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[Hyperion] Heavy Assault Cruiser tweaks

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Sara Tosa
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#321 - 2014-07-29 19:58:15 UTC  |  Edited by: Sara Tosa
Altirius Saldiaro wrote:
Sara Tosa wrote:
Altirius Saldiaro wrote:
Querns wrote:
MeBiatch wrote:
To balance the ishtar I would greatly reduce the target range by 1/3 or to 52.8km. That way if you want to take advantage of the senty range you have to use sensor boosters.

Ishtars will just assign their drones to someone with longer target range.


If ECM and Damps affected a ship's connection with its drones, then it couldnt assign their drones because they'd lose ability to command their drones.

Ewar is the key to balancing OP sentry boats. EWAR needs to affect the connection between ship and its drones.

maybe sentries, if regular drones get immobile becouse ewar they'll get instakilled then the ship (now we arent' talking about ishtar anymore) lose its only weapon.
ewar should be temporary, not a permanent weapon denial.



Balancing ewar is a separate topic. Making ewar affect drones just makes too much sense for ccp to implement. There is ECCM which is the counter to ECM. So ecm is not permanent. It can be if you're fitted to make it highly effective. But there are still counters in game for that.

maybe I didnt explain myself, sorry - not native english.
when a drone ship drop connection to its drones, those will stop and become immobile targets - easily blapped by anybody, the only defence a small or even medium drone has is when its orbiting its target.
so if ewar do the same it basically means singleshotting all the droneship weapons.
Gizznitt Malikite
Agony Unleashed
Agony Empire
#322 - 2014-07-29 19:58:24 UTC
Gorski Car wrote:
Mizhir wrote:
Gizznitt Malikite wrote:
Mizhir wrote:
CCP Rise wrote:
Sentry drones have enormous downsides. They can be killed like other drones AND they don't return to your ship. There's a reason they were never used at all until assist + these tracking/optimal bonuses came along.


But with the possibility for 3 full sets of sentries it outweights this downside.


Perhaps the solution is to increase the size (but not bandwidth) of sentry drones. Sentries taking up 50 m3 of space would severely limit the number of sentries a drone ship may utilize. Suddenly Ishtars are 1 set of Sentries, 1 Set of heavies.

Food for thought, not necessarily a good idea (and may require balancing the drone bay of other drone boats).


Interesting concept. 50m3 would probably be too much. Even 30m3 may be sufficient. That would leave an ishtar with 75m3 after 2 sets of sentries. Otherwise 35m3 sentries would give you 25m3 remaining.


People can still just depot in new drone sets.


I chose 50 specifically so the ishtar can't fit 2 sets of sentries.

You are right they could use a depot to refit more drones, but since depots are not shared with fleetmates/corpmates, it would compete with the "spare drones" space. It would also be difficult and time consuming to anchor a depot and refit in the middle of a fight.

I'm thinking simply increasing the size of sentries to 50 m3 would really solve this issue without making the ishtar obsolete.

I think an additional feature that would provide a nice ewar counter to drone ships (and improve the use of a not-very-used module) is to have ECM bursts disrupt drones. If the jam succeeds, have the drone return to its owner's control, and then have it aggress based on drone settings and the drone target prioritization AI.
Xequecal
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#323 - 2014-07-29 20:00:13 UTC
Mike Voidstar wrote:
Xequecal wrote:
Nerfing the range on the Ishtar is actually fairly significant.

One of the biggest problems with the Ishtar is that it can shoot from outside the range of any medium-sized weapons except for railguns, and railguns shoot into its T2 resists. This is compounded by the fact that the Megathron is vastly superior to all the other gun-based battleships in basically every way, and it's also on kin/therm damage. This makes it very difficult to exploit the Ishtar's major weakness - EM damage.

What are you going to use against a sniping Ishtar fleet? The best option is the Apoc, but Amarr is the least-played race and an Apoc with beams basically requires AWU V to even undock. Large artillery? Proton L has a 96km optimal, it can't really reach a 130km sniping Ishtar and it has problems tracking it even at that range. Medium beams and projectiles don't have the range to hit a sniping Ishtar even on optimal range-bonused ships.

The same problem occurs against brawling Ishtars, close in, lasers have trouble tracking because they have the worst tracking. Autocannons have been nerfed into a godawful weapons system in general and the best missile boats are locked into kinetic (the worst damage type to use against an Ishtar) due to their bonuses. So, how are you going to apply EM? Ishtars are free to fly around with a giant EM hole, confident that it's very difficult for anyone to take advantage.



To deal with sentries? Rohk comes to mind, as does any maurader-- large rails will do the job easily, as will beams and cruise...artillery will be in falloff and fire a bit slow for the purpose. Get outside that drone control range--- which is only 100 or less for 99.9999% of all drone boats and you are shooting a stationary cruiser. I don't care how bad you think laser tracking is, they can hit a stationary cruiser which is what a sentry looks like for targeting, and if you can't, it's not like target painters don't exist or are hard to use.

Expensive? perhaps, but it can be done cheaper by the attack battlecruisers. They can counter by picking up their sentries and chasing you, but then they are doing exactly 0 DPS. Stop letting them fight how they want, and this problem will go away.


Ishtar has 134km drone control with two DCUs, no reason not to fit that in a sniping Ishtar fleet.

The Rokh deals kin/therm damage. This is the worst possible thing you could use. The typical fleet-fit Ishtar with links has around 95% kinetic resist.

The Ishtar isn't stationary. Brawling Ishtars are using heavy drones, they don't need to stand still. Sniping Ishtars can orbit their own drones.
James Amril-Kesh
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#324 - 2014-07-29 20:06:03 UTC  |  Edited by: James Amril-Kesh
Keep the optimal range bonus on the ishtar as-is. Drop the tracking bonus entirely.

The tracking on the ishtar is the main problem and the drop to 5% is not nearly enough to address this (see the graphs posted elsewhere in this thread).

Enjoying the rain today? ;)
Frostys Virpio
State War Academy
Caldari State
#325 - 2014-07-29 20:06:12 UTC
Xequecal wrote:
Mike Voidstar wrote:
Xequecal wrote:
Nerfing the range on the Ishtar is actually fairly significant.

One of the biggest problems with the Ishtar is that it can shoot from outside the range of any medium-sized weapons except for railguns, and railguns shoot into its T2 resists. This is compounded by the fact that the Megathron is vastly superior to all the other gun-based battleships in basically every way, and it's also on kin/therm damage. This makes it very difficult to exploit the Ishtar's major weakness - EM damage.

What are you going to use against a sniping Ishtar fleet? The best option is the Apoc, but Amarr is the least-played race and an Apoc with beams basically requires AWU V to even undock. Large artillery? Proton L has a 96km optimal, it can't really reach a 130km sniping Ishtar and it has problems tracking it even at that range. Medium beams and projectiles don't have the range to hit a sniping Ishtar even on optimal range-bonused ships.

The same problem occurs against brawling Ishtars, close in, lasers have trouble tracking because they have the worst tracking. Autocannons have been nerfed into a godawful weapons system in general and the best missile boats are locked into kinetic (the worst damage type to use against an Ishtar) due to their bonuses. So, how are you going to apply EM? Ishtars are free to fly around with a giant EM hole, confident that it's very difficult for anyone to take advantage.



To deal with sentries? Rohk comes to mind, as does any maurader-- large rails will do the job easily, as will beams and cruise...artillery will be in falloff and fire a bit slow for the purpose. Get outside that drone control range--- which is only 100 or less for 99.9999% of all drone boats and you are shooting a stationary cruiser. I don't care how bad you think laser tracking is, they can hit a stationary cruiser which is what a sentry looks like for targeting, and if you can't, it's not like target painters don't exist or are hard to use.

Expensive? perhaps, but it can be done cheaper by the attack battlecruisers. They can counter by picking up their sentries and chasing you, but then they are doing exactly 0 DPS. Stop letting them fight how they want, and this problem will go away.


Ishtar has 134km drone control with two DCUs, no reason not to fit that in a sniping Ishtar fleet.

The Rokh deals kin/therm damage. This is the worst possible thing you could use. The typical fleet-fit Ishtar with links has around 95% kinetic resist.

The Ishtar isn't stationary. Brawling Ishtars are using heavy drones, they don't need to stand still. Sniping Ishtars can orbit their own drones.


I think he meant to shoot the sentry instead of the Ishtar. It's stupid because his BS can't target as fast as you drop sentry and you are still dpsing him but meh...
Altirius Saldiaro
Doomheim
#326 - 2014-07-29 20:10:23 UTC  |  Edited by: Altirius Saldiaro
"maybe I didnt explain myself, sorry - not native english.
when a drone ship drop connection to its drones, those will stop and become immobile targets - easily blapped by anybody, the only defence a small or even medium drone has is when its orbiting its target.
so if ewar do the same it basically means singleshotting all the droneship weapons."

So be it. I'm ok with that. I should have to fit my ship to prevent losing connection with my drones.

When I am flying my Apoc in missions, and I get tracking disrupted, damped or ecm'd, it affects my ship's effectiveness. I dont complain about it. I fit my ship to compensate the best I can. However, if I use a Domi, Ishtar or Armageddon, ewar does not affect the effectiveness of my drones/sentries. They keep shooting and tearing through targets, even though I cant target the rats or my guns cant track. So why is it ok for ewar to affect my ship but it doesn't affect my drones? To me, making ewar hitting my ship affect my drones is common sense, but then why call it common sense when its not so common?
Judas Lonestar
Stryker Industries
Stryker Group
#327 - 2014-07-29 20:14:56 UTC
Musashibou Benkei wrote:
Tempest is fine as it is now with its versatility in choice of either shield or armor fitting. If you're going to take a slot and put it into the lows, take it from high instead of mid.

As many people have stated, the problem with ishtars is their ability to use sentries and be insanely mobile as well. Outside of using bombs in null, low sec fights have no "good" way of taking away their dps unless you want to sacrifice a smarty battleship to the pvp Gods each time.

On a side note, you guys at CCP need to not just "tweak the current" but also keep adding new things. The last thing you actually added to the game was a single t2 mining frigate and nothing else (I'm not counting the mordus ships because I don't consider them "line ships"). It's just a circling of encouraging/forcing people to train skills they didn't have to train before or further eyecandy.

Where is the t2 smartbombing ship? Where is the mobile cyno jamming ship? Where is the sub-cap mini-triage ship? I'm not saying these ideas are good or anything but goddamn; these latest patches are seriously lacking in actual new content.


Oh, if we get to request new things can I request an "Anti Ewar" hull that gets weird modules and bonuses specifically created to counter neuts, jams and disruptors?

Kind of like the Wild Weasel of Eve, only made by some Pirate faction rather than McDonnell Douglas (To name one).
Mike Voidstar
Voidstar Free Flight Foundation
#328 - 2014-07-29 20:17:47 UTC
Xequecal wrote:
Mike Voidstar wrote:
Xequecal wrote:
Nerfing the range on the Ishtar is actually fairly significant.

One of the biggest problems with the Ishtar is that it can shoot from outside the range of any medium-sized weapons except for railguns, and railguns shoot into its T2 resists. This is compounded by the fact that the Megathron is vastly superior to all the other gun-based battleships in basically every way, and it's also on kin/therm damage. This makes it very difficult to exploit the Ishtar's major weakness - EM damage.

What are you going to use against a sniping Ishtar fleet? The best option is the Apoc, but Amarr is the least-played race and an Apoc with beams basically requires AWU V to even undock. Large artillery? Proton L has a 96km optimal, it can't really reach a 130km sniping Ishtar and it has problems tracking it even at that range. Medium beams and projectiles don't have the range to hit a sniping Ishtar even on optimal range-bonused ships.

The same problem occurs against brawling Ishtars, close in, lasers have trouble tracking because they have the worst tracking. Autocannons have been nerfed into a godawful weapons system in general and the best missile boats are locked into kinetic (the worst damage type to use against an Ishtar) due to their bonuses. So, how are you going to apply EM? Ishtars are free to fly around with a giant EM hole, confident that it's very difficult for anyone to take advantage.



To deal with sentries? Rohk comes to mind, as does any maurader-- large rails will do the job easily, as will beams and cruise...artillery will be in falloff and fire a bit slow for the purpose. Get outside that drone control range--- which is only 100 or less for 99.9999% of all drone boats and you are shooting a stationary cruiser. I don't care how bad you think laser tracking is, they can hit a stationary cruiser which is what a sentry looks like for targeting, and if you can't, it's not like target painters don't exist or are hard to use.

Expensive? perhaps, but it can be done cheaper by the attack battlecruisers. They can counter by picking up their sentries and chasing you, but then they are doing exactly 0 DPS. Stop letting them fight how they want, and this problem will go away.


Ishtar has 134km drone control with two DCUs, no reason not to fit that in a sniping Ishtar fleet.

The Rokh deals kin/therm damage. This is the worst possible thing you could use. The typical fleet-fit Ishtar with links has around 95% kinetic resist.

The Ishtar isn't stationary. Brawling Ishtars are using heavy drones, they don't need to stand still. Sniping Ishtars can orbit their own drones.


Shoot the Drone. It can't move, it's fat, and it does not have enough HP to matter. Dead drones do no damage. A Rohk will hit stuff from 200km away and still be in optimal range of the guns. You will need some sensor booster to target with, obviously.

Run them out of drones, and stop engaging the way they want you to. It does mean changing how you fight.
Shilalasar
Dead Sky Inc.
#329 - 2014-07-29 20:18:03 UTC
If the tracking on sentries was so bad the counter to Ishtars is to orbit the sentries? That sounds wrong. About as good of an idea as smartbombing them off with 0 m/s battleships.

CCP Rise wrote:
Sentry drones have enormous downsides. They can be killed like other drones AND they don't return to your ship. There's a reason they were never used at all until assist + these tracking/optimal bonuses came along.


I am fairly certain someone at CCP took a hard nerfbat to every doctrine that was used before the Ishtar got buffed like crazy. Have not seen any supercaps with normal drones, trackingtitans, canes or drakes lately. Also DDAs weren´t a thing. Or ships warping with different speeds. Pretty sure there was no real cruiserdoctrine except zealots for quite a while.

The Ishtar is a broken peace of ****, with more fittingroom than most HACs. You can put whatever you want on it without requiring fittingmods. While not needing any CPU/PG for guns and still having free highslots.
And as many people have pointed out destroyable only counts in largescale and without the ability to carry more than enough of them around and then even being able to reload from the cargohold.
Orakkus
ImperiaI Federation
Goonswarm Federation
#330 - 2014-07-29 20:23:43 UTC
l0rd carlos wrote:
I have hoped the Muninn would get a midslot more :(


This

He's not just famous, he's "IN" famous. - Ned Nederlander
Frostys Virpio
State War Academy
Caldari State
#331 - 2014-07-29 20:24:49 UTC
Judas Lonestar wrote:
Musashibou Benkei wrote:
Tempest is fine as it is now with its versatility in choice of either shield or armor fitting. If you're going to take a slot and put it into the lows, take it from high instead of mid.

As many people have stated, the problem with ishtars is their ability to use sentries and be insanely mobile as well. Outside of using bombs in null, low sec fights have no "good" way of taking away their dps unless you want to sacrifice a smarty battleship to the pvp Gods each time.

On a side note, you guys at CCP need to not just "tweak the current" but also keep adding new things. The last thing you actually added to the game was a single t2 mining frigate and nothing else (I'm not counting the mordus ships because I don't consider them "line ships"). It's just a circling of encouraging/forcing people to train skills they didn't have to train before or further eyecandy.

Where is the t2 smartbombing ship? Where is the mobile cyno jamming ship? Where is the sub-cap mini-triage ship? I'm not saying these ideas are good or anything but goddamn; these latest patches are seriously lacking in actual new content.


Oh, if we get to request new things can I request an "Anti Ewar" hull that gets weird modules and bonuses specifically created to counter neuts, jams and disruptors?

Kind of like the Wild Weasel of Eve, only made by some Pirate faction rather than McDonnell Douglas (To name one).


You mean like cap transfer to counter neuts, remote ECCM to counter jams and RESEBO to counter damp?
Altirius Saldiaro
Doomheim
#332 - 2014-07-29 20:26:28 UTC  |  Edited by: Altirius Saldiaro
Shilalasar wrote:
If the tracking on sentries was so bad the counter to Ishtars is to orbit the sentries? That sounds wrong. About as good of an idea as smartbombing them off with 0 m/s battleships.

CCP Rise wrote:
Sentry drones have enormous downsides. They can be killed like other drones AND they don't return to your ship. There's a reason they were never used at all until assist + these tracking/optimal bonuses came along.


I am fairly certain someone at CCP took a hard nerfbat to every doctrine that was used before the Ishtar got buffed like crazy. Have not seen any supercaps with normal drones, trackingtitans, canes or drakes lately. Also DDAs weren´t a thing. Or ships warping with different speeds. Pretty sure there was no real cruiserdoctrine except zealots for quite a while.

The Ishtar is a broken peace of ****, with more fittingroom than most HACs. You can put whatever you want on it without requiring fittingmods. While not needing any CPU/PG for guns and still having free highslots.
And as many people have pointed out destroyable only counts in largescale and without the ability to carry more than enough of them around and then even being able to reload from the cargohold.


Thats what they do. They go the lazy route. Everyone in null used drake blobs, so they nerfed drakes. Meanwhile, it affected the game play of everyone who loved using the drake for nonblobs. I loved the drake. Used to be my favorite ship to mission with. Now it sucks.

Players need to come up with doctrines that counter whatever. If thrre is no counter, then ccp should either buff something to become the counter or look at development of something that can become a counter. I keep suggesting in here to make ewar affect the relationship between the drone ship and the drones. It doesnt nerf the stats of the ship, it gives other players a way to counter that ship if they choose to use that counter measure.
Mike Voidstar
Voidstar Free Flight Foundation
#333 - 2014-07-29 20:28:58 UTC
Altirius Saldiaro wrote:
"maybe I didnt explain myself, sorry - not native english.
when a drone ship drop connection to its drones, those will stop and become immobile targets - easily blapped by anybody, the only defence a small or even medium drone has is when its orbiting its target.
so if ewar do the same it basically means singleshotting all the droneship weapons."

So be it. I'm ok with that. I should have to fit my ship to prevent losing connection with my drones.

When I am flying my Apoc in missions, and I get tracking disrupted, damped or ecm'd, it affects my ship's effectiveness. I dont complain about it. I fit my ship to compensate the best I can. However, if I use a Domi, Ishtar or Armageddon, ewar does not affect the effectiveness of my drones/sentries. They keep shooting and tearing through targets, even though I cant target the rats or my guns cant track. So why is it ok for ewar to affect my ship but it doesn't affect my drones? To me, making ewar hitting my ship affect my drones is common sense, but then why call it common sense when its not so common?



This is part of the balance to drones.

They can be individually targeted and easily destroyed. They do low end of average damage for weapons of their size, with fewer options to increase that.

There is an effect on their performance when their ship is under ECM--- they rely on their own targeting AI to continue fighting, which is not great. If you force a drone redeployment either by destroying the drone or the pilot recalling it, the new drones will not engage even on aggressive mode until something new hits the ship.

Drones are different from other weapons. They do have huge downsides, many of which are unique to them. They have unique advantages too.
ElDiablo DelRojo
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#334 - 2014-07-29 20:33:21 UTC
One simple 'fix' for the BS class is to revise the warp speed changes. While those changes were an absolutely fantastic idea overall, the big loser is Battleships - their incredibly slow warp speed just makes them fundamentally unfun to the point they're unplayable.

HACs and everything below got substantially more fun. The warp speed changes made scouting and gang ceptor skirmishing awesome.

Caps don't warp much, they cyno in and mostly do their thing.

BS got the shaft, becoming so slow that you'd never use them for anything other than 'undock, warp to titan, take bridge to fight'. You basically eliminated them for any small gang application / roaming, outside of titan bridging.

Just re-balance the speeds around where BS were originally, instead of cruisers / hacs. BS were playable before and would be again. I know you're a fan of BS roaming, Rise, and this change made it so boring as to be utterly unplayable. Easy change leads to more BS use.
Frostys Virpio
State War Academy
Caldari State
#335 - 2014-07-29 20:33:35 UTC
Mike Voidstar wrote:
Altirius Saldiaro wrote:
"maybe I didnt explain myself, sorry - not native english.
when a drone ship drop connection to its drones, those will stop and become immobile targets - easily blapped by anybody, the only defence a small or even medium drone has is when its orbiting its target.
so if ewar do the same it basically means singleshotting all the droneship weapons."

So be it. I'm ok with that. I should have to fit my ship to prevent losing connection with my drones.

When I am flying my Apoc in missions, and I get tracking disrupted, damped or ecm'd, it affects my ship's effectiveness. I dont complain about it. I fit my ship to compensate the best I can. However, if I use a Domi, Ishtar or Armageddon, ewar does not affect the effectiveness of my drones/sentries. They keep shooting and tearing through targets, even though I cant target the rats or my guns cant track. So why is it ok for ewar to affect my ship but it doesn't affect my drones? To me, making ewar hitting my ship affect my drones is common sense, but then why call it common sense when its not so common?



This is part of the balance to drones.

They can be individually targeted and easily destroyed. They do low end of average damage for weapons of their size, with fewer options to increase that.

There is an effect on their performance when their ship is under ECM--- they rely on their own targeting AI to continue fighting, which is not great. If you force a drone redeployment either by destroying the drone or the pilot recalling it, the new drones will not engage even on aggressive mode until something new hits the ship.

Drones are different from other weapons. They do have huge downsides, many of which are unique to them. They have unique advantages too.


Their advantage outweigh their downside when it come to sentry. That's where the problem is.
Altirius Saldiaro
Doomheim
#336 - 2014-07-29 20:43:07 UTC  |  Edited by: Altirius Saldiaro
Drones are drones. They should not have their own AI. They should rely on their ship.

Because if I warp off grid, why dont my drones continue to shoot targets? They have their own targeting AI dont they? When I am on grid, they are connected to me and they work, off grid they dont.
Mike Voidstar
Voidstar Free Flight Foundation
#337 - 2014-07-29 20:48:33 UTC  |  Edited by: Mike Voidstar
Advantage should always outweigh disadvantage, or there is no point in using such a thing.

In the case of sentries... just get away from them. Honestly, there are tons of things in this game capable of hitting from far beyond the drone control range of an ungimped drone ship. That disadvantage of being easily destroyed will show itself real quick if you just stop charging into them and shoot them from a distance.


And yeah, Drones are drones. I don't know what you are reading, or where you have been, but every drone I have ever heard of, fictional or real life, has at least rudimentary ability to operate individually from it's controller. That's what makes it a drone, and not just a gun mounted on the hull, or a piloted fighter.
Deeone
Deadspace Zombie Factory
#338 - 2014-07-29 20:50:22 UTC
Harvey James wrote:
i expected the ishtar change ... will the domi change aswell then?

Eagle
- i did say in the HAC page it was far too slow .. would be nice at 200 along with some drones .. it has a dronebay now on the model and would allow for blaster variants then instead of only rails ...

Vagabond
- please nerf its speed ... resilience is the theme of HACS remember so why is it just as quick as a stabber and cynabal???



Speed is the min resilience.......Seriously its made out of rust and tape you really think it can tank?
Lothras Andastar
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#339 - 2014-07-29 20:55:52 UTC
MAH RATTINGS!

Because the Legacy Code has too much Psssssssssssssssh, nothing will ever get fixed until CCP stop wasting money on failed sparkle MMOs and instead rewrite the entire backend of EvE from scratch.
Frostys Virpio
State War Academy
Caldari State
#340 - 2014-07-29 20:57:16 UTC  |  Edited by: Frostys Virpio
Mike Voidstar wrote:
Advantage should always outweigh disadvantage, or there is no point in using such a thing.

In the case of sentries... just get away from them. Honestly, there are tons of things in this game capable of hitting from far beyond the drone control range of an ungimped drone ship. That disadvantage of being easily destroyed will show itself real quick if you just stop charging into them and shoot them from a distance.


They should be a trade off, not outweigh. The fact it outweight it's drawback means there is no choice because one is just flat out better.

It's like you think the Ishtars will sit still while getting their sentry sniped to death one after another.

Whats the EHP of a bonused sentry anyway? How about 5 of them?