Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This would be a poor change because the issue lies not within tracking issues, but rather within damage application issues at range with ACs. This change would only really benefit artillery fits to a large degree.

As an alternative to the "turn sentries into arty; lower their dps overall but give them high alpha" idea, I have one that's a lot more simple, clean-cut, and solves all the issues the ishtar has.

Bar sentries from use for anything smaller than a battlecruiser. The main issue with them currently is having their parent ship has too great a level of mobility to be brought down easily, in addition to it getting obnoxious dps and range. Dropping them from cruiser down is the only viable option for that particular drone system.

Earlier it was stated by the dev that sentry downsides offset its damage and range enough.

I'm sorry, but that's complete hogwash.

Sentries are a completely different type of drone weapon system than any of their counterparts because they simply sit there and fire at long ranges. No other drone system in the game does that, and the advantage of having a long-range, high-dps weapons platform that isn't affected by any ewar at all done to the parent ship is WAY too powerful for ANY cruiser in the game to field, especially for a HAC that gets nothing BUT drone bonuses. The ishtar is fine with using heavies as its strongest drone system, and I would enjoy seeing ships like the myrmidon and especially the geddon used more as premier fleet drone boats with sentries.

Dropping their use from cruisers and below entirely completely eliminates the problems with the ishtar and cruiser sentry boats in general; that the ship fielding them can just fly away from the drones and not be grabbed an taken down easily by a fleet. It's simple, and you don't need to go through the nightmare of doing a heavy nerf and/or rebalance to either the ishtar or sentries in general.

Bro, do you even FYF?

Still awaiting the much needed rebalance for T3 cruisers...

Also... Why no changes yet for the Zealot - Sacrilege?

That's because, when they first did the T1 battleship balance pass, it was pointed out to CCP Rise that after having taken away the Apoc's laser cap use bonus and nerfed it's capacitor, it's cap would last long enough to fire just its guns for about seventy seconds.

Thus, Large Lasers got a cap use reduction, and the T1 Amarr battleships got a cap increase (instead of the decrease they had originally intended). This translated into the Navy versions as well.

What can be packed in with a Depot is largely irrelevant since it only takes ~300 to kill it before it anchors, not to mention no kiting ship will stop for a full minute to switch drones.

I think the tempest slot layout is fine it can shield tank and armor tank dectently enough right now hoever I think its bonuses are very weak looking at other ships the hyperion gets 9 guns + repair bonus and the maelstrom gets 10 and a shield boost bonus while the tempest only gets 9,48 guns
I think giving it 10% damage and another bonus like maybe prop mod cap use would be nice

the spare highslot the munin got would be so much better as med or low

I think the navy geddon could use a bit of love its cap is very very bad

and there is still the nestor.....

It's not really more complicated - battleships are borderline useless outside of PvE (regardless of whether battleships are fine "WITHIN" the class). It's not just bombers - you'd also have to adjust strategic and command cruisers as well. They need more EHP at a bare minimum: 0% for attack battlecruisers, 25% for combat battlecruisers, 0% for Maruaders and BlackOps and 50% for all T1, Faction and Pirate battleships. It wouldn't hurt to bump the scan resolution on the entire class as well. Just because they may look good "on paper" doesn't mean they have a practical application outside of high-sec or null fleets.

If one really wants to start thinking outside the box:
• Battlecruisers should get a -1 warp core bonus; battleships -2
• Battlecruisers should get a -10% defense against neuts; battleships -20%
• Battlecruisers should get a -25% reduction against webs; battleships -50%

Again, attack battlecruisers, Marauders and BlackOps excluded from the list. None of these changes would make battleships "op" - but it would extend their survivability such that people might actually start soloing and using them in small gangs again.

What?

Dude, you have no idea of how the game is played if this is the official CCP line on sentries.

Yes, they can be killed by other drones. But usually, the sentries are dropped out of the drone control range (<58km) of the target, meaning you have to motor towards the sentries (lel) to even task your own drones to attack ONE of the sentries (which takes forever to lock). Then your drones have to slowboat toward the sentry you have targeted. Your drones then miss their first few shots due to MWDing too fast. The Sentry has about 2500 EHP, so it takes a lot of time to kill that one sentry. Then you lock the next senty.

meanwhile, the Ishtar has done;
08:34:27 Garde II owned by douchebag hits you for 1145!
08:34:27 Garde II owned by douchebag hits you for 1811!
08:34:27 Garde II owned by douchebag hits you for 1567!
08:34:27 Garde II owned by douchebag hits you for 1399!
08:34:27 Garde II owned by douchebag hits you for 1457!
08:34:27 Garde II owned by douchebag hits you for 1124!
08:34:27 Garde II owned by douchebag hits you for 1800!
08:34:27 Garde II owned by douchebag hits you for 1777!
08:34:27 Garde II owned by douchebag hits you for 1657!
08:34:27 Garde II owned by douchebag hits you for 1345!

QED, you know nothing, John Snow. Let alone the fact that the Ishtar owning the sentry drones is MWDing around at 2300m/s cap stable, at 80km while you are suffering 860 inbound DPS which hits perfectly as you orbit his drones at 58km trying to follow CCP Rise's Elite PVP Advice that addressing the Sentry set kills the Ishtar. hint: it doesn't.

or you try to chase down the ishtar itself, which works just as well, considering he will stay away from his set of Gardes, allowing you to make the mistake of staying in the perfect optimal of his set of Gardes. Or just drop a second or third set.

Yes, the drone assist meta wasn't used in EVE, you are correct. My second point in this demonstration of your ignorance, is that the drone assist feature existed in EVE for years. The meta of the game did not favor it because, to whit,
1) DDA's did not exist for the vast majority of this time, restricting the Ishtar to around the 500-550 DPS range. Adding DDA's unboxed the demon.
2) The Ishtar up until it got broken in Rubicon courtesy of yourself and CCP Fozzie, was too hard to fit, resulting in sub-optimal levels of tank. in fact, it was notoriously hard to do anything with it related to PVP simply because you ran out of CPU just by buying the damn thing. This was addressed, again by the infinite wisdom of CCP, by the addition of CPU rigs. However, this was then superceded by the problem that
4) The ishtar could never be cap stable with a MWD, and under way at 1200m/s, it's sig was so bloated (especially shield fit) that it would just get alpha'd off the field or grind to a stop after 45 seconds
5) Geckos also did not exist for brawler work. Then you nincumpoops put them in the game, because ommni-everything heavy drones is a good idea (tm).

For years, flying a weakly tanked, sig-bloated, relatively slow fitting-impossible, capacitor-bereft drone-assignation meta using expensive ships, was far less preferable to welpcanes, arty Maels, hellcats, Drakes, Tengufleets, etc, etc. Why bother with the Ishtar when naga sniping gangs or Talos gangs were far more effective, far more mobile and cheaper?

Then suddenly, magically, you had DDA's, CPU out the wazoo, buffed drone parameters favoring OMGsniper sentries, low-sig permarun MWD with no cap modules at all, and a reasonable tank, to boot. You just couldn't have more than fifty ishtars assign drones to one player to "balance"this all out.

The facts of the matter is that various factors and patches and new modules, topped off by the giant turdy cherry on top of the HAC de-balance, all combined to turn a tried and discarded drone-assign meta into an overpowered killdozer meta which scaled from gangs of two (Ishtar + tackle in lowsec = wtf) to gangs of 200...now "nerfed" to wings of 50. It's called a convergence of things which caused the meta to suddenly, within the space of 6 months, become not only viable, but so self-obviously OP that you would be insane not to do it.

CCP Rise, you and CCPFozzie should be commended for so rapidly realising the Ishtar is out of balance. I mean, six months is a short period of time to notice this graph.

I wonder how long until you realise the Deimos is unbalanced? That it needs to lose about 60 PG and 20 CPU and 5% capacitor, to stop it being unkillable by any other ship in a 1v1, aside from something with neuts and (ahahaha, I lafff) a 1200 DPS active tank and unlimited capacitor.

or, maybe, that the Sacrelige is still bad at everything it does except undocking.

- - - -

Battleship-wise, how about you give the Tempest uber webs? You have the Scorpion (for people who can't afford an equally-priced Jamgu or Failcon) for ECM. You have the Geddon with 38km neuts for people who aren't rich enough to ddrop a Bhaalgorn. Yet you have somehow, no uber webbing battleship aside from the Vindicator which gets 90% webs and fulfils a niche role as station-camping troll fit. You even have the barghest for ridiculous long-point glorious lossmail creation (I mean, whatevs, it sucks out-of-the-box)

I'm not asking for 40km webs. I'm not asking for 30km webs. But a Tempest with 20km webs and the current slot layout would be pretty much what the BS field needs. This would solve the damage application problem, provide BS gangs with ceptor defence. 5 mids would force fitting compromise for twin web setups.

Yes to the 8/4/7 tempest, though I would prefer 7/5/7. Also give it more pwg so it can fit arty and a 1600 plate or two.