Player Features and Ideas Discussion

If we help CCP rise Work with what he is trying to achieve, we will be far more likely to get a useful effective and desirable ship.
He clearly wants to get to a point where the guristas line becomes a closer focused boat to take advantage of their strength.
He also clearly wants to reduce the number of sentries on the battlefield (in number)
And he also wants to make a popular and effective ship and platform.

If we argue about the exact benefits of missiles, velocity, or other minutia, it does not take us towards this goal.

So questions?
1 how can we suggest options for the superdrones that achieve these goals? Whilst eliminating or removing the downsides.
Personally I think that basing the superdrone concept around Gila Type mediums with appropriate power levels is the best compromise, they would work up and down the scale for everything from frigates to battleships. Not as good as lights where they shine against small targets, not as good at battleship killing, as they need time to get to target, but tough little devils that are extremely mobile and do the job effectively still. Power should scale to ship class, so basically powerful enough to replace a flight of sentries or heavies on the rattlesnake. Ideally even a little more as they have to get to target while not firing.
Mike voidstar suggested 10 unbonused heavies as a DPS level, that seems entirely sensible.

2 ECM. losing light drone bonuses is an issue for ecm uses. Annoying for sure, but Is it a critical issue? The rattlesnake was never considered an ECM boat to my knowledge. So If the superdrone concept gives overall improvements, it may be a balance worth accepting. A little more drone bay to allow for some losses seems a good compromise.

3 Sentries. I understand that CCP rise is trying to keep the peace here together with heavies. It is Very very hard to keep the balance with them now.
If however the medium superdrone concept offered clear benefits, then I could accept losing them (and I love sentries).
Either way, if kept people will learn to use the better medium superdrones but still have something familiar to work with while they discover the advantages. I suggest Slightly increasing the drone bay to allow an extra flight of medium ecm drones. We will lose more.

4 Drone range or the DLA issue. If we have effective medium superdrones, that are a real applied damage and survivability alternative to sentries, then the Drone range is less critical. Exchanging for a launcher is then acceptable as mobile drones do not need the long ranges any more.

So in summation the rattlesnake will be a closer range ship, with great mobility and good survivability.
It's only new requirement will be to allow it to be More mobile to match the new freedom from nursemaiding fixed drones, under the circumstances, it will either need more cap to support an afterburner, more speed or more agility to function in this role. CCP rise can work this out for himself if he feels this is the correct way forward, we do not need to micromanage suggestions.
There will be some PvP uses which are currently missing and The Rattlesnale will continue to be an effective and more mobile PvE ship too

Most importantly? People will want it.

If you are outside drone control range on a drone ship, you are doing it wrong.
The new Rattlesnake has a range of about 80 km.

Thus you do not get out of missile range.

Defenders make a difference only between 15 and 20km between the two bonuses as I stated already.

Volley miscounting happens above 60km, but still shouldn't really.

My death... if at my death in a potentially over 100k EHP Battleship the last volley's arrival makes a difference, that's one epic battle to tell

Theoretically the first volley does matter, but what if my last volley before the reload already killed the target!

I never used missile speed rigs with Cruise, only Rigor, stays that way.

Having to shoot potentially 2 salvoes less wins for me:

Faster kill due to higher dps.

[*] Less reloads needed as less shots are needed to do the same damage.

I still can't make up my mind about RS. Right now, I'm seeing it as an SNI with 7.5 sentries instead of 3 to compensate for nerfs to missile damage and the loss of a mid (I don't feel the extra low suitably compensates the missing mid). It's just a ship with 2 sub-par weapons systems, where one weapon system can be made moderately decent, but still not competitive with other ships dedicated to that weapon type, while the other weapon system might (or might not) be able to compensate for the weakness of the primary system.

Whether the RS competes with other missile or drone boats or not, it will still be forced to use two weapon systems to keep up with those ships which only need one. It also makes the RS DPS far less reliable and more situational, as applying full DPS to any target with 2 different weapon systems is a lot more complicated than doing it with just one, especially without application bonuses.

I'm not really keen on the RS having 2 weapons which are both 75% decent, instead of just giving it a 100% good system and a 25%-50% decent second system. I'd actually prefer it if they just kept the RS as an SNI and gave it the Worm bonus to lights instead, tbh.

That is a pretty interesting summation. This is a ship that has the potential to be worth having and a decent example of the pirate line. But it just.... Does not make it,
sort of better, sort of not really......
lots of good suggestions amongst the "noise" so hopefully CCP rise will take something away from it and make it worthwhile.

I asked myself why ? and mostly i think it's for PVP purpose, as u can warp out quite fast for a BS sized ship .
I dislike the nerf because it s adressing false problems ,Reduced sig radius and warp out speed aren't really OP by themselves at least they can be countered (TP,Point).
The part thats is too strong is the 50 % F/o bonus combined with AC800 mm ,who has been balanced with reduced Cpu and PG .
Unfortunatly Machariel is equally the only non t1 viable platform for 1400 MM ,and the F/o bonus is quite useless for them and we have to deal with a reduced fitting capability .
That's why i've imagined Ccp would come with something more refined for it ,afterall the hull is quite popular .
I'd propose something like this .
========================================================================================

MACHARIEL

Gallente Battleship Bonus:
5% bonus to Large Projectile Turret falloff

Minmatar Battleship Bonus:
5% bonus to Large Projectile Turret rate of fire

Role Bonus:
37.5% bonus to Large Projectile Turret Damage
note: This ship has increased warp speed and warp acceleration


Slot layout: 7H, 5M, 7L; 6 turrets, 0 launchers
Fittings: 17950 PWG, 630 CPU
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 10320 / 8550 / 8260
Capacitor (amount / recharge / cap per second) : 6000 / 1154000ms(-875) / 5.32
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 161 / .096(+.012) / 94680000 / 12.60(+1.5)
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 100 / 125
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 75km(+13km) / 125(-25) / 7
Sensor strength: 28
Signature radius: 350(+10)

Alpha is the same one less turret on the profile

Sorry, I missed that. I think the 10% falloff should remain, however.

Spreadsheet with Missile Maths
Google docs spreadsheet: Summer-2014-Rattlesnake-Missile-Damage

Assumptions/Caveats
The spreadsheet lists the time/volleys to kill particular mission NPCs. Repairs and defenders are not taken into account. TPs are always assumed to land. The Rattlesnake uses 3 CN BCUs, everything else uses 3xCN BCUs + 1xBCU II. PWNAGE TPs are assumed unless they're overridden in 'Force Single TP Bonus' (1.40 == RF TP.) The number of TPs is for a reasonable fit (my idea of reasonable.) Cruise Fury ammo is used because I can't be bothered to change ammo. Tengu uses Fury or Rage.

The Golem and the CNR are the "gold standard" in that they can one shot a Seven Bodyguard which seems to be the hardest non-elite cruiser to one volley for level 4s. Meaning, the CNR/Golem can use Fury on everything (but frigates.)

The first section of NPCs are battleships, then BCs, then cruisers, then elite cruisers, and finally elite frigates. (Except for mercenaries which don't seem to have elite ships.)

The Summer Rattlesnake with it's Kin/Therm bonus, has two entries/sections since I don't have the time/patience to update the formulas to auto-select the best damage type to use against that particular NPC.

edit: This is in the context of Level 4 missions.

Tentative Conclusion: Why the Summer Rattlesnake is 'Meh to Me
Generally speaking, the Rattlesnake requires one extra volley to kill a level 4 NPC battleship or battlecruiser, some cruisers, and frigates in general. Which means your drones (sentries) need to finish off the target. Since the missiles have a ~8 second cycle and the sentries have a 4 second cycle, this, in very rough terms, means that the Rattlesnake's drones should finish off the wounded ship with one volley, otherwise the Rattlesnake would have no advantage over a first class missile ship. Thus, the Rattlesnake's super-special pirate "extra" DPS equates to roughly one half of the DPS of the sentries. Example: if the missile DPS was 800 and the drone DPS was 700, then the Rattlesnake has effectively 800 + (700 / 2) or 1150 DPS. (These are contrived numbers for demonstration purposes.)

More importantly, if you compare the Fleet Issue Typhoon (TFI), the TFI, with it's 8.25 effective launchers (versus the <=7.5 of the Rattlesnake) tends to require one less volley. Which means the Rattlesnake ain't that much better than a TFI if we assume that the Rattlesnake's drones even things out.

Again, these are rough numbers based on some simplified number crunching. Statistics are like a lampost to a drunken man. The lightpost is there more for support than illumination.


UPDATE: I have updated the Rattlesnake to use two Faction TPs. End results is the Rattlesnake still general requires an extra volley against battleships, but against BCs, cruisers and elite cruisers, it brings the Rattlesnake more in line with the TFI. The Rattlesnake's "extra DPS" is probably a bit more than 50% of the drone DPS.

I thoroughly enjoyed this - thanks for doing it up! I particularly liked how you included the Tengu.
The new Rattlesnake would be a lot more advantageous if it had a flat +50% damage bonus as opposed to kinetic and thermal. I think we'll have to wait and see what the new Mordu battleship holds in a few days...