Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Welcome Rattlesnake and Drone-boat lovers, design interested parties and balance fetishists.

First up - this is not about number crunching and evaluation of the buff, this is about the immersion factor, the gameplay and associated role of our beloved ship - the Rattlesnake.

“About a year ago I undocked for the first time into the limitless space of New Eden. After just a few days I flirted heavily with Drones and got quite fond of the mechanisms of missile-warfare, all the while searching for a long term goal to aim for higher tier ships. I searched high and low finding decent drone and missile ships (by stats and values), but none to my liking. I don't fly ugly ships even if ... well, I don't fly ugly ships ... period!
An extensive search let me to the Rattlesnake which came quite close to my technical desires and had an acceptable look. Over time I grew quite fond of it and fell deeply in love with the ship and its performance, which for me lies in the role, the look and not in its numerical values. Though I have flown and are flying other ships due to fleet doctrine, whenever I get the choice I grab my Ratter and head out into the unknown. Even though I never felt that the Rattlesnake performed worse then other ships or unsatisfying on its own merits, I could not deny that I wasn't a bit joyful when I heard the news about a little buff. But reading the posts and looking at the actual values I fear my Rattlesnake will be less awesome to play no matter the paper DPS increase and my disappointment with the insight the designers seem to have into Rattlesnake pilots lead me to write this post.”


Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens. Makes her a home.
http://i1191.photobucket.com/albums/z479/Pogumogc/20130820211321_zpsc1ab95c9.png
Captain Malcom Reynolds



Rattlesnake Design and Changes

My beef with the coming changes is derived from different aspects regarding balance, immersion, playability, its perception in the universe and of course its awesomeness piloting it around. All those issues make it hard to organize and categorize them, so bear with me.


The Changes

The Rattlesnake will get an extra launcher slot making it a 5/6 instead of a 4/6

My first objection is, that the 2 support slots are dearly needed for Drone Link Augmentors to gain 100km + drone control range, without those an MJD and most sniping fits will be useless. I feel forced or obligated to add a 5th launcher, just for the sake of sheet dps, even though I can resist, most won't - how sad.
Further more with the added bonus to missile damage it will make other supposedly pure missile boats like the Navy Scorpion look obsolete.


The Rattlesnake will get a 10% damage bonus to kinetic and thermal damage (instead of..)

This is one of the heftiest missile buffs I have seen in a long time and with the added launcher will make it one of the best missile BS out there something that is overkill regarding balance. Especially since the Ratter has less launchers then all the rest and can save not only on missile types but also base ammunition itself due to reduced on shot salvos. This is combined with the drone ship role and its bonuses totally overdone.


The Rattlesnake will get the 'Hero Drone' bonus of 275% to to damage and hit points for heavy and sentry drones and a reduction in bandwidth to 50 mbit (and lose the light and medium drone bonuses)

This is one of the worst changes that kills immersion and playability totally for me, especially if I consider the awesome gift of the Geckos. The Rattlesnake is a 'Drone Ship' and yet, even though it has multiple times the mass of other cruisers and battle cruisers and their capabilities (game lore) it can field only 1 Gecko ... 1 Drone .. WOW ¨¨!!!
The Rattlesnake is many times larger then the Stratios, which can field 4 sentries, and now I can field only 2, makes me feel real mighty (not)! No matter the stats, this is about immersion and playability. I lose the light and medium drone bonuses and now the mighty battleship is weaker then a Skiff or Procurer which even can field 5 medium drones with a 50% bonus of former battleships.



Fazit - If I have to fit one ship completely to essentially command 1 other ship (in case of the Gecko) the I can just skip the intermediary and fly that ship itself. I want to feel awesome in my ship and expect a BS of any type to have more or at least equal capabilities of launching drones, then a frigate, cruiser and anything in between, especially if it is MY ROLE.

The Rattlesnake was a Pirate Faction Drone Ship with missile support, now its a Pirate Faction Missile Boat with some drone support. And by title comparison them the Procurer is now a Faction Drone Battlecrusier with mining support. So much for roles.

Regarding the 275% as a value itself, I always found high values and especially multipliers a sign of bad game design. It literally says, look: this is what we wanted to achieve in values, but we don't really know how to do it properly and suitable to the game, its mechanics and lore.

There is already a thread to discuss rattlesnake changes and it is stickied.

Reading though it is like poking yourself in the face with a powerdrill though. It's probably had more pages deleted than are left.


Edit: Splitting this out might be a good idea if it cuts the clutter in the sticky though.

The hero drone concept has little to do with reducing server load.

The things you say are "immersion breaking" do not seem "immersion breaking" at all to me. I'd be down for it to get a bigger dronebay however. I liked having a variety of medium and light drones and that will be harder now.

This is an odd objection. At worst, you simply prioritize drones over missiles and don't fit a fifth launcher. The extra hardpoint gives options, and in no way detracts from any other aspect of the ship. Think of this in the light of some of the Minmatar or Amarr designs that have more hardpoints for turrets & missiles combined than they have high slots, it's not about fitting every single launcher you can, but about having the option.



It's a strong bonus, completely in keeping with the Caldari Kin only bonuses they get on some hulls. Gallente have also recently been reducing hardpoints in favor of oversized bonuses, such as on the redesign of the Hyperion. Your only real complaint seems to be that it's a missile damage bonus on a drone boat, but I would point you at the older designs of the Gallente Drone line, as well as the current destroyer and N.Dominix Guns+Dones concept. The bonus is stronger than on those hulls, but the idea is the same.



The problem here is the magnitude of the bonus, not it's nature. 275% is simply break even with other battleship drone platforms at the cost of drone flexibility and resistance to disruption. There can be no doubt that both the Worm and Gila will be the best in weightclass drone platforms. They straight up do 60% more DPS than any other ships in their class with weightclass appropriate drones. Gila does lose out on large drones, but the mediums it gets put out almost the same DPS with much better application.

Some similar increase in power is warranted for the Rattlesnake drone system. The superdrone concept re-establishes the balance point for drones by removing flexibility, increasing vulnerability to disruption, and compensates with a 60% increase in performance. Even a slight upgrade to DPS, and the fully upgrade to HP would be acceptable, as this is the reverse of what happened on the frigate level. Gallente drone frigates get the HP boost, but not a damage boost--- so the HP boost of the superdrone bonus is slight (going from 7.5 effective drones to 8). some middle ground might be found too, but the current level of the superdrone bonus on the Rattlesnake is simply too low.

Geckos don't enter into it. They are outside the normal production chains and therefore outside normal balance. There may be a slight advantage to running one Gecko from the Rattlesnake instead of 2 and a spare large drone out of any other large drone platform, but its largely offset by the vulnerability of the drone weapon system when there is but a single drone to disrupt or kite.



The two systems are roughly balanced in power with the current proposed bonus. You can still fly it as a drone ship with missile support after the change, and it will do so as well or better than it does now.

The idea does fit the Lore poorly. It effectively has 2 Caldari flavored bonuses (Resist, missile damage) and one Gallente flavor (drone bonus). They could put either of the other two bonuses as the role bonus, or even simply bake the resist bonus into the base stats. I disagree strongly with Rise about Gallente 5 being needed.

The problem is that immersion is not about "meeting your expectations".

There is nothing more or less immersive about controlling few more powerful drones than many less powerful ones.

I think it's perfectly plausible that a group focusing on drones decided to try to soup up their drones at the cost of only having a few of them.

It does not in the event I described, basic plus perfect skills are 60km + 20km for a normal drone link augmentor, how is that enough for a 100km MJD ? I am flying with faction mods that give me 108km and I am happy that they start picking off targets before they even get in lock range, especially after I was forced to jump. And I am not using Wardens and Bouncer for their close range brawler abilities. You know you can get 150km+ with them right ?


Sure, point. But like I said, I am not against the principle, just taking it that far. I would maybe be all right with the Rattlesnake having 100 mbit, but only being able to filed 2 drones, no matter what (adjusting values of course).


I never said they suck or that they are bad, quite the opposite, I think they were not needed and if, with the new concept, not in such a fashion.
Almost every time I have experienced fixes via high values they went wrong for the game, there can be exceptions of course, nothing wrong with 300% tractor range ,), but when I see those, my warning lights just go on.


It would cost the same regarding damage output vs ammo, not more. With the implementation it would cost less, way less.
5/7 would be great for me as a player, but I am not sure about the balance, have to think about it.
Anyway, in principle, everything that has a visible slot should be filled, I would love 8 slots on all the Scorp hulls and 6 again on the Myrmidon ,)



Just heard to the contrary, but maybe not, I bet their skills weren't as good as yours. Anyway, yes, I would like the light bonus back, I could skip the meds though.

Fair enough

Hey, I didn't know about the graph , I guess if there is a thing to make a chart about someone does.

I do know how to use an MJD though and without it , intuitively, just by looking into space and doing the evaluation in my head. I know how to triangular and bridge any distance in two jumps or get the distance I need to any given target, my accuracy is about 0-5km just by optically aiming.
The issue is with 3+ groups that are spread around you and no matter how you jump the variation will be from 75-130km between after the jump. Dropping MTUs and other bods also drift into the problem, you don't want to jump around too many times to pick up the pieces or abandoned drones.
The best average jump usually leads to around 85-105 km - That's my experience of course, others will probably do it different.

And on another note, I am already faster with my Rattlesnake running L4s then my colleagues with their Navy Scorps, after the Launcher and damage buff, they will hang even more behind. So much for paper missile dps and applied total damage.

A Vindicator isn't bonused for small and medium turret damage, so why should the Rattlesnake receive a bonus for small and medium drones? Admittedly the across-the-board missile damage bonus is a little anomalous, but that doesn't mean the drone bonus should be. Plus, you can still field a full flight of lights and mediums without any problems with your available bandwidth, just like you could easily fit a full rack of 8 small or medium turrets to your Vindicator. It's a ship with a purpose, and that purpose appears to be using heavy drones and any missile it feels like to brawl the bejeebers out of things. If you want to hit out to much longer ranges with your drones you have to start making compromises of some kind, but is that really so bad or out of line?

And lastly, one does not balance around a single special snowflake drone.