Ships & Modules

I think you're just being paranoid about this "organized effort."

A temporary fix in the way of swapping the stats of amarr and minmatar drones is easy enough to do, and would satisfy those calling for a drone rebalance long enough for ccp to actually pull another crucible and fix all the drones.

Right, and it would just be a temporary fix until something better along the lines of a 2/2 split happens. You may be on to something about it making drones overall worse. CCP probably knows this and for that reason fudged the numbers between amarr and minmatar drones (and refuses to fix them). With the proper progression, the only good drones would be gallente.

Let's be clear. I have no economic interest in drone statistics being adjusted whatsoever. And I'm curious as to where the rest of this 'organised effort' is. I see plenty of threads complaining about the imbalance between ECM drones and other EWar types, but if you think that could be motivated by the economic interests of T2 BPO holders, then you're clearly brain damaged.

Maybe I enjoy academic arguments, or maybe I'm trying to make a useful argument about how to add a little more depth to the most widely used weapon system in the game.

Anyway, putting your first irrelevant ad hominem to one side, lets move onto your next one.

You are confusing the positive (what is) with the normative (what ought to be) in my argument. It really doesn't matter whether or not drone tracking is a significant variable at present, because when I was talking about tracking, I was talking about how it ought to be.

While we're on the subject, you are just wrong on tracking. The quality of a hit is influenced by both the tracking speed of the weapon and the angular velocity of the target, even when the angular velocity is significantly less than the tracking speed. If tracking worked the way you seem to think it does, every shot by a drone would be a wrecking hit. That is quite obviously not the case.

Regardless, varying tracking was merely one suggestion of many. It's hardly the linchpin from which this whole discussion hangs. If there is a better variable that you can suggest instead of tracking, then I'm all metaphorical ears. But I would have thought it would be pretty obvious that for the variables to add meaningful specialisations to each 'race' of drone, the differences would have to be significant enough to be noticeable. That is not any kind of endorsement of the status quo range of drone tracking speeds, or any other range of variables in drones as they are currently.

As for your 'few comments'
- You are right that the link between drones and their supposed race of origin is tenuous at present, but it needn't be. If each race's drones could supplement the design of their particular ships, then the game would be richer for it. While it's unlikely that we could ever get to the point where Caldari drones could be as natural a choice in a Drake's drone bay as HMLs are in its highslots, it's not a bad analogy to have in mind. There should be synergies between each race's ships and 'their' drones.

- As you admit, that existing DPS/speed curve (it wouldn't even be a curve if Amarr and Minmatar drones' damage modifiers weren't mixed up) renders two races' drones obsolete. So why are you so wedded to that discredited model? If it makes the middle-ground obsolete now, it will make the new duplicates of the extremes obsolete if you simply polarise them.

At present, the HP, tracking and whatever else of every drone are merely functions of its DPS. The exact same problem applies to hybrid ammo and laser crystals, which is why all the options in between the max dps and max range types are hardly used. All the variables are functions of one another, so there can only ever be two extremes, and therefore two options that users gravitate towards.

For an example of what drones could be, look at projectile ammo. In any given situation, the decision about which ammo to use is multifaceted: You have range, tracking and damage type to consider. Lets make drones more like projectile ammo, and less like hybrid charges and crystals.

- Tracking speed and hitpoints are not 'entirely new mechanics'. There is already variation in those stats between the drone 'races', but the differences are not pronounced enough for them to even register as secondary considerations. As long as all the variables can be laid out on one single axis, there will only ever be two favoured types of combat drone.

It's adorable that you think any sort of "temporary fix" is a good idea.

First off, CCP has a loooong track record of implementing things, then refusing to look at them again for 2-3 years. You're basically asking CCP to nerf drones overall, probably for several years, in the hopes that the drones will be better balanced with each other, which brings me to my second point:

Swapping the damage mods on em/exp drones is neither temporary nor is it a fix. You're looking to make drones WORSE overall, so that ONE specific drone can be made better(while still being useless, I might add). I'm siding with liang here, it has t2 BPO owner written all over it. Had you simply been arguing to up the stats of kin/em drones to their therm/exp counterparts levels, you'd have a valid point, but to argue that it would actually be any sort of improvement over what we have now to swap the damage mods of the 2 faster drones is absurd. Look at kinetic drones; they follow the normal progression that you seem to want, but they're STILL useless.
This should be proof enough that swapping the drone damage mods won't actually balance the drones with each other, and is, from a practical POV, identical to imply nerfing explosive drones and leaving em ones unchanged, because the em drones still have no use, and the explosive ones are still viable.

What that means is that the ONLY way you could think swapping the drone damage mods would be a good idea is if you were looking at it from the POV of em drones exclusively, and given that drones are more closely related to ammo than they are to weapons (in that there's no real skill difference between the different races types, so there's no reason not to just take the best ones) this makes absolutely no sense, unless of course you have a vested interest in EM drones specifically, such as, say, someone with a t2 BPO would.

Basically it comes down to this: Whining about EM drones is like whining about EM heavy missiles (as most caldari HM using ships get bonuses to kinetic). Yes, you have one that is clearly inferior to the other, but it really doesn't make a difference. If you're so far entrenched in your RP hole that it really bothers you, then the lesser stats of the EM drones shouldn't stop you from using them, and if it's not an RP thing, and it's not a BPO ownership thing, why do you care?

Note that I actually said all that, the ideal end result is a proper 2/2 split of drones between damage and speed. You basically just expanded on everything I said in my quoted post.

The temporary fix would actually be a good thing, because it would **** off the forums to incarna levels and force CCP to actually engineer a proper balance change, as is evidenced by your post actually.

O.o Heavies hit frigs just fine - especially if the frigs are actually moving. While drones have absolutely fantastic tracking, they also have the tendency to "fall behind" whatever it is that they're shooting. When they go into pursuit mode they effectively don't have any transversal and thus don't need the fantastic tracking they have.

This is why Ogre IIs are so brutal to frigs (both player and NPC!) on approach.

-Liang