Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I've read a recent CSM debate on Ishtar being too strong and stuff.
It's true that drones have no counter except for a smart bomb, so yeah. I agree we need some balancing here.

Thing is, these all could solve easily if you make missiles hit AOE damage at impact.
Think of all the possibilities, like if you hit a single hobgoblins or garde, all 5 pack of them gets damage.
This patch will even make "Missile Doctrine" viable in fleet warfare. (No more sticking together when you see a missile fleet!)

We already got AOE bombs with us, so what are we waiting with that "explosion radius" factor missiles have?

That and highsec PvE are things to consider, but I think this is a better idea than current ones.
I thought people would come up with something like giving "fuel meter" to drone or something, but that damaging drones in bay thing is plain ridiculous.

Because then you'd need to buff turrets, which are subject to range and tracking to deal damage in comparison to drones (which have near perfect application) and missiles.

AoE missiles would be fun, but only as a lower damage ammo option.

They'd also probably need to fix defender missiles or create defender drones if AoE missiles became a thing.

Make defender missiles also attack the drones which attack the ship.



I'm a genius, what can I say?

AOE doesn't work for PVE in Highsec... I would sit into a cloaky ship, scan down mission runners and approach the rats until i take AOE damage. Then comes Concord and i leech on the KM with a TP or so. Believe me, that would not just be me, lots and lots of people would do this. It's just too easy to get an shiny KM this way.... And the tears, the tasty, tasty tears.

The other thing is scale-ability. Imagine 100+ ships doing AOE-dmg. Either every single missile must be made very weak, or it will just be OP in bigger fleets. That's a balancing nightmare that will not improve the situation from what it's now.

If you want to nerf drones (which i don't think is necessary, just nerf sentries like Paynus Maiassus pointed out) than please don't do it via missiles, the only thing this will lead to is turret users complaining that missiles are OP because missile-doctrines become the new standard. This just shifts the problem, it doesn't solve anything.

a better way would be via a specialized defender-missile launcher. Even most turret-boats have utility-highs and a launcher hardpoint (or maybe the spezialized version doesn't need a hardpoint at all?).
Afaik defender missiles are completely uselsess atm. If you want to "properly defend" your fleet than you need some dedicated defender-ships (the "spezial launcher" like a specialized EWAR ship)... or just fit 2-3 of them in the fleet and avoid some of the damage (like EWAR without bonus). Plus it should work against drones and missiles. because if you want to revamp missiles into becoming more like turrets, than i'd very much like something like a missile-TD as well.

But again, i don't think we really need this at all. just fix the sentries. I just always liked the idea of defender-missiles.

You have a valid point.
Making defender missile a counter to drone is much easier, low-risk way to balance things out I guess.
This might also give missile boats a new role in fleet combat... like that smartbomb firewall thing from a long time ago :P

http://cdn1.eveonline.com/community/csm/Meetings/summit/CSM9-WS-D3.txt
According to this, either drone re-deployment delay, drone band nerf, or AOE/drone specific counter measures are being consiered by CCP fozzie.
My missile suggestion was to support the latter AOE one, as it could work great as a counter measure to drone.

fingers crossed that this is the one they go with.

I would prefer if defender missiles worked and did so with two scripts you can load into them. Either auto hitting the nearest missiles or drones.