Player Features and Ideas Discussion

or make it so that a cruiser doesn't have the bandwidth to use battleship weapons


seems a lot simpler and doesn't add 8 more drones that will need to be balanced

I, personally, am against changing drones to what would be an imitation of the other weapon systems.

Let them be unique. They can be destroyed, they can be left behind, they can't be overheated.

With a single squad of bombers you can render whole ishtar fleet useless by destroying their weapons...

That doesn't work in lowsec, which is primarily where I see the endless swarms of ishtars.

There is something inherently broken with ishtars when you see 10-20 ishtars in a row in lowsec, followed by (insert random ship here) then repeat. (And I'm honestly not exaggerating, I regularly see nothing but ishtars for long stretches of time.)

We all know they will be getting nerfed again, question is how.

Or how about drone boats in general lose their drone HP buff, make shooting them a realistic option.

yeah then i don't need to use smart bombs anymore to disco gates i'll just slap my alts into bombers and point them at the gate

Have you tried Sentries on an unbonused ship? They are next to unusable there. Having said that, all drones on Ishtars seem overpowered and imbalanced only because of the Ishtar's bonuses to drones. This opens up 2 ways to reduce the Ishtars viability as a fleet plattform and put it in line with other HAC's damage and application:

1.
Most of the drone bonuses only apply to Light/Medium/Heavy drones. This makes Ishtars with Sentries next to worthless, but still allows their use with Geckos and Heavies for ratting and small PVP fleets where they would still be very tough ships to crack. One could argue that the Ishtar had lost its bonuses to the long-range weapon plattform whereas other HAC keep their bonuses for both short-range and long-range weapons alike; however, since L/M/H drones can be used up to 100km and further with DLA, it would make Ishtars just as bad as missile boats. The other argument is that Heavy Drones are also Battleship weapons, which sounds a bit like a hypocrisy to me to leave Ishtars with just another form of fully bonused BS weapons.
2.
Reduce the bandwidth of the Isthar to only allow 4 sentries in space and maybe reduce the bandwidth of Heavies to still allow 5 Heavies in space. This would reduce the Ishtar damage by a fifth, which reduces the DPS of a Garde set from around 706 to 564 and all other drones accordingly.

These changes are not originally by me but are two a lot easier solutions to the problem than the introduction of yet another item to the game that CCP has trouble with balancing correctly. Instead, they grab the problem by its roots: the bonuses of the Ishtar hull.

So... leave the fleet usage but kill all other uses of the ishtar? No salvage drones? No light drones? No chance against frigates anymore? No combat complexes anymore? No thanks

Should just make drones have a mode

A) Mobile mode (mobile, close range, more DPS, more tracking)
B) Sentry mode (stationary, long range, more alpha, less tracking)

Remove sentries.

If they got a tank buff when stationary this might actually fix a few things in one fell swoop.

yeah but how much work would it be to code.....