Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So you're trying to tell me, that dps doesnt matter on the one weapon system that specializes in long range dps? And I already showed you that even taking into account falloff, the wardens will apply better damage at the same ranges as rails. The only point they come even close is at 150km where the wardens drop to near to rail levels but then rail damage drops dramatically as falloff kicks in, all the while wardens have better tracking. So no, rails do not apply damage better than sentries in the same situations. While yes it does tank a bit more than the common fleet ishtar fit, it does not help much against double the dps.

It's just as stupid as the notion of eagles fighting them at that range




The bottom line is thus - at anything approaching a real engagement envelope, Ishtars are far too good compared to both their immediate peer group and to a lesser (but still very significant) extent anything else you want to bring to the field as a line ship.

Situations where the Ishtar is not the optimal ship to use in the overall circumstance are really pretty contrived and don't pan out like that in the game. A gang of 30-50 Ishtars land on grid with typical fleet support and your sole recourse is to hope you utterly outspent them, or simply have more Ishtars than the enemy.

I don't like it, but the effectiveness cannot be denied and as I say, I'll continue to roll in these until they are fixed. I am, however, honest enough to point out that it is bad for the game and needs fixing ASAP.

Got a fit to go with this claim for the Eagle?

Yes, along with the other ~25 eagle pilots in the game, I'd LOVE to have a decent one that's not niche and leaving me feeling like I should just stop being a handicap and fly a better hull. But one which isnt merely "decent" and can compete with ishtars? I suspect you're chasing rainbows there.

Easy dude, has been clearly established that there will not be more for The next release but they want to continue lsitening , because you know.. SHORT RELEASE CYCLES. that means that in 2 months you can have more.

Chill.. and try to be constructive.

Rise and fozzie work will get easier with the new release cycle.

Just tested it live, it works.

Dropped sentries at undock from station, burned off roughly 150km dropped can. burned off another 80km (not so confident how far my drone control range is with skills) to equal about 220-230km from drones 80km from can. Ordered drones to engage and they destroyed can. The drones do not need to in control range to recieve order but the object of the order (target) needs to be within that control range.

Probably Rage HAM with a ~35km range and such application that it will result in 250-300 kinetic dps versus an afterburning cruiser.
Right into the Isthar Highest resist.

Like many people stated above I believe the problem with Istars or sentries is their general lack of weaknesses.

Perhaps an alternative to nerfing tracking or damage is providing better counters to the Isthar. This would keep people happy that currently use it for PvE aswell.

For example, with turret weapon systems there is tracking disruptors. Granted these do not work really work very well on a fleet level but even damps and ECM affect other weapons more then they do drones because drones can be assisted.

ECM at the moment is not very reliable and does not preform as well as damps do (because damps are always applied and it is not chance based).

Either a new mod could be designed to counter drones (which would mostly affect sentries) or a currently under performing EWAR system like ECM could be changed to jam out not just the targeting systems of the target ship but their drones.

Another thing that always struck me about sentries that they are one of the few things that EVE players drop in space that don't need anchoring (think bubbles, mobile depots etc).

As an example, giving them a 15 second anchoring time and a 5 second unanchoring time would serve to atleast give them a weakness. Also this would be comparable to highslot weapons that have to reload every time they run out of ammo or want to switch damage type/range. In any fleet fights when positioning changes reloading ammos to change optimals plays a big factor. With sentry drones it is more or less instant because of the ability to abandon drones. Even pulling them in and launching a different set does not consume a whole lot of time. If the weakness of other mobile drone systems is the fact that they are mobile and have travel time (lights mediums heavies) I believe the weakness of sentries should be that they are not, instead of it being mostly a strength as it is right now.

Furthermore, I believe the sentries are a symptom of a bigger problem. Personally my single biggest gripe with nullsec fleetwarfare is that currently almost everyone flies the same ships.Emphasis being on tank and damage projection in the current meta. Logistics is overpowered, Ewar (mostly) is not very useful and brawling setups are never used.

I think we need more options and slightly more ship (or weapon system specific) counters, so we can challenge ourselves and our opponents to more dynamic style of playing. I would love to see an expansion focused on electronic warfare instead of just simple damage buffs and nerfs.

The reason why brawling doesn't have chance is actually the fact that there is no such thing as line of fire's obstruction in current game's engine. To understand the connection between those two aspects, just imagine two fleets fighting huge battle. Each fleet have 2 wing, close range and sniping. Two close range wings are brawling and their ranks now intermingled. Now sniper wings have to choose their possitions and targets wisely, as they can't simply shoot through their own brawling buddies (neither through other sniper buddies who happen to get in their line of sight) and asteroids.

Now lets get to those brawling wings. Their ranks now mixed up, and any single one combatant can lock and shoot only those enemys who are adjacent to him, because line of sight to others now obstructed by those adjacent ones. So focusing with dps of all wing now becomes infeasible.

Snipers still can project fire and alfa focus targets pretty well, but if some close range fleet will warp to their 0, same rules will start apply - they won't be able to shoot through their others sniping buddies and adjacent enemy close range combatants to focus one particular target, only those close to them enough.

With this tactical element lacking from the equation it will be very hard to balance things and shift battles to brawlings.

I might be wrong, but I believe this has been discussed before. If I recall correctly, the Devs said that forcing the servers to calculate what is essentially collision damage for each instance of a shot would amount to hundreds of thousands of extra complications on the processors per tick, and over the course of any decent sized battle? Forget about it. You'd see even small gang brawls enter into TiDi. So the concept is completely and utterly off the table.