Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Personally I detest ishtars and everything they stand for in the current meta - its an analog of campers in an FPS game to me... however to really encourage diversity would mean making some of the other HACs a bit more interesting - I look at the vagabond, muninn, etc. and see little reason to actually fly them in todays eve whether the ishtar got deleted tomorrow or not.

I'd much rather see the 5% to sentry bonuses get adjusted to something else, perhaps a bonus to heavy drone microwarpdrive speed? Makes them a little more aggressive in engaging and switching?

It's less common more guaranteed the minute the enemy is on field. It is the entire premise of the doctrines. Use the ishtar movement to pull the enemy into optimal range of the sentries.

The ONLY time ishtars sit near their drones is if you know the enemy can only muster bombers as you pound the structure so you can rescoop quickly.

I guess it would make them more vulnerable to a couple of disco ships warping in to destroy the cloud, but that's easy to mitigate by staggered deployment.

In my opinion, you should leave the damage as it is and simply remove the tracking and range bonus for sentries in Ishtars. In other words, apply an Armageddon like bonus structure to Sentries on Ishtars.

This leaves the Ishtar intact for combat against things like structures and capitals (maybe even BS if webbed properly), but removes the viability of Sentry Ishtars against all other mobile ships.

I personally would rather see sentrys removed from all ships below BS size. However i am not a fan of straight up nerfs to ships either.

I thought something along the lines of giving it an extra 2.5% damage for light, med, heavy drones per level to compensate for its loss of sentrys drones and switching the the sentry optimal range bonus to 5% gun dmg bonus to ALL sized hybrid guns could make it a more interesting close ranged ship.

Sentry drone provide far too much versatility that infringes upon the roles of other ships and weapon systems. I know this isn't the most helpful suggestion in the game, especially since it has been said a million times before, but just go ahead and remove sentries entirely. They don't belong in the game.

Drones in general are in a nice place of strengths and weaknesses. But some of those weaknesses, like travel time and destructibility, lose meaning when you can fire across 100km. All other drones have to move to their target, putting them at risk for webbing and being hit by brawling/short range ships. Sentry drones hit out at long range, farther out than many ships can target, and farther out than most can apply meaningful damage to them.

Can Ishtars/sentries be defeated? Absolutely 100%. It's been discussed to death hundreds of times on the forums that I'm aware of. But sentries are heavily lopsided in all of their upsides (immune to EWAR, no cap, no ammo, long range, selectable damage, automatic aggression, great alpha strike, assignable, etc). Why would people go Eagle or Zealot for sniping, when you can do better with sentries? Sentries by themselves obsolete two other HACs just by existing.

All this said, I use Ishtars and sentries myself. I own two Ishtars and use them in lowsec and highsec. So I'd be heavily effected if you removed sentries. But I also fly the Zealot and Eagle, and I honestly can say I prefer flying them over the Ishtar because turrets are more fun to use. Maybe I don't have the same level of experience with HACs that other pilots here might, but I do see a problem when one HAC routinely out-performs two HACs in both of the latter's damage profiles. Any time I run into trouble, Ishtars are my run-to vehicle because they just do everything thanks to sentries and drone mechanics.

I know, this is the part where everyone now joins in on a doggy pile of flaming me. Isn't the first time, won't be the last time.

Too little. The dps they can project at sentry range still exceeds that of any other AHAC, while still inexplicably having the fitting to strap on a 100mn afterburner.

This is a good start, nothing more.

I fear reducing their DPS will only make people bring even more Ishtars to compensate.

The nerfs should be to their damage application/projection

It's a start. I'd certainly not object to Ishtars having a harder job fielding Sentries, whether that be through them being larger or just blocked entirely.

The thing that made the Ishtar king of the hill for fleet-warfare isn't the ships boni, it's the Drone Damage Amps.

Remove the Drone Damage Amp module and leave the Ishtars boni as they are.