Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hey,

This idea came to me the other day, on how we can make the Ishtar still an option for people, but one that comes with more considerations.

And it does not involving adjusting the hull at all.

Currently, if you look at missiles and guns, you have to be able to lock to fire, and if someone wants to disrupt you doing that, they target your ship and Neut/Damp/Disrupt/ECM you, affecting all your weapons.

With Droneboats, I believe currently to disrupt tracking or any other mechanism, you need to destroy their drones, which they can launch another flight of, etc.

In order to balance these ships more, would it be possible to make Damps affect Drone Control Range, ie the control ship needs to be closer to the target, just like Damps on a turret ship. This creates the opportunity for an enemy to force the droneboat into engagement range, or to disengage.

Likewise, having tracking disruptors affect Omni Tracking Links would mean that the entire weapon system had reduced tracking, making the choice of drones for differing engagements more important than drop sentries with multiple tracking links/enhancers to boost it enough.

Lastly, and more controversially, remove Aggressive mode from drones, make people lock and fire them each time, so that damps have a real effect on droneboats, and also force considerations on whether it is better to assist all the drones to one guy who can be damped, or to assist to multiple, or make everyone fight themselves and present many targets.

These Ewar types, would force more interesting combat choices, and ensure that Ishtars are more engageable than they currently are.

Let the roars of fury flow

we don't even have missile damping yet and you already want drone damping?

pfffffffffffffff. no

Here's a test for someone. Damps work on the drone boat to break/prevent lock so use a damping ship at range with long range guns to kill the drones, I'm pretty sure that if a drone boat deploys drones once already being fired on the drones will not auto agress the currently firing enemy (mine don't when I deploy new drones in combat anoms). Drone boat will either need to close one you or pick up the drones. if it closes you can draw it away from the drones, if it scoops then fire on the drone boat before it deploys more drones and they will sit there dumbly ignoring you until the drone pilot can get a lock.

As I say worth a test since I'm working of observed drone behaviour in combat anoms rather than PvP

It still would not affect larger drone fleets, very rarely do you have a large fleet spreading Ewar effectively on all enemy DPS.

Also this would nerf a lot of non sentry boats who's drone are already very vulnerable to smart bombs and enemy fire.

Even without drone assist, Ishtar fleets are OP. Don't get me wrong, I love my Ishtar, but I don't believe it's strength is good for the health of the game. Likewise, I don't feel that poking it's hull bonuses around will truly create viable alternatives, or tactical choices.

By allowing EWAR to impact Drones and drone boats, it forces people to make tactical choices to overcome them, whilst still allowing drones to do their thing. Poorly equipped or chosen fleets or ships can still be destroyed by the ishtar, but through creative fitting or fleet composition, it will be possible to overcome.



EWAR still has a role in fleet fights, either to break Logi chains so you can have a chance to destroy either DPS or Logi Ships, if Logi is broken, the DPS will not last very long. Ewar does not need to be projected onto all DPS, it's about shutting down segments in order to force engagement, or complete disengagement.

As for non sentry boats, yep, they would still be impacted, and why not. But likewise, is there a real advantage to taking EWAR against other droneboats to the same extent? ie do they have the same sort of range advantage that the Ishtar has, etc to justify taking an EWAR boat, where another DPS ship would achieve the same end.



Agreed there are pitfalls, but not really enough to force choices to be made on the Ishtar in my opinion

I can stand by most of what the op stated. There needs to be some adjustment regarding the Ishtar in addition to that.

Personally, I think that Celestii are way more OP than Ishtars and Domis.

We are still flying Ishtars and they are way less useful than they used to be after their last nerf round. People also have finally begun to show intelligent behavior and started destroying the drones when they cannot hit the Ishtars. This leaves the Ishtars very quickly without anything to shoot.

Oh, and a note from another, very similar topic: You can nerf or change however you want; if there are 100+ ships of a class, they will outmatch you in any case. See for that, for instance, one of the recent Naglfars which died to a swarm of Arty Claws.

Interesting point with the Celestis, though I do not really remember seeing too many swarms of Celestii on the killboards, Ishtars on the other hand...... Pray tell how it is OP?

If people talk about droneboats, there is few, if any, other ship used as frequently, or with such success as the Ishtar, so much so that more people are using the Ishtar all the time. The last "nerf round" as you put it was quite farcical, as many people demonstrated with Graphs, etc demonstrating the miniscule effect from the bonus changes. Even after the changes, CCP recognise the ship is still better than it's peers, by rating it a higher points value for the Alliance Tournament.

Yes drones can be destroyed, but in the time it takes a similar sized fleet to destroy one Ishtar's drones, how much damage have the Drones from the ishtar fleet caused?

As to the comment about 100 plus ships, and the example given I agree that 100 of a ship vs one other ship will always end badly for the one, a fleet of 100 Ishtars hits well above it's class against larger opponents of similar size. Remember, Sentries and Heavies are a Battleship sized weapon system.

My post is not about making the ishtar impossible to use, but making it susceptible to similar things to other weapon systems, right now you cannot limit the damage protection range of a drone boat, any other weapon system you can

NOTE - I do understand that fleet composition and tactics have a role to play in the success of Ishtars, something your alliance has demonstrated to effect.

EWAR still has a role in fleet fights, either to break Logi chains so you can have a chance to destroy either DPS or Logi Ships, if Logi is broken, the DPS will not last very long. Ewar does not need to be projected onto all DPS, it's about shutting down segments in order to force engagement, or complete disengagement.

As for non sentry boats, yep, they would still be impacted, and why not. But likewise, is there a real advantage to taking EWAR against other droneboats to the same extent? ie do they have the same sort of range advantage that the Ishtar has, etc to justify taking an EWAR boat, where another DPS ship would achieve the same end.

Agreed there are pitfalls, but not really enough to force choices to be made on the Ishtar in my opinion
[/quote]

That's was sort of my whole point, In a large fleet people focus Ewar on Logi, tackle ect, its hardly ever spread on DPS , at which point its irreverent what that DPS is.

As far as Non sentry boats go, If a normal drone ship is affected by Ewar then they are at an even more of a disadvantage than a gun/missile boat. Since you can not only lock down their ability to apply DPS but kill the DPS as well.

Eg, TD a Gila, kill its drones while its moving into range/jammed then kill the ship. At least with a Gun/missile boat once they are in range/have a lock they can apply the same DPS.

Umm no and no to a sentry nerf. The Ishtar should actually be a heavy drone boat not a sentry drone boat, and since it has higher mobility than the Dominix even more so. CCP doesn't need to touch sentry drones at all ( it will destroy the dominix for sure), but having a cruiser use long range battleships weapons should be address. They should remove the sentry drone bonus altogether and replace it with 10% heavy drone orbiting and optimal range per level (so that the heavy drones can hit and orbit targets out of web range) and a -10% reduction in heavy drone signature radius per level.