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Honestly I haven't read all 18 pages so I hope I am not repeating someone.

The drones adjustments are underwhelming. They are good, and they do rebalance things, but they seem to be just a matter of someone going in and tweaking numbers. This is regarding the drones themselves, as I really have no problems with the skill changes and ship changes mentioned. However, the big problem with the drones in my view has been that nobody uses anything but Gallente or Minmatar drones (excepting sentries - I am talking about the regular combat drones). The basic issue is really that if a player (we're generally talking PvP) wants to hit hard, he uses Gallente (Hammerhead or Ogre) and if he wants to hit fast, he uses Minmatar (Warrior), and that's it. Making the Amarr into slightly less fast Warriors and Caldari into slightly less hard Hammerheads and Ogres isn't going to convince anyone to use them. Also, just tweaking some number values is not giving players 'increased variety of options' as the devs seem to want. Overall, this seems like the expansion is a minimal effort, minimal thought tweaking process that is more deserving of a patch than an expansion. I let the underwhelming nature of Rubicon go as I assumed you were writing back end code for the impressive additions on the horizon that we hear tell rumors of (player built gates, new galaxies, etc.). But are we going to keep having expansions like this forever?

If you want to provide a truly expansion worthy drone revamp, how about actually changing the character and flavor of drones and fixing major problems? When was the last time anybody ever used a Stasis Webifier drone? Nobody knows, do they. Because they are worthless. Fix them or remove them and replace them with another kind of drone. The only EWAR drone worth anything is the ECM drone.

I suggest for the combat drones that you really introduce unique characteristics for the drones. Caldari are supposed to be the masters of range. Give the Caldari drones, and Caldari drones only, an innate bonus to drone control range. Therefore pilots can use them in long range fits with fewer Drone Link Augmentors. Yeah, they don't get there fast like the Warriors, which would increase their value more for long range PvE than for sniper PvP, but such has always been the fate of the Caldari - PvE masters, PvP challenged.

The Amarr are supposed to be Eve's second race of drone masters. Have their drones be the only drones in the game that do two damage types: EM and thermal. This would make the drones into a truly generalist philosophy. They travel the field quickly, and they do well against a variety of targets, just underwhelming damage.

I could talk more about ideas for better and different EWAR drones, but the post would get too long. While I would like comment about the ideas about drone control range and multiple damage type drones, the major point of my post is to express dismay that the drone revamp seems to be a numbers tweak and not a real significant effort at meeting the goals of 'making all races equally appealing' or 'giving players interesting options in drone choice.'

I'm curious to hear what you all think.

interesting but your missing a WHOLE bunch of other drones, how about sorting out the damn EW drones etc rather than "JUST" damage dealing drones? EW among the other variants of drones are in DIRE need of some TLC.

more like what about regenerating drone armour/hull while in the dronebay, as well as visible hp of drones in dronebay

QFT

Armor and shield were at long last close to balance, this will ruin it..

Could we have a midslot mod that only boosts bomber damage, and stacks with DDA's?

Indeed. There needs to be some hard line where "the right drone for the right job" applies. The proposed change doesn't offer anything. It's still Minmatar fast, Gallente strong, Amarr and Caldari mediocre at everything.

I do like the idea proposed earlier about 2 factions strong, 2 factions fast because then at least there's a 50/50 choice, though it would probably still leave amarr as pretty pointless (except in PVE versus rogue drones, in which I've found them surprisingly effective.)

Maybe if each drone had a slight positive secondary affect on the ship launching them, equivalent to their race's anti-ewar? So having a full rack of Gallente drones would give you something like 1/5th of a sebo, amarr 1/5th TC, caldari 1/5th ECCM, minmatar 1/5th istab(or something.)

Then there would be two factors driving a decision towards each drone. Maybe getting extra tracking/range on your guns would make it worth having mediocre DPS of an undesirable damage type to make Amarr drones attractive.

Would like to ask this also, from the quote:

"we will be increasing the base damage multiplier of Tech One sentries and limiting the Tech Two advantage to the 2% per level gained from the racial Drone Specialization skills that will now be required to use T2 sentries."

It looks like this will be a rare instance of someone *not* being able to use a $THING that they were able to use prior to a skill training change.

Possibly... depending on who the drowning man was....

this, unfortunately, is pretty much the only constant thing when it comes to CCP updating the game...

If anything, wouldn't it be better to get a "tiericide" treatment for drones? Something along the lines of "this drone does X best, while this other drone does Y best." Otherwise, the fear is the decision is going to be the same as it is now: do I need speed/tracking? Minmatar. Do I need damage? Gallente. Having the Caldari and Amarr drones on a sliding scale, where they're objectively worse than their counterparts at either end just adds to that idea.

It just seems that there's plenty of room to improve the state of Amarr and Caldari drones without just making them better/worse than Gallente/Minmatar drones. Aside from their damage profiles, they'll still have nothing going for them.

Players will not be given racial drone spec skills. We're announcing this change early so that players have plenty of time to train the skills before the patch.


Yes this is a relative buff to the Wyvern, and yes that is intentional. However it's much less of a buff than you seem to think it is because the vast majority of Supercarrier use is in situations where they can refit at will, allowing clever pilots to switch between high tank and high damage fits as needed.