Player Features and Ideas Discussion

medium sentries for ishtars heavy sentries for bs and capitals also nerf drone modules, dont just gimp the damn thing, it would nerf the ishtar popular usage and not outright gimp the tactic.

This is a good a approach, keep the ship design as is and tweak existing bonuses to reduce the effectiveness of the ship. This change brings the damage output better in line with what a HAC should be capable of. There are not a lot of options available without overly nerfing the hull, changing the design of sentry drones, or the design of the Ishtar.

If in the end, it is decided that the sentry bonuses are too strong on this platform and need to be removed, I would propose making the Ishtar a very strong mobile drones platform instead.

New Ishtar (Non Sentry):

Gallente Cruiser bonuses (per skill level):
7.5% bonus to Light, Medium, and Heavy Drone max velocity and tracking speed
10% bonus to Light, Medium, and Heavy Drone damage

Heavy Assault Cruisers bonuses (per skill level):
5000m bonus to Drone operation range
20% bonus to Drone health points

Role Bonus:
50% reduction in Microwarpdrive signature radius penalty

Resulting Changes:
Light and Medium drones get the speed and tracking bonus like the Heavy already has.
HP bonus moved to HAC level and doubled allowing all drones, since they are forced to brawl, to be tougher.

OR Change it to be like the Heavy Drone version of the Gila

New Ishtar (Heavy Drones):

Drone Capacity: 300 m³ Drone Bandwith: 75 Mbit/sec

Gallente Cruiser bonuses (per skill level):
7.5% bonus Heavy Drone max velocity and tracking speed
10% bonus to Drone damage and HP

Heavy Assault Cruisers bonuses (per skill level):
5000m bonus to Drone operation range
100% bonus to Heavy Drone damage and health points

Role Bonus:
50% reduction in Microwarpdrive signature radius penalty

Resulting change:
Max heavy drones down from 5 to 3 but each one is stronger and tougher. The damage remains the same old 1.5 x 5 = 7.5 vs new 2.5 x 3 =7.5. And perhaps some of these numbers actually should be higher to compensate for the loss Sentry bonuses.

I'd hate to see Sentries removed from cruisers as they are also used on VNI and Stratios. But If CCP moves in that direction, please don't abandon the unique and specialized drone boats. Balance by buffing them up in some areas to compensate for any nerf you apply.

The last option is to go the way of a mixed weapon system, which is a bit unfair to those not adequately trained for a 2nd system, but there you have it. Remove the sentry bonus and add a bonus for Medium Hybrid turrets. I don't like this option myself, but this thread is to look at options.

Fighters warping to supers/carriers is a very nice quality of life thing for capital pilots. Since the intended target of the nerf is a very specific style of gameplay, it would be nice if recovery of drones wasn't collateral damage.

Thank you CCP for daring to bring a solution for this whole Ishtar mess. Let's see how can we all together find the most optimal solution.

So far there seem to be some pretty important points:

- Ishtar can deal very high DPS for its size by using sentries.
- At the same time, it can apply that DPS thanks to its tracking bonus.
- It is able to have an impressive tank, being a drone ship AND having lots of CPU/PW.

While the damage change proposed by CCP would reduce a bit their performance on solo Ishtars or small gangs, several people have stated it won't have that much of an impact on very large fleets, since you can always bring more of them to cover the DPS loss.

For me, some changes that would reduce its performance to more acceptable levels would be:

- Keep the sentry damage reduction.
- Reduce, or remove, the tracking bonus for sentries.
- Reduce its CPU/PW to levels comparable to its cousin HAC's.
- Reduce its dronebay to BC levels (Myrmidon, Prophecy).

Combining all of these changes, I think the Ishtar would end much more in level to other HAC's on terms of overall performance, without nerfing it to the ground (we all know that nerfing things too much makes them utterly useless, and might even take with them a weapon system, as happened with the Drake).

Some people have even proposed to completely remove sentries from the game. Personally I would prefer them to stay: I've used them for a long time on the Dominix, and I doubt removing stuff from games is a good move. When you look at it, however, maybe it wouldn't be that bad. Drone ships would need to land their drones on their targets, and maybe there could be Gecko-like superheavy drones to offer more options for drone users. Even, the current purpose of sentries as deployable turrets could be taken by actual deployable structures with a big ol' gun on top.

I hope the changes I posted above are enough, though, and we don't need to remove sentries from anywhere.

I dont like to see a ship that is over-powered in large scale pvp environments destroyed when the ishtar is backbone for alot of people to make their isk... Your removing DPS from sentries when on a 200 ship scale is almost nothing.. On the other hand makes a huge difference when Im running sites with 2 of them... The problem is not me using them to make isk.. its to "try" and make alliances use something else.. the ishtar is too good? or all your other ships are not good or specilaized enough? Id be perfectly fine with my sentries only able to hit out to 40km.. or have to pull them in and put out lights or mediums to combat smaller ships because sentries cannot track anything but cruisers up.. but to cripple the only useful HAC in the game down because people are sick of fighting them.. honestly makes no sense.

This is not fixing the problem and only hurts the "usefullness" of the ship in every other aspect than why your actually nerfing it to begin with. i.e sentry tracking + range (is all you need to touch) why does everything need to be compared to its equivilant ship class?

Or maybe the "only useful" HAC ingame is totally unbalanced in comparison to the other HACs, it's not crippling them but more getting them "in line" with the rest of them. Most people in here ask for changes that wouldn't cripple your PVE ishtar but weaken its current role as jack of all trades ;)

You nerfed Bounchers (-6km optimal. Nerfed the whole drone ships in the game) and now you nerfing ishtar. From bounchers nerf, now, the drones will work at deep fall off, so less DPS Already. I wouldnt suprise if dps drop to high 500ish to low 600ish and that is unacceptable for Dominix and others drone BSes.

So, ishtar now woll have 500-600 dps, but thats ok for you. A Rail deimos with 5x 250mm rails can be around 530-600DPS, but now you nerfing rails too.
From the above it seems you targeting the whole Gallente fleet.

I m against these nerfs.

WHY
ARE
THESE
CRUISER-CLASS
SHIPS
STILL
RECEIVING
ANY
BONUS
TO
BATTLESHIP-SIZED
WEAPONS!?


/bangs head on wall

Don't know; don't care. They are.



Optimal Range
Ogre II__________________4200
Neutron Blaster Cannon II__3600 (Navy AM)
Warden II_______________60000
425mm Railgun II_________57600 (Navy Lead; closest ammo to Warden's range and tracking)

Falloff
Ogre II__________________5000
Neutron Blaster Cannon II__10000 (Navy AM)
Warden II_______________42000
425mm Railgun II_________24000 (Navy Lead)

Tracking
Ogre II__________________.540
Neutron Blaster Cannon II__.052 (Navy AM)
Warden II_______________.012
425mm Railgun II_________.010 (Navy Lead)

DPS (w/o bonuses)
Ogre II__________________31
Neutron Blaster Cannon II__31 (Navy AM)
Warden II_______________22
425mm Railgun II________14 (Navy Lead)

Signature (the size ship they are designed to shoot)
Ogre II ___________________400
Neutron Blaster Cannon II____400
Warden II_________________400
425mm Railgun II__________400

This man understands the game.