Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Which makes you completely vulnerable to frigate wings if you are pushed out of the sentry range.

Sure, it's an interesting bit of variety that drone sizes are not tied to ship classes the way launchers and turrets are, but that puts you in the awkward position of finding a way to balance battleship-level DPS (which sentries clearly are) on a cruiser-class hull.

Consider the Ishtar in the context of battleship-class sentry drone boats like the Dominix and Rattlesnake: they all have identical sentry drone damage bonuses (7.5 effective drones). The only other place you see smaller hulls fielding that kind of battleship-level DPS is attack battlecruisers, but those have thinner tanks than battleships without much of a sig radius advantage. The Ishtar gets a significant sig radius advantage over a battleship and still has the slots, resists and fitting to mount a solid tank. I can't think of any other ship in the game that has that combination of features, and this nominal damage application nerf isn't going to change that. It might make the Dominix look better compared to the Ishtar (bigger and slower, but slightly better sentry range), but the Ishtar will still put the other HACs to shame in many contexts.

Why not just reduce the Ishtar's drone damage/hitpoints bonus from 10% to 7.5%? That gives it a ~9% DPS nerf, which puts its theoretical long-range damage output right in line with other high-DPS HACs like the Deimos. You'd then have to decide what to do about the Vexor Navy Issue, but given that hull's much weaker tank, you might be fine leaving it as-is and letting it fall into the glass cannon niche like the attack battlecruisers.

What happened to the Gila then? (choices in drone was reduced)
And, more importantly: When can we expect carriers to be able to field fighter bombers?

I think you have something here.

I get more tank out of my Oracle than my ratting Ishtar, while having similar DPS and range.

ftfy

Amarr HACs
I like the position of the sacrilege/zealot. The sacrilege in particular is in a really good place right now. The zealot has always been a good combination of mobility and projection and that hasn't really changed either.

So with that as an idea of a base:

Gallente HACs

Deimos: It cries out to have a utility high returned to it. Cross-referencing the sacri, which is a brick and has high cap strength, the deimos wants to be the fast-attack solo version of the fleet oriented sacrilege. To do that, it needs the nos back! That simple tweak would legitimize the deimos as a solid small-gang ship, particularly with a bit more base cap.

Alternative to base stats tweak, if you want to get more adventurous, small tweaks to cap batteries to make them fit better. (actually, it might work as is, see the spoiler below, but I'd prefer a 1600mm plate on this fit).

I envision a solo fit along these lines, resistant to neuts but requiring careful attention to micromanage:

[Deimos, SoloPassiveCapLife]
800mm Reinforced Steel Plates II
Medium Ancillary Armor Repairer, Nanite Repair Paste
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Damage Control II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
True Sansha Armor Explosive Hardener

Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
Large Peroxide Capacitor Power Cell
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I

Heavy Ion Blaster II, Void M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Void M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Void M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Void M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Void M
Medium Diminishing Power Drain I

Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Anti-EM Pump I

Valkyrie II x5

The speed difference with the sacrilege is already sufficient to differentiate the ships roles.

this way the vigilant is positioned as a bricktanked, cap-booster using ship, and the deimos as a different style and use of slots.

Ishtar: Remove the sentry role. With the buff to heavy drones, it's no longer necessary to "fix" the ishtar's damage projection with a sentry role.

There's a couple of options once you've done this:

1) Continue with the stratification of drone tiers and give it bonuses to medium drones only. In this case the gall cruiser bonus could be "7.5% bonus to medium drone optimal, tracking, and speed" and "10% bonus to medium drone damage" and HAC skill would be "+5km range" and "5% bonus to medium drone damage" (or 5% pending the exact power balance you want here). This makes it competitive with the gila without creating an obvious winner

2) Make the ishtar's bonuses to medium and heavy, respectively, giving it a broad range of options but not a particular specialist.


This would remove the sentry aspect of the ishtar, but would still make it able to project damage in fleets due to heavies and meds being a bit faster now (~1.8km/s on gecko?) and have the hope of recovering its drones still. Kiting is still feasible, particularly through the use of medium drones, if that route is taken.

In both cases, Eos then retains the heavy bonus, and dominix is stripped of the bonus to Heavy drones and retains only the bonus to sentries (making it a battleship instead of a solopwnmobile)



Minmatar HACs

Muninn is a victim of the meta. It "should" be a competitive boat in mid-range HAC fleets but the projection of scorch overshadows arty a bit, and because of the last few years, people are kinda played out on artymuninn fleets I suppose. It does really lack in the solo department, not having the raw dps of the vaga or the tank/projection/application of the sacrilege. Perhaps the Optimal bonus should be converted to Optimal AND falloff. Then it'd be distinctly better than the vagabond at LR atrillery application, while remaining a slower, less kiting style of boat due to base stats and slot layout.


Vagabond... needs the mids need to be able to be MWD/XLASB/LSE/Disruptor without fitting mods and a full rack of 220s, that might be the fastest way to fix it. More damage projection (the TE and falloff buffs massively improved it, and then the re-nerfed TEs hit it the hardest when they landed, perhaps in the form of a further increased falloff bonus, or a falloff+tracking bonus, especially now that it's in direct competition to RLML boats, particularly the cerb, which basically has it beat hands down in almost all situations.

Alternatively,

Caldari HACs
Cerberus is also in a pretty good place. I think it has (more of) the sort of projection and precision in the RLML configuration that the Vagabond wants to have. The HAM version is certainly interesting, and I'm not quite certain that the community hasn't just not caught on to how to use extreme range HAMs yet, as the on-paper stats certainly seem viable (particularly in a Claymore-Linked gang with Speed+Res links running). I see HACs as a class running MWD+some mods with good cap stability (but possibly lower base cap?). As harsh as it is being in-between the extremely cheap Cruisers and the much more EHP-blessed battlecruisers, the HACs having the "advanced technology" advantage in capacitor, sensor strength, sig bonus, etc., is perfect... keeping them in this niche is fine. Bumping the Cerbs cap just a tiny bit more so it's stable running, say, 2 active mids and the MWD (i.e. permatank and permanrun) would place it in a really solid class of kiting that the game has lacked w

The Eagle needs a 7.5% damage bonus in place of the current 5%, a base speed buff (already included), and MUCH better cap life. That should bring DPS up to be in line with cerb, respecting that rail tracking is "worse" than HAM tracking.

Why not just change sentries? It would solve a lot of problems and it makes sense when you think about it... We have combat drones that operate away from the ship, and sentry drones that act as shipboard turrets.

Make drone ship also lose connection to its drones/sentries if jammed by ECM and/or Sensor Damps. That on top of a max range to maintain active connection to drones/sentries would balance sentries and drone boats all around.

I get more tank out of my Oracle than my ratting/PVP hybrid (not the weapon system) Ishtar and my pure PVP Ishtar, while having similar DPS and range.

Happy now?

You're forgetting damage application. Sentries track much, much faster than pulse or beam lasers. Ishtars are also much faster and have much lower signature radiuses than Oracles.