist leads to passive playing, and later point out that it's necessary for things like logistics ships. That you would apply the former logic to archons and not the latter, makes us think that might not understand what an Archon does while in a fleet. Alternatively, you might be completely ignoring our requests, much like the client does when we wish to deactivate our modules.

So, to summarize. The problem with drone assist isn't that it is broken. The problem is that it works and everything else (turrets) are broken.

The pragmatic response would be to fix turret/module activation/cycling/deactivation under tidi.

Is there any mechanic in place that prohibits persons with drones assigned to them to assign their own drones to someone else?

If not this change will make things only WORSE

Example 10 people assign 50 drones to person A, 10 people assign 50 drones to person B, 10 people assign 50 drones to person C; Person A, B and C assign their drones to Person D, Person D assigns there drones to Person E, Person E assigns There drones to Person F

Person F is killed, Person E immediatly takes over, Person E is killed Person D immediatly takes over.

Drone assist still has multiple more drones the then the absolute limit, but you also Incourage an extra problem: If the other fleet identifies the last one in chain (person F) and kills it, the underlying structure makes it so that Person E has all the chains commanded. Since players / fleet commanders want to maximize the potential, its an extremely easy doctrine to say "squad members assist to your squad leaders, Squad leaders assist to your wing commanders, and the wing commanders assist to the fleet commander. You can even pre designate backups in squad / wing / fleet, in the case the chain collapses a little bit.

In realistic terms, if the controller is killed now, 200 people need to re-assist their drones. In the new scenario, people will know who the've assited too, and only up to 10 people need to re-assist their drones. since people can put their assisted person in the watchlist, they can immediatly see if their assisted is dead, and assist their drones to anyone else to start contributeing to the chain again.

Secondly due to phased shooting, i think with chain assisting in the proposed method without prohibiting people that have drones assisted to them to assist their own drones, the lag issues will actually Increase. Since the chains makes the amount of commands and checks even more.

Is it a perfect solution? Nope. I'd prefer something with choices, so you can gimp your fit, to take more drones. (A new script for SeBos would work, and provide a balancing factor)

But it's a simple one, which won't add additional load. I like it.