Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Just because the Gecko can be used on the Rattlesnake does not mean it is meant to replace all other varieties of drones. You are reading into things that are not there. This isn't some great work of art with a deeper meaning, it is a reskinned Dragonfly Fighter turned into heavy drone with greater than normal stats. The fact that it can kinda sorta compete with Hammerhead IIs in speed/tracking is only a byproduct of it being such a beefed up drone to begin with and not because it was designed to replace them.

I am reading very many assumptions here and the only true fact being that you indeed cannot put a full rainbow of drones in your drone bay anymore. Sorry about that, I guess you'll need to adapt and bring a mobile depot with you.

So this thread has run for a while and it seems that none can seem to offer a valid reason why we should not have a change to the drone AI with regards to the Gecko.

This change seems to be purely beneficial and should not be a difficult fix.

Personally, this is a change that I need to continue enjoying the game. I had my primary playstyle ruined on a highly SP intensive pirate faction battleship, the Rattlesnake, the only combat ship I have been training for, dreaming about and perfecting since I started this game over 4 years ago. This change would go a long way towards improving opinion(at least mine) of the game and the devs when it comes to making the needed changes even when they don't effect a great number of people.

As a Torpedo using Rattlesnake pilot that used primarily light and medium drones, it is extremely disappointing to me that the Rattlesnake was changed to such a large degree into a ship I that I do not enjoy nearly as much. I'd like to mention that I also trained in sentries and heavy drones for the Rattlesnake, and have several different Rattlesnakes with several different fits that all use multiple deadspace and faction modules, and I don't just run easy level 4 missions without looting or salvaging, like some people seem to assume can be the only way to play a Battleship in EVE.

My playstyle was simple and effective, especially under the effects of e-war: Lock on the battleships first, which are faster to lock, and apply Torpedoes while using the optimal type of light or medium drones with the optimal damage type to clean up the frigates or cruisers respectively. As soon as lights and mediums finish their job destroying the smaller ships(something they do automatically without the excessive locking delays and re-targetting neccesary of each individual frigate and cruiser as is required of the Gecko in the same role), salvage drones can be salvaging. Wrecks are in close clusters instead of being spread out like they are when sniping, allowing your MTU to gather your loot much more quickly. Warden IIs are used with this as well when preferred to salvage drones.

Unfortunately, the Rattlesnake has lost its bonuses that made this playstyle as effective as it was. Its bad enough for people like me, with the loss of missile velocity bonus that makes makes torpedoes non-viable in a majority of scenarios, a specialized missile damage damage type, and -225m3 reduction in drone bay that destroys the creative possibilities of utility drones, and loss of ability to use the optimum light and medium drone types. What ultimately makes it all too much is the annoying hassle of having to babysit your gecko onto every single frigate or cruiser you want to destroy if there are Battleships present, as Battleships will be prioritized by the AI script used with Gecko.

Under the effect of jamming or dampening, this problem is amplified as other drone boats have bonused light and medium drones which will continue to deal high-end damage upon frigate and cruisers without popping Battleship triggers like a Gecko will, or leaving you web scrambled and webbed as it uselessly wastes time attacking a random battleship, ultimately compromising the great benefit of using drones to combat e-war.

There is now a heavy micromanagement burden required in using a Gecko to combat ships smaller than a battleship that is compounded by the ship being limited 7 locked targets max. Since the Gecko appears to be compensation for the loss of bonuses on light and medium drones and a -225m3 reduction in drone bay space, it would greatly benefit the game if they could be made to prioritize the target type they are tasked upon, frigates or cruisers, instead of prioritizing battleships, something that traditional heavy drones do much better at dealing with.

CCP giveth.

CCP taketh away.

I am probably feeding the troll at this point... but Poe's Law and all...


Likewise, you have offered no good reason why there should be any changes other than "because I want to play this way and not have to adapt!"



Again, adapt.

Suicide Gankers complained about changes made to their style of gameplay... yet they adapted to keep doing what they liked to do.
0.0 SOV Alliances complained about the Dominion changes to their empires and way of life... yet they adapted to recreate the "environment" they were used to.
PvPers complained about various ship that were rebalanced (about how some metas were being changed or tossed in favor of others)... and yet they all adapted new ways of blowing each other up.
Industrialists complained about the recent Industry revamp... and now they are adapting to it and making profits once again (some more than others).

You, as a mission runner and fan of a particular style of playing, are no more of a "special a snowflake" than anyone else (see: you are not more entitled to run missions exactly the way you want than I am to getting killmails in exactly the ways I want).
Things change. It keeps things "fresh."


That has more to do with general drone AI than the Gecko specifically.

Normal heavy drones and sentries exhibit the same behavior.


I am probably beating a dead horse here... but "try a different tactic!"


*buries face in hands*

- The Gecko was not a "replacement" for anything. It is a limited edition, slightly OP, super-heavy drone given for "funsies." Just like the Gnosis was given out as a lol-jack-of-all-trades ship that is actually somewhat competitive as a battlecruiser to its peers (yet not supposed to replace them or be the harbinger for a new ship line).

- Light and medium drones are still effective on a Rattlesnake... they are just not "optimal" (in fact, I would go as far as to say they were never "optimal" on the Rattler to begin with).

- A smarter drone AI system where you can prioritize targets is something you would gain more traction with. I suggest you redo the OP to focus on that point rather than obsess over Geckos and Rattlesnakes (which are moot points).

1): Then we must be getting to get BPOs for the reduced-CPU faction armor hardeners, because it's the only way to get certain fits for certain cruisers working! Have to, because those faction hardeners were apparently made specifically so those fits work exactly how I want them to!

2): The Rattlesnake change was a massive buff!

True, you don't do as much damage with lights and mediums, but you do about as much damage with them as any other battleship besides the Dominix and Armageddon. Your sentries and heavies massively out-DPS the Dominix and Armageddon, especially because your Rattlesnake is shield-tanked and you aren't sacrificing any tank by throwing Drone Damage Amps on it. The reduction in drone bay is because you don't need to store 125m3 for each kind of heavy or sentry drone you want, only 50m3 now.

Torpedo range was reduced (not even going to mention cruise missile range getting reduced, because you can hit out to your lock range after the change anyway), but that needed to happen because of the damage buff. Imagine BUFFED torpedoes hitting at cruise ranges. As it stands now, your cruise missiles on the Rattlesnake hit like torpedoes are cruise ranges with cruise damage application.

If you don't like the way your fit works on the new Rattlesnake, change your fit. Torpedoes on a Rattler makes it a dedicated battleship killer that has a hard time applying damage to cruisers and frigates, but it's 1600 DPS of battleship-killing.


I'm not even convinced it's broken. You want this change so you have to put even less effort into mission running. Hi, welcome, you must be new to Eve.

I don't think he screwed this one up at all. Before, it was a shield-tanked Dominix. Now it's actually a unique ship that has very interesting differences.

Nope! Very different ships, very different roles. The only "upgrades" are certain T1 ships vs certain T2 ships, like the Omen compared to the Zealot (and even then considering it a direct upgrade is somewhat iffy).

When proposing a change like this, the impetus is on YOU to prove the change is necessary; not on us to prove it is not.

The Gecko was not provided to you as a replacement for any perceived nerf to the Rattlesnake. As has been said before, it was just CCP's gift to players for EvE's anniversary, and you're reading too much into it.

As for the fact that its tracking is comparable to a Hammerhead's, so is the Berserker's, as it always has been. That doesn't mean they're intended to target and counter smaller vessels. They are still more effective against BS sized targets, given that both the Gecko and Berserker have BS-sized Signature Resolutions.

Its true the Rattlesnake's ability to wield medium and small drones is weaker than before. It also lost the range bonus that made torps viable.

However, it gained a significant 2-type damage bonus that enhances its damage abilities with cruise missiles to near its old unbonused torp damage, not to mention the option of Rapid-Heavies. It also got another launcher, which FURTHER improved its missile damage capabilities.

As things stand, its quite simple to use the Rapid Heavies or Cruises to pick off cruiser and frigate targets while allowing the Heavy Drones to tear through BS sized targets.

As to having to spend more time locking targets: lol.
Fit a sensor booster.

1. New Rattlesnake does more DPS with cruise than the old one did with torps.
2. *Snip* Please refrain from personal attacks. ISD Ezwal.

OP (sorry, I just can't keep up with all your alt names anymore, stop getting them banned or whatever),

You really don't want to use Geckos the way you are seemingly wanting to use them now in any case. NPC AI will attack drones their size and larger. This means when you put out a Gecko into a full room, everything is going to come after it, from the frigates on up. This is why you are losing them this way.

Reverse your strategy. Put out sentries to engage the battleships more effectively than the old torps would have, at longer ranges even with the old hull bonus. The sentries will be more resilient to taking incoming fire, and force the smaller ships that want to engage them to come to you.

Then mount RHML, or RLML, depending on how worried you are about frigates. Engage them with the launchers--- you don't have to fire them all in a group, you can leave them separate to target up to 5 targets, but I usually split them into two groups to avoid corpse cooking while still getting good damage. If you are Using RHML then Fury Heavies will do good damage to battleships when they are all dead, or with lights you were very effective against even Elite Frigates with minimal missile support.

Your playstyle remains almost completely unchanged except for which weapon is doing what and the fact you are doing lots more damage than you were before. Sentries will take out battleships with minimal input from you while you concentrate on eliminating their smaller support vessels with the same effort you used to expend on battleships.

You just really, really, REALLY don't have a complaint here. Your claim that the RS is more like Caldari is true *now* that the missile system is equal to the drone system, so using missiles this way should not bother you. If you want a better focus on the way drones work, go pick up a Navy Domi, which is almost identical to the playstyle you are complaining about having lost. With 4 rails and a couple DLA you can easily snipe from ranges that rats in missions won't even agro from, rendering all your lowslots free to amp damage. Navy Domi has sufficient mid slots to mount a sufficient shield tank, and you lose no functionality in the drone system. You can do the same with the standard Domi for even cheaper, but you lose a mid slot and the turret damage bonus, though the mid is made up for by the tracking/range drone bonus.

Wrong. Only against targets with primary kinetic and thermic weaknesses, and only ones that do not use defender missiles.


The only people who have can't seem to find issue with the Rattlesnake changes are people who don't seem to understand the game very well, EFT warriors and rabid forum socialites who no one takes seriously.

The fact remains that a unique and optimal playstyle was destroyed on a pirate faction battleship, the Rattlesnake, a ship that takes much longer to fully train for than a marauder, and it remains that these changes are necessary to restore some of that functionality. The proposed changes have no visible detriment whatsoever and there is no reason why they can't or should not be implemented. This is the least that should be done to make up for CCP Rise shittng up the Rattlesnake so badly with the specialized, DPS-centric changes that gutted the versatility that many people trained to fly the ship for in the first place. Nobody was training for a Rattlesnake to have the highest on-paper DPS. The pirate faction battleship thread was over a hundred pages long due to complaints over the Rattlesnake though I have yet to see one change made by CCP Rise due to player feedback over any his proposed balance changes in Kronos. Unacceptable.