Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You sure know how to light a fire

people have short memories, things get overbuffed . because people complain about nerfing instead of buffing things, but the fact is things get buffed and nerfed as and when they are needed most, kind of like A&E really, makes me awant too watch grey's anatomy

I'll add my 0.00002 cents on the subject. A lot of stuff was probably already said in this thread or elsewhere, but meh.

Sentries are currently the most used meta for a reason (battleship-caliber damage, excellent tracking, small sig radius and so on, so forth). In turn, this meta places itself into the meta of drones which is pretty strong (some would even say too strong) as well: selectable damage type, no ammo consumption save for blapped drones and decent projection.

Now, while thinking that only one thing needs to change is a bit too easy, one can orient itself in three different directions:
A) Change the sentries
B) Change the hulls using them
C) Change the sentry requirements and/or role altogether.

Option A leaves us with several issues: One of them are skills being pushed at players for years made less desirable. The second one, far more bothersome, is the fact that option A will not close the gap between Gallente drone boats and all other drone boats (Guristas are a special case). The Armaggedon, for instance, will take a heavy hit.

Now, option B is a lot more tempting, but makes the dedicated drone boats more bland and less desirable. While I personally use Gallente Cruiser V for the Oneiros and not the Ishtar, not everyone does so

So, option C. Everyone knows sentry drones are a weird beast, being a battleship-damage device that can go on cruisers. Maybe it's time we change that? Yes, it is a complicated thing (and is not a "silver bullet"), but let's give it a try:

- Scrap all >50 mbit bands on sub-battleship classes (cruisers and BCs). So by default, you can fit only 2 sentries.
- Make a new mod: Sentry Drone Control Unit. Goes into a highslot, costs in the ballpark of 50 CPU and 200 PG to fit. Each Sentry Drone Control Unit adds 25 mbit/s bandwidth (allowing you to have 1 more sentry out). You can't go for more than 5, because Drones skill prevents that.
- What does this accomplish? Well, it eats up high slots and fitting attributes, allowing for less silly pure drone boat fits (hello neut brawler VNI and kiting Ishtar, among other things). You'll still be able to fit an Ishtar, but probably not with 100MN ABs without sacrificing other stuff.
- Also, it would open new horizons for some ships. Myrms and Stratioses and simple Vexors would perhaps be able to field full flights of sentries. At the cost of other stuff of course - a Vexor with 3 SDCUs would only have 1 gun left. This would have to be looked closely upon, obviously, but the sacrifice of 3 high slots and a lot of PG and CPU should minimise those cases.

Basically, those SDCUs are a bit like fitting a 10MN on a Tactical destroyer: it's doable, but you have to give something up.

After that, other adjustments can be done (maybe Ishtar's capacitor, maybe drone bay sizes, maybe other stuff).

What about cutting out some of the ishtars dronebay so it cant have extra sets of almost every sentry? Fairly mild change and makes killing its drones a bit more feasible.

People keep bringing this up like they just figured out the da vinci code. "They're battleship weapons they're battleship tier weapons hey everyone they are battleship tier! Guys! Guys!"

Drones don't work that way.

Did you just propose to solve the sentry drone problem by adding another sentry platform?

CCP Fozzie, I just want to point out you have about 240 posts in 9 hrs, with almost all of them telling you the same thing.

"Fix the hulls not the drones."

If the problem really is both, why not fix the outliers like Ishtars first so you have a balance across hulls, before adjusting the drones. Otherwise the Ishtar will only continue to skew your data anyways. You need to get you data into a sing,e standard deviation before adjusting drones. Taking data including Ishtar as it is now is pulls data 2 and maybe 3 SDs out. That's bad math and bad data management.

If CCP is insistent on adjusting both, listen to your player base and just switch the order. Fix Ishtar.. THEN Sentries.




Personally, I'm a fan of making "medium sentries" and "large senties" to match the weapon size instead. This would give CCP much more control over balancing them without needing BS so hard because of a single cruiser. Might even make adjusting carriers easier too!



I forgot to add - (this is the internet after all) - Pics [Stats in spreadsheet] or it didn't happen.
You've shown stats before... If everyone is wrong, then post the stats.

Nothing is new here. Those that invested time in specializing in drone boat weaponry are not so favorable towards the nerf, those that haven't specialized in drone weaponry are welcoming the change.

My POV:
1. Ishtars have always been very useful in new eden because of being able to whip sentries out and tank a 10/10 earning a nice amount of isk. I have a feeling this is also behind the nerf.
2. I find it ridiculous that a hole class and role is defined as drone boat and because it ends up being one considered as overpowered it gets the hammer.
3. Skill level is never reflected on in any nerf that has happened since I started playing 8 years ago.
4. When will we see thinking move from "balancing" or nerfing to actual "counter game plays". It's been said a times, just because something is overpowered and unbalanced it doesn't mean it is bad for the game, What is bad is when everything is placed on a level playing field.

i..agree completly

Battlecruisers and cruisers are not the same thing.