Player Features and Ideas Discussion

HAC's that can project damage without Battleship Weapons: Cerberus/Eagle, Deimos, Munnin/Vagabond, Sacrilege/Zealot
Hac's that cannot have their primary weapon system be destroyed by the enemy: Cerberus/Eagle, Deimos, Munnin/Vagabond, Sacrilege/Zealot

HAC's that can have their weapon system destroyed by an enemy, and only have one size of effective weaponry: Ishtars.

I too see a problem here.

Lets not just gloss over all the downsides and pretend that removing sentries will somehow make them "balanced"

Oh look, Ishtars are OP!!! There's no counter to be found!!!

Enough said.

so your counter is for an fc of ishtar fleet to go full ****** durring a fight check... once agian i feel so stupid for not thinking of that.

Make EWAR that is affecting the ship, affect the drones.

Done.

EWAR affecting drones would end ishtars online.

**** these huge alliances using them in numbers in the hundreds, how about the gangs with one or two of them facing the same number?

There is only one direct counter to sentries and that is shooting them. So, you have to make a choice, destroy the DPS and let the ishtar get away, or burn in close to the ishtar, get 100% dps from sentries.

Ishtar deploys drones, burn to point range and wait for enemy to chase.

Here is my problem with the ishtar:
3 med Neuts
2 LSE Shield tank
Nanos/damage mods in the low w/ DC
buffer rigs

700DPS, 2000m/s, ~30k ehp

Seems like a slow cynabal at first glance.... Here is a bonus that the ishtar has as well as ALL other sentry ships....

DAMAGE APPLICATION THAT CANNOT BE AFFECTED BY ANY EWAR.

edit:
thought from the ride home from work....
You can take any other ship, without drones, and take them out of the fight instantaneously depending on the type of EWAR that you brought. There is only one way to get sentries out of the fight once they are deployed. You must shoot them. You cant stop them. They don't even run out of ammo. Sure they have tracking and range, but why exclude all the other drawbacks of ewar, and only have tracking that can be mitigated? BTW there are 5 per Ishtar. They are ranged, stationary weapons, so if your tackled and cant move, you cannot have any defense whatsoever against sentries. Mobile drones circle their target which makes them more vulnerable to damage than sentries.

wah

Just a thought, perhaps he, like me and many others that have posted here have experienced this "Ishtar online" phenomenon and like me and the others we simply doe not believe you. Both sides are opinions and those opinions are based on our in game experiences, because we view this differently than you do does not make us wrong and it does not make us blind anymore than you are.


Let me deal with the "there are no counters to Ishtar online" theory with a few things that I have personally seen work extremely well. I do have another character that is in a low sec corp and we routinely face Ishtar fleets, granted nothing in the hundreds of ships size that nul sec players are reporting but I see no reason why these would not be effective even there.

First ignore the Ishtar and deal with the drones, and yes it really is that easy unless you care more about the Ishtar kill than driving the enemy out of your territory.

Any ship that can fit cruise missiles can be particularly deadly to a drones ship. They can warp in at ranges that have the sentries deep into fall off so they are not hitting particularly well which minimizes the damage you take. And in the ultimate PvP no no we have found that slightly modified mission fits and their active tanks are the most useful as it minimizes the need for reps, leaving more pilots for dps roles. Drones vanish quickly and the Ishtars warp off because they have nothing left to shoot with. But hey we miss the kills so if you care more about the kills then this is a fail procedure. But then based on the comments here you are failing anyway so what do you have to lose?

Hard tanked fast assault is another tactic that works particularly well. Small fast ships can get in close enough and move fast enough that the sentry drones simply cannot hit them. This forces the Ishtar pilots into a decision, leave sentries out that are dying but cannot hit anything, or move back in to recall the sentries and risk the swarms of fast attack ships. Definitely more risk in this one vs the long range above but it is still effective and we even get Ishtar kills out of it. The major drawback here is you must have a decent set of cloaky scouts to set up warp ins so the fast attacks do not die trying to get in tight. But what the hell if a group of retreaded carebears can pull this off it should be easy for you "serious" PvP pilots.

We have used various combinations of these two extremes as well and they are just as effective.

No these will not work for every group of players and they will not work in every situation but if you are willing to think and play out side your comfort zone you would probably find they are an effective counter in many if not most situations.

But I still go back to an earlier post as the best option for the first attempt at balancing that which you all seem to think is broken. Eliminate aggressive mode and the ability to assign drones to assist another ship and lets see what happens, then adjust as needed from there. To those who say no to this idea as it would affect their PvE play. The changes being discussed here and in other sections of these forums as well as the internet in general will have far more negative impacts than these simple changes will so it is a decent compromise that PvE players should be willing to endorse.

I'd limit drone assist by a pilot only being able to control drone interfacing + advanced drone interfacing drones in space (not including fighters so carriers still work). Limits any pilot to 10 drones max under their target control which is still useful but nowhere near as OP as now. I find that managing drones manually in combat sites is way more effective but auto aggression can still be useful so I'd keep it as it's the drone pilots counter to ecm.

um what vaga projects like a battleship? they only have one real draw back which is mitigated by drone HP buff.

and none of these HACs can have a full rack of small, med, and Heavy weapons. None of these HACs can out damage their battlecruiser counterparts whereas the ishtar out damages and out projects the Myrm by miles.

Counter proposal: Give up on killmails. If you fight Sentry Drone Ishtars, kill their drones first and foremost and then the ship itself. It's that easy. The only thing that needs to change is the mindset of the players from "Must have killmails" to "Must win this fight". "Must have killmails" is flawed and backwards as you cling to tactics of the past and do not adapt; whereas "Must win this fight" opens up so many possibilities to counter people and Ishtars in particular: Focus on destroying their drones instead of the ship, orbit the drones and you won't get damaged, warp out to pings and back to the next drone ball/drone streak if the Ishtar drops another set and repeat step 1. Do it again and again and again. And if the Ishtar flees to a station to restock the drone bay, camp the station. If the Ishtars flee to another system, camp the gates, camp the route, intercept them -- without drones they can't hurt you. If they go to a POS, find the POS and watch it or camp it depending on its set up. If the Ishtars warp to save spots/a safe spot and you see mobile depots, scan down the depots and rf them/kill the Ishtars there. You might not get as many kills in the first place, but you win the fights. That is what should count.

There is no doubt that Ishtars could need a little nerf, which, depending on the nature of the change, is going to make them completely inviable as a fleet ship but that's another story; however, as long as it is as it is you need to adapt and change your way to play the game. You ought to stop only complaining about the Ishtar, you need to take on its weakness and use it against the ship.

Is that why the only answer to the problem was to upgrade to archons instead?

The "drone ball" only exists because killing drones is barely practical even with bombers. If that is actually undertaken en mass, they just enter a long orbit and scatter the drones to the winds and killing them becomes beyond a bad idea.

I know this, because it's what we do when the enemy can only muster bombers and they try and bomb the drones. Then you're down to locking up and shooting individual sentries, whilst taking return fire. That is only going to end one way because if you can soak the fire in the first place, you're shooting the ishtars.

It's a nice idea on paper, only works in limited circumstance/vs poor or inexperienced FCs.