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So, you're whining. Which is sad because you raise valid points. You can raise valid points without whining.

I do agree that I don't see a reason not to expand on the roles of drones. They already fire at bad guys, they salvage, they do EWAR, why not also give them other interesting things to do that would make them really bad news to see them circling around your ship. That's a great point.

I don't support 'just a few tweaks'. I have some understanding of how that process works, it takes plenty of considerations to make all this work. And it belittles the efforts of our gentle giants in far Reykjavik. They are far more deserving of our love and respect than that.

I would hope that the Summer release has more to it than drone adjustments. The drones just being one aspect that's being changed.

Your points are valid and deserving of consideration and you want to present them as such. 'Expressing dismay', seriously, you're using the emotional energy of people who are working extremely hard to bring us a product that does not have an equal on all of planet Earth. Celebrate that experience and be part of it. Make it be about the great ideas you have, and they are not bad at all, don't make it about shaking fists in inchoate rage.

You asked what 'we all thought' so I'm telling you.

Nothing of what's being done here has anything to do with highsec players, though, so I don't understand why you're bringing them up.

Not really, no, since new players will benefit from the much higher base damages they get initially with their training. They'll be far better off than they currently are and we don't yet know what the skill ranks will be for those new skills.


He's getting it from the fact that they aren't being used. Their competitive edge is far too small and far too situational to be worth it for most players, which is why they are seeing about as much usage as the completely useless Amarr drones. People go for a general best in class, and situational advantages of any other drones are… well… situational. So those drones are discarded in favour of guaranteed results.

It's much the same reason why the split-damage “advanced” drones never took off: because split damage inherently means less damage. So why on earth would you get a far more expensive drone that is much worse at its only task — killing stuff?



I maintain the suggestion that you simply give all (non-sentry) drones the same damage output and let resists and damage profiles make the difference there. If you want to have some other differentiation, think of what it is that you get out of the speed differences and try to implement that through different means.

E.g. minmatar drones have an easy time catching up and establishing an orbit around its target. Perhaps caldari drones are a bit slower, but have much longer ranges and larger engagement envelops — they don't need to fully catch their target because they just have to get close enough to bring their long range to bear. Or maybe create a classic split between alpha and DPS — some drones will rather binary in that either the cloud is large enough to blap a target, or it will mostly be scary between each volley, whereas others will slowly but surely grind the target down through continuous DPS.

Do something other than just making a choice between high damage or high speed, because the half-way options will always be just half-way and will only perpetuate the same problem you're having now (for the exact same reason).


Oh, and just to nag a little: could you clarify the exact skill prereqs for the revamped T2 drones, and whether or not this will entail any ye olde “if you could use it before”-type fiddling with people's skills?

HEY CCP! Once again you guys are doing a lot work for not a whole lot of change! Why do insist on doing these changes?!

So here's the deal:

Leave your changes as they are if you want, BUT add the following

Dump all racial drone skills

Add the following skills

Light Drone Spec
Medium Drone Spec
Heavy Drone Spec
Sentry Drone Spec

But I guess making a weapon system make sense and jive with all the other weapon systems in game would be too damn easy.

I generally judge game changes on the basis that if they are annoying the right people it's a good change. When people like Barracuda from Finfleet abd Dinsdale is annoyed by the change is often means it's a good one.

While I agree with you on being able to switch out mods for more damage I still feel that Thanny and Nyxs are still getting the hardest hit by this. With only 6 low slots giving up 2 slots for damage mods greatly reduces its tank. When DDA did not effect fighter and fighter bomber damage 5% per lvl was a nice bonus now with these new changes wouldn't 10% per lvl be more adequate or an entirely new bonus all together? I understand that Supers still have to be looked at but this change will effect this single ship the hardest and with out a time table on super rebalancing.

Hi Fozzie

They are some very good idea in the re balance.

But please check some stats if you compare long range guns versus Sentry drone.

The sentry drone are still too powerful, because range versus alpha (dps) and tracking is clearly a big advantage and when you use sentry, you don't need to use some extra slot or rigs for the fitting (example Amarr need more powergrid with beam etc).

Perhaps the best way will be to decrease the tracking of the sentry by 25%

Also for the modification of the new drone light medium and heavy it's a good thing about new repartition tracking versus dps and speed.

But you have still the problem when you use small drone against inty or very very fast ship. Your drone can't apply the damage because light drone make a lot of mwd between each hit . (same problem with all e-war drone) Example the small web drone are completely useless against inty.

Tracking disruptor :

why not use the tracking disruptor against drone. When you use then on the ship the module perturb the transmission data between ship and drone . That will be affect the tracking or the range of the drone also.

so this means that if no further training, someone currently able to use T2 sentrys having all racials at IV, will not be able to use them anymore after?

if this is the case, then it is very, very wrong because you are screwing ppl over their SP, training time, thus the money they gave you.

Its an attempt to balance an utterly overpowered class of ship. Also, post with your main, its more fun that way.

Give us a way of repairing our drones which have suffered armor/structure damage whilst in space, damaged drones are bloody annoying in wormholes. This could be as simple as allowing nanite paste repair of drones, or my favourite idea of giving a highslot smartbomb like module which does aoe repair and just works on drones, not enough to allow you to keep drones alive under fire, but enough to repair them if you need to out of combat

Seriously? You're mad because it will take one guy running several cheap bombers with isboxer more than one bombing run to make a 30 billion plus isk ship defenseless?