Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Painters are the indisputably least powerful racial ewar in this game. There is ittle reason to fly a Vigil or Bellicose, or to waste a midslot with one as opposed to a ranged web on a Hyena, Huggin, or Rapier.

The bonus painter ships get is also too small versus the base painter strength when they are fitted on any other ship.

Meanwhile this game is still one where ranged damage and mobility are king. Turret range is already attackable through TDs. But missiles and drones have no range counter.

There has been talk from the balancing team of introducing tracking effects through mid slot and low slot modules. This could either be adding such effects to TCs and TEs or introducing sister type modules that are missile specific. Presumable such mods would affect missile speed/range, and the explosion parameters such as explosion radius or explosion speed. Concurrently TDs and TD boats would get the ability to reduce missile range and negatively affect explosion stats.

From the backstory perspective this makes some sense. Now that Minmatar has more missile boats one would assume the Amarr racial ewar should have some affect on missiles. The same dynamic could be given to painters. A new effect from the use of a painter that would affect drone use, since Amarr now field more drone boats.

Being painted could not only increase the signature of an affected ship, it could also reduce the drone control range or drone bandwidth of a ship. The technobabble explanation being that the painting produces a lot of electromagnetic disturbance in or around the painted ship such that communication with it's drones becomes more difficult.

Drone bandwidth might be tricky with the game though. Not sure what the game code would do with a drone that was deployed from a ship but then was suddenly beyond that ship's bandwidth to control. It would seem anyway to be too much of a nerf to drone use.

However, reducing drone control range might be much easier to code. And if suddenly you found yourself beyond that range because your ship was painted, then you would simply get the effect and message that you get when you move too far from your drones.

This would be an indirect nerf to the nano Ishtar sentry doctrine. Fittings would have to be changed, tactics as well. Sentry use would still be possible, but would have a new counter that would have to be taken into consideration. Armor Ishtar use would be less affected. But then that is less often cited as the Ishtar problem by those that post (or whine) about it.

Both the TD and Painter new effects should consist of boat buffs in conjunction with a base nerf to the strengths of each module. It should really weigh heavier toward use of a bonused ship (and I would argue the same for damps). Currently many midslot blessed frigs without ewar bonuses too easily can fit/use damps or TDs to effectively neuter other ships in their class. This is part of the range and mobility is always better problem. This is part of the problem with the proliferation of sentry shield Ishtars and rail or formerly HM Tengus.

Drone and missile boats can try to fit for better range, but when the TD and Painter boats get their range reducing effects on Drone and Missile boats, we will start to see more balance in fighting modalities within the game. Range will not always be king.

Please buff tp's
my golems 100% Domination tp needs to be higher

Why on earth would a glorified laser pointer interfere with a drone ship's bandwidth or range? This is one of the dumbest ideas ever.

-1,000,000

Ah no, Drones in general need a nerf, adding a press button solution is not a good way to go about it.



why is this a problem



it's not, otherwise we'd see nothing but nagas and tornados. keep in mind Tangus and Ishtars are some of the slowest cruisers in the game.



and unlike drones guns require most your Powergrid, take slots, use ammo, take cap, actually requires range control, can be TD'd, both your vector and and your targets velocity vector are relevant to their performance, require locks, and can be fried overheating and still have issue getting the DPS you can out of alot of these drone boats, in dedicated gank ships.


Oh and you can't pick and choose from several racks guns Ideal for a particular target

Obviously you and some other people that have posted did not read where I said the TDs and Painter base effects should get a nerf and the specialized boats for these modules get a buff to the ewar effect. As to the painters on a golem, I never thought they should have given a minmatar ewar bonus to a caldari ship. In any case if the base strength is nerfed in no way should a golem get stronger. And pvp golems are a rare site so I hardly think we will have to worry about golems painting drone boats out of the game.

As for giving ecm an anti-drone effect that would be the worst thing for this game. Ecm is already the most hated ewar to have been hit with. To make ecm and ecm boats even more desirable would break the game.

As for those posters that seem to read the op as just another Ishtar/sentry whine, it is not and wasn't intended as one. I fly drone boats a lot, including the Ishtar. I love them in fact. But, I am hopeful that the currently proposed changes reduce the prevalent use of sentry Ishtars. Because any ship that gets vastly more use than other ships is going to have to get some nerf to bring balance back to the game.

However, if the current proposed nerfs to the Ishtar do not result in a reduction of Ishtar use you can be sure the axe will fall on it again. I would rather it was not something stupid like removing sentry bonuses altogether from the ship, or other ******** ideas that have been posted on these forums by people that yes refuse to take into account the drawbacks of drone and sentry drone use.

Minmatar painter boats do need a buff. Yes the Golem does not. The Ishtar quite possibly is going to get hit again, as much I think the current nerfs are enough.

But anyway, one should expect the typical reflexive negative posting anytime some change is proposed. Maybe though some who read this will find some merit upon deeper examination.

I tried to blend a steak once, wound up breaking the blender.


Anyways, target painters reducing a ship's ability to use drones makes no sense whatsoever, and therefore does not get my support.

While I cannot support OP's idea, I must support his use of what must be the clearest and most relevant title F&I has seen in a long time. Most threads have either titles that give you a sense of what the thread is about or have titles that are outright clickbait; OP's thread title is a fully-functioning TL;DR.

+1 for the thread title, but -1 for the idea. Your net result is +/-0 and it's as if I was never here.

The bellicose is not useless. Its underestimated. My rlml belli with 1 TP will ruin most frigs. Thats in a combat role. If you just want a simple paint boat, the belli or vigi are cheap and effective. Problem is, drones are the go to weapon platform at the moment. Seeing a drop in missile gangs (that arent rlml). This might be why OP thinks TPs are useless. HML or long range HAMS fits greatly benefit from TP.

The only interesting "extra" bonus tps should have is a % chance of wrecking shots with turrets. Think the default is 3% chance. So maybe TP can add sig bloom and increase wrecking chance by a couple %. Would make combining them with turrets a thing to consider instead of webs. Or at least consider mixing them.

Otherwise the whole drone thing doesnt really fit. And trying to shoehorn it with amarr, is also silly.