Player Features and Ideas Discussion

641 Asteros
12 Cruor
51 Daredevil
33 Dramiel
6 Succubus
29 Worm

yeah it is

But to be honest I prefer they bring out a broken Nestor and maybe fix it rather than doing their normal thing of releasing something way overpowered and then nerfing it 6 months later.

You say "No Risk" but have you seen the KB's for the SOE L4 Mission Agent areas? Now while I grant you it's more down to stupidity that someone in a ISK4bn Golem get's ganked doing and L4 it's not completely without risk...

I agree however that I can't think of a purpose that I would want a Nestor for TBH apart from the "Oh a white ship" factor in somewhere like Ammold.

Even after the omnidirectional tracking link nerf, you can still farm SoE missions very quickly indeed in a combination of dominix, interceptor and ishtar.

Dominix still gives 1000dps at all ranges to 70km (2 or 3 omnis, garde II, 2 or 3 drone damage augmentors).
MWD Ishtar allows you to blitz the recon gas cloud mission (and stick around to kill rats if you must)
interceptor aces the cargo delivery and jump gate missions

The maximum potential loss on the table at any one moment is 250m isk. The maximum value drop is in the order of 7m isk (30% of your isk20m in fittings). I can assure you that you are completely safe from being ganked.

There is as close to zero risk in obtaining a Nestor as is possible to achieve without staying in a station.

A priate battleship can be bought, but that money is a proxy for the risk someone else took in acquiring the blueprint. There is certainly an element of risk premium in the price, tempered by a good supply of willing risk-takers.

And before someone starts up about using bling ships to run missions - it's a totally false economy, always. An absolutely sub-optimal risk/reward play. Only a noob or a moron would do it.

The Nestor is really, really bad.....

I'm starting to notice that Rise likes to unsticky the threads that are not overly positive...

I'm still thinking that a utility BS with 5 turret hard points and a laser bonus deserves more than 11k power grid.

Alright, I’m gonna take another stab at this.

I won’t reiterate what could be done to make the Nestor viable for exploration, in the vein of the Stratios and Astero. It’s been said often enough here. Rather, at least for the moment, I think we have to accept that the Nestor simply isn’t meant to serve as a true exploration ship (which makes the hacking bonuses rather more confusing, but hey). Instead, the intended role seems to be “combat logi,” particularly given its billing in the patch notes as



And I will say, this is perhaps not a useless role to fill. Having a capable logistics boat that can also contribute significant DPS could offer some interesting possibilities—if, and only if, those logistics capabilities are competitive with existing support ships, particularly logistics cruisers and carriers. Unfortunately, the Nestor leaves something to be desired here. If you’re going to bill it as “the most potent &c. &c.,” then I think you have some work to do to bring it up to spec.

Logistics cruisers are a natural point of comparison. In theory, the Nestor is capable of out-repping existing armor logis, which is not a terrible start. It is unfortunate that a logi can rep at ranges of over 4x that of the Nestor, and is more mobile to start with; probably a logi should be able to rep at longer ranges, but I’m not sure the current 100% range bonus on the Nestor strikes the right balance. Much more damningly, the cap life on the Nestor is simply atrocious: where a Guardian can comfortably maintain cap stability in a 4 rep / 2 cap transfer configuration, the Nestor can’t even manage that in a 3/3 setup without additional equipment. In fact, with 2 reps and 4 transfers, it will remain cap stable at 24.5%—provided no other modules are active. This problem is compounded by the fact that the Nestor has no bonus to cap xfer range to go along with its rep range bonus. Note that in these hypothetical setups, a 4/2 Guardian with armor maintenance bots can repair 376 HP/s out to the 60 km (or 341 HP/s out to 71 km), compared to the 3/3 Nestor’s 384 HP/s out to 16.8 km. (The Nestor could deploy armor maintenance bots of its own to an added 90 HP/s max, but then you are sacrificing its DPS output, at which point it becomes just another logi.) Granted, in this example the Nestor is out-repping a Guardian with 25% fewer repair modules and no drones, which is not something to ignore; but it is doing so at barely over 22% of the Guardian’s range, and without the Guardian’s means to protect itself against cap warfare. Nestor’s scan resolution is also pitifully low, which is a significant drawback for a support ship. It does have an edge in sensor strength (and room to improve that further), which gives it a bit of added resistance to ECM; and of course, it can contribute as much as 700+ DPS to its gang, which a logi can’t, so that’s good. But in order to be competitive in a logistics role (and thus worth fielding in place of logis and high-DPS battleships), its cap life, scan resolution, and possibly rep range all need to be considered for improvement—not to a place better than logis, since the goal is not to obsolete those hulls, but certainly to a healthier place than the current state.

Then, of course, the Nestor also has to compete with remote-repairing carriers. Personally I’m of the opinion that a triage carrier should clearly outperform Nestor in a support role: they pay for their added reps by becoming stationary targets unable to field DPS or receive remote repairs themselves, both capabilities the Nestor gets to keep. But given that non-triaged carriers can provide more DPS than an RR-fit Nestor*, while still providing substantially greater repping power at nearly 3.5x more than the Nestor’s range (and cap transfer range and amount bonuses on the Archon and Chimera), the Nestor still isn’t as competitive as it should be. This is even before we consider the much higher EHP and sensor strength afforded to carriers.

I haven’t addressed price yet, since the drone Nexus chip drops should lower the Nestor’s in the long run. But even if the price falls to the average cost of the other (non-Rattlesnake) pirate battleships, it will still be five times as expensive as a Guardian, 72% of the cost of an Archon, and 81% of the cost of a Chimera (before fittings). In order to compete with these ships in its current combat logi role, it needs to perform better on the “logi” side of things. The Nestor has the making of some good balance points (chiefly sensor strength, DPS, and raw rep amount, as compared to logistics cruisers), but the balance just isn’t currently in its favor, cost notwithstanding.

This is a pretty great analysis. I'll have a look at getting some tweaks in to address some of the issues you raise.

Thanks for a really well-articulated argument, I'll update everyone if we can commit to any changes in the near future.

Logis aren't overpowered. Besides, if you nerf them, we'll just bring more of them.