Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Good day all,

I will post here some small thoughts on the Carrier issue, as we seem to be facing in EVE, while well understanding that possibly a lot of what I write has been possibly said countless times by other people.

To start I will say up front that I wholeheartedly support the recent changes to the assist mechanic introducing the cap on drones (so please do not flame on the issue here, there’s a separate thread).

Now as to the suggestions themselves:

• Introduce a dedicate drone bay to the carriers (size up for debate 500m3, more/less).

“Story explanation”: It could be something as simple as an event in which some rouge drones (you do know the NPCs don’t you) would slip on board of a Carrier that carried in its hangar alongside traditional fighters also drones (or just drones – standard Slowcat). I am sure this could be spun into a greater story in which those drones then proceed to kill all people on board, spread havoc or even infiltrate whole fleets to cause mayhem (again could easily be spun into a different “incursion” type of events with rewards – exp. new game carrier being based on Gallente/Minmatar character skills progression).

To continue above, the idea of the “dedicated” drone bay on carriers, could be introduced under the Concord/Empire agreement to prevent a repeat of the “drone takeover” by providing sealed off drone maintenance bays on the Carriers which would be fitted with the necessary security measures to ensure Rouge Drones cannot endanger the ships.

OOC: The above would give the excuse for the fix/nerf (decide yourself) to the Carriers without influencing their roles for any other situation but the Slowcat Fleet issues that are hotly debated now. It would not take away the ability of Carriers to field drones for fights, but would limit the number of times the ships could replace them (the over 300 sets of sentries do make the current situation somewhat odd and strain the nodes a lot).

Such a change does not mean, to stop the work on improvements/fixes for Fighters which the carrier could and should still be able to carry (and by making the changes use more often).

• Make the “drone bunny” (as in the ship to which the drones are assigned) receive some form of UI marking (similar to cyno beacon) visible to all.

“Story explanation”: The high number of drones which need to be controlled simultaneously should create a huge number of dataflow, thus transmissions from such vessels. With the advancements of scanners of ships, the other pilots in space should be able to reasonably find out the ship that controls the swarms of drones.

OOC: The above would not influence any PVE/Incursion use of the Drone Ships. As such it would however prevent AFK fielding of drones in larger battles when fleets are engaged in PVP. EVE being a game that prides itself on “Players” being the driving force of change/consequences, should make it “real” by encouraging players to actually be there when events happen (as opposed by current situation where we read that more often than not fights are being run without people actually “being part” of them in person).

• Aside of the above:

Eve Story, in game data mentions that Fighters and Fighter Bombers are “manned” craft as opposed to AI run Drones. Of course this does not reflect on the mechanics, where all of the above are considered similar items with different sizes and bandwidth requirements. Limiting the bandwidth on carriers, which would not affect the Fighters, could also be a solution to the “debated” mechanic of over-use of sentries by certain fleets.

If this was posted in same/similar form somewhere else please feel free to add a reference or to move this post to the appropriate thread.

Thank you for reading.

I have no idea what you're trying to propose or what the point of this thread is. The drone assist nerf is fine as proposed, it doesn't really need a lore explanation, and it absolutely doesn't need a second drone bay added to carriers. Why are you suggesting a second drone bay? that doesn't even make sense.

@Batelle

Please allow me to elaborate, as I can understand that there might be some confusion.

In regard to the “dedicated” drone bay on Carriers I am simply referencing to an idea which was voiced before that the Carriers should have the Fighter Bay (for fighters only) and a Drone Bay (for drones only). In other words that unlike what we have at the moment you would not be able to fill up your Carrier with countless drones, but instead be able to carry a flight or two of Fighters, and have a smaller bay for fielding of Drones.

(As an example of similar division already existing in game please look to the recent changes of Industrials or the Venture which has a small “general” cargo hold, and a “dedicated” mining hold.)

This would permit for the Carriers to maintain their support role, while limiting the over-use of drones in certain situations, or permitting sub-capital ships to counter the carrier by limiting the number of drone swarms a single carrier can keep fielding as they are being destroyed.

It would in no way prevent the Carriers from fielding fighters, as they were imagined to do.

In this regard the story suggestion is meant to give a tidy and consistent in game explanation, why ships that were up to that point able to field 1000+ drones, are now limited to 3-4 sets of 5 heavy/sentry drone flights, without losing the Fighter flights.

I do hope this explains the question (Edit: Thank you Bertrand Butler for explaining it as well)

@Hatsumi Kobeyash

I do apologize if you feel that I am repeating something you heard too often.

Please note that the changes to Carriers, which I believe is what you refer to, are only one of my suggestions.

I do hope you take a moment to read about the “drone bunny indication” as well, as my intention is to encourage more active participation of players by suggesting a way to deal with the one aspect of fights that at this time in several cases are turning players from “participants” into “spectators”.

One time bump to fix forum.

The problem is that to actually limit the sentry drones a carrier can field would require far more radical changes. Lets say you give carries a fighter bay, and a very small 500m^3 regular drone bay. I can now only field 2 flights of sentries out of my carrier right? WRONG. No one cares about a solo carrier with infinite drones, people care about a slowcat fleet, which means I can refit, which means I can reload my drone bay, which means that my entire fleet hangar can be loaded with more drones. So now I have 420 sentry drones, instead of the about 800 I currently load my slowcat with. (probably never lost more than 200 in a day) So all you have done is made life annoying for carrier pilots, but wont make any of the critics of carriers happy. Oh and if you have any supers/titans, that is another 2000/4000 sentries the carriers can reload with EACH.

Dear OP,

you would do yourself and all your readers a huge favour if you changed your original post to look like this format:

Brief Introduction

Proposed Changes

Reasons Why

Pros & Cons

Conclusion

Get rid of the lore stuff entirely, it has no place in a proposal like this. As for the change I think you are suggesting, have a +1