Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Alright...let's see if I can get this right:

Currently, this game is divided up into three types of offense, and three types of defense. For offensive purposes, we have gun turrets, missile turrets, and drones.
Gun turrets are currently the most balanced and widely used weapon system, while missiles and drones are being updated, they still suffer from a lack of a unified skill tree that gun turrets do, and unlike missiles, drones are still not complete as an offensive line.
To elaborate on this, each weapon system with all turret types and missiles have a short-range option and a long-range option. While we can argue that all drones are long-range weapon systems, the reality of the fact is apart from the current sentries, that each size level for drones only has a single TYPE of offensive drone, which is namely the close-range type that flies up to shoot at you.

To this end, I would advocate adding the equivalent-sized sentries to small, medium, and capital respectively, as well as some more varieties I will cover further down. The new small and medium-sized drones would function exactly the same as the current sentries, and be scaled appropriately in terms of damage and how well it applies them. With tweaking a few rigs, skills, and ship bonuses, you could draw up a fairly consistent and balanced line of drone sentries for frigates and cruiser/battlecruiser-sized ships that wouldn't be too unbalanced, since they have the same strengths and weaknesses as normal sentries. Drone users would simply be given more options on the field of battle; dps or performance tweaks to nerf power projection could be added to avoid potential power creep if it becomes an issue.

Now, capital sentries would be an interesting route to go. They would scale with fighters in the same way current sentries scale with heavies, and would provide excellent damage projection on the part of carriers. With this in mind, I would like to see fighters buffed accordingly to avoid being marginalized by the new capital sentries.

Additionally, such things as t2 ewar and logistic drones, and self-repair with logi drones might be things to add or look at.

Again, the entire point of this is to have a unified, appropriate offensive line for drones balanced between long and short ranges just as you have with missiles and guns, NOT as a giant buff to drones; I have stated that I would be amenable to any type of balancing or nerf that would be appropriate to bring them in-line with the others to keep them from becoming overpowered.

I'm not sure I really understand how this could work? One major balancing point of drones is that they can be out-run or otherwise mitigated. Making small and medium sentries does a couple of things but mostly they create a scenario where you have high-tracking medium level dps that can, critically, left behind at another location while the controlling ship moves in to brawl (or kite) and otherwise provides an extra layer of offensive power that doesn't cost the host ship anything than it did before. Even if light sentries used 10m3 and mediums used 20m3 with there being no heavy, just standard sentry at 25 what has been accomplished here?

While I respect the initiative you have taken here I don't believe you've thought about it hard enough when concerning ships like the vexor/gila/moa/prophecy or other brawling ships that stand to benefit incredibly from this.

Care to give an example of that, or are you just here to throw poo from the safety of your tree? It's a fairly good question to ask since it's rather odd that sentries are singled out in one particular class. At the very least, I'd like to know why they don't have medium versions of them.

Also, it's not a good idea to call people nubs unless you know how long they've been playing in the game, and how they spend their time in it. There are things called locator agents said nubs can use to find you if you rub them the wrong way.

Hence the need for raising the issue in the first place; why not? What could go wrong, and more importantly, what could go right?