Player Features and Ideas Discussion

TLDR: Introduce a new attribute to all hulls called Drone Control Channels which function like Turret/Launcher Hardpoints dictating the number of drones which can be controlled simultaneously. Remove the Drones skill (rationale below).

• I like that this brings a level of parity to Drones when measured against the other systems. A parity which makes fitting philosophy more coherent in my opinion.
• Drone bonuses on hulls would become more nuanced and less at risk of being imbalanced. (the unusual and IMO inelegant bonuses that the Gurista ships have recently received would not be necessary).
• The random legacy cap of 5 drones per ship could be removed, with some ships allowed fewer and others more.
• If implemented this makes redundant the Drones skillbook as it seems better to me that a ship be allowed always to launch the number of drones for which it has Channels available: just as you can fit the number of turrets/launchers for which you have Hardpoints.
• EXPANSION 02:11 03/24/2015 (please read rest of post as well for context) Only Combat drones utilise a Drone Control Channel (just as only turrets/launchers use a hardpoint) this would allow for utility bandwidth to be used to launch 'extra' Combat Utility, Electronic Warfare, Logisitic, Salvage and Mining drones

-CLARIFICATION- I don't want to begin a discussion about the stats or relative power of individual drones. (yet)

Case Study: some of you have been asking for an example of exactly what I might mean so I will attempt to oblige you. Let's compare the Vexor against the Thorax using the All Level V character on EFT [v2.27].

• A naked Thorax equipped with 5x Heavy Neutron Blaster II with Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M outputs 318dps
• A naked Vexor with a drone flight consisting of 2x Ogre II, 2x Hammerhead II and 1x Hobgoblin II outputs 315dps
- a fair comparison of the max damage brawling loadout of the turrets on a Hybrid ship against the drones on a Drone ship I trust you'll agree. My reason for suggesting the aforementioned changes is because of the following:


• The engagement envelope of the Neutron Thorax looks like this:
-Signature Resolution: 125m
-Tracking: 0.206
-Optimal Range: 2250m + 6250m Falloff
As long as the Thorax pilot can fit and fly to engage targets that fall within these parameters he/she can reasonably expect to consistently apply most of their damage.


• The engagement envelope of the Vexor looks like this:
-Signature Resolution: 400m OR 125m OR 25m
-Tracking: 0.54 OR 0.696 OR 2.178
-Optimal Range: 5250m+5000m OR 5250m+3000m OR 2625m+2000m
The Vexor pilot has an (imo) unnecessarily messy job fitting and flying, and choosing engagements to reliably and consistently apply most of his/her damage and is likely, much of the time, to be losing most of the damage from one or more drone size

After the implementation of Drone Control Channels I would prefer to see a Vexor whose high-damage drone flight consists of Hammerhead IIs only - this does not prevent the Vexor pilot from fielding other drones as his/her fitting fancy finds. (as it happens a flight of Hammerhead IIs able to output 315dps from the current Vexor would consist of 6.5 drones - see 'clarification' above)
I wish for drone pilots to be able to achieve the same elegance and focus of engagement envelope and fitting philosophy that pilots of other weapon systems enjoy.



I think the addition of Drone Control Channels has far-reaching and nuanced implications for the weapons system which I hope you will see for yourselves. I will add to this post as the discussion progresses but I think just the bare bones suggestion might appeal to some of you.

I hope you'll allow me to clarify. Bandwidth functions for Drones like PG&CPU do for Turrets&Launchers. I'm proposing that Drone Control Channels would be like Hardpoints. The lack of an attribute for drones like Hardpoints is akin to having every ship able to fit up to 5 turrets or launchers, it flattens and obscures the tactical landscape and leads to strange fitting choices

Thanks Aeryn, I wasn't actually aiming for the Ishtar at all. I'm a drone pilot myself so believe me it's not my intention to destroy drone boats. It is my reckoning that if any ship had lots of Drone Control Channels it would be a "drone boat". I don't see that this needs to hurt drone boats at all. What I would hope to see if this change were implemented is a Vexor that can deploy a focused drone loadout, rather than being pushed to deploy the crazy mixed flight of: 2xHeavy, 2xMedium, 1xLight Scout - which has such sketchy damage application to so many targets. After this change the Vexor's stats could be re-adjusted to perhaps allow it to deploy a smaller flight of bonused Heavy drones or a larger flight of bonused Mediums.

Again you are forgetting that there are other factions with drones aside from gallente, the weird line-up you are complaining about falls on deaf Amarr ears since it is caused by Gallente getting 25 more bandwidth and hence more tactical options and dps. We Amarr Drone boat pilots like our high slots thank you very much they are good for neuting Gallente active tanks.

We should also add Navy Vexors to the OP list since they also get the bandwidth as a BS, there is a reason it is called the poor man's Ishtar.

Every ship comes with five channels with the exception of carriers, supers, and the Guardian Vexor.

I see your proposal as balance drone use by using two levers (channels and bandwidth) instead of one. Really not sure how this actually allows for finer balance.

Can you write out a full example for us?

How can people that play Eve be confused by such a simple suggestion?

..which come from a time when the Dominix could field 15 heavy drones at once and is a tournament boat.

Right... he means - a Harbinger might have 50bw, currently that means 2 heavys, 5 meds or less. In his system you could say the Harb has 50bw and 3 drone channels. Which would mean 2 heavys, 3 meds or 3 lights. It could never have more than 3 drones in space.

Or a domi might have 125bw and 12 channels. Meaning 5 heavys as usual but going to lower bw drones you could launch 12 meds (totaling 120bw) though it would need a new drone skill for 6+ drones. That would be op yeah, just an example. You could take Ishtars down to 75bw but give them 8 channels to try and drive them away from sentrys and still have a nice dps.

Its a fine suggestion which wouldnt really break anything existing and could give more balance option. Technically its already in there and all ships just have 5 drone channels (exept guardian vex) and DCUs add a drone channel.

I'm not for it nor am I against it. The only real problem I could see is with multiple ships having more drones in space it increases server load.

Unnecessarily complicated. I think what you're basically proposing is to allow any number of drones, up to the ships maximum bandwidth, and then tweak individual drone bandwidth usages and ship bandwidth capacities to keep things balanced.

Interesting idea, I don't hate it. It would have to be balanced really well to work though. I think it would mean a LOT of changes to the numbers for a lot of ships. I don't know that the amount of effort required would really be all that beneficial. Plus, the one huge downside would be adding objects in space, which CCP have gone to great lengths to reduce in the last few years to ease server load.

The "server load" argument is a red herring. It can be solved with some re-engineering of code to increase parallelism.

It's a lazy answer by CCP.