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[Carnyx] Sentry Drone Adjustments

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Max Kolonko
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#281 - 2015-05-22 09:08:26 UTC
CCP Fozzie wrote:
Seven Koskanaiken wrote:
CCP Fozzie wrote:
The great thing about balance surrounding drones/sentries/ishtars is that everyone thinks they know the one and only thing that needs to change, so no matter what you change you **** off 90% of the forums.

Big smile


Well has something come to light that contradicts Rise's statement? Which particular ships outside of Ishtar and Domi are using sentries/drones to OP effect? Where's the data to back this all up? What do the CSM say on this (if anything?)


Nothing here contradicts Rise's statement. The biggest issue was definitely the Ishtar hull, and the hull is still a significant component of the issue. That's why we made a much larger adjustment to the Ishtar last release (cutting its sentry damage bonus in half) than these changes to the drones. While the results of that Ishtar change is still playing out, we're continuing to make more adjustments to the overall sentry ecosystem with these changes. We also won't rule out more changes to the hull (and to other non-hull aspects of this whole picture) in the near future, but we aren't ready for more of those in Carnyx quite yet.

Sentries are an extremely strong weapon system, and their strength has really shown itself in the past years as we hit the critical mass required for players to improve their tactics for using them. At the moment they are a bit too good on essentially every ship that has a drone damage bonus and at least 125mbits bandwidth (with Ishtars the most obvious offender, but Domis, carriers, VNIs, Rattlesnakes and Geddons all affected), which is why we're making some moderate changes to the drones in Carnyx.

I'll let individual CSM members share their opinions if they wish, but every member of the CSM that provided any comment on these changes pushed for larger nerfs. The version of these changes that I first showed the CSM was a bit milder, but they convinced me to give it a bit more teeth.

The problem is not really ishtar bonuses. Its a fast kiting ship being able to field that powerfull weapon. Once you limit sentires and heavies to bs and capital hulls most of the priblem is solved and we than have a healthy discussipn about whetever or not sentries are op or not.

Read and support: Don't mess with OUR WH's What is Your stance on WH stuff?
afkalt
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#282 - 2015-05-22 09:09:23 UTC
Sort Dragon wrote:
CCP Fozzie wrote:
Seven Koskanaiken wrote:
CCP Fozzie wrote:
The great thing about balance surrounding drones/sentries/ishtars is that everyone thinks they know the one and only thing that needs to change, so no matter what you change you **** off 90% of the forums.

Big smile


Well has something come to light that contradicts Rise's statement? Which particular ships outside of Ishtar and Domi are using sentries/drones to OP effect? Where's the data to back this all up? What do the CSM say on this (if anything?)


Nothing here contradicts Rise's statement. The biggest issue was definitely the Ishtar hull, and the hull is still a significant component of the issue. That's why we made a much larger adjustment to the Ishtar last release (cutting its sentry damage bonus in half) than these changes to the drones. While the results of that Ishtar change is still playing out, we're continuing to make more adjustments to the overall sentry ecosystem with these changes. We also won't rule out more changes to the hull (and to other non-hull aspects of this whole picture) in the near future, but we aren't ready for more of those in Carnyx quite yet.

Sentries are an extremely strong weapon system, and their strength has really shown itself in the past years as we hit the critical mass required for players to improve their tactics for using them. At the moment they are a bit too good on essentially every ship that has a drone damage bonus and at least 125mbits bandwidth (with Ishtars the most obvious offender, but Domis, carriers, VNIs, Rattlesnakes and Geddons all affected), which is why we're making some moderate changes to the drones in Carnyx.

I'll let individual CSM members share their opinions if they wish, but every member of the CSM that provided any comment on these changes pushed for larger nerfs. The version of these changes that I first showed the CSM was a bit milder, but they convinced me to give it a bit more teeth.


Like Fozzie has stated we were consulted about this and the nerf suggested was less than posted at the start of this thread and after discussions between us and ccp, fozzie upped the nerf a bit. Speaking for myself I am satisfied that ccp realises the issue with sentries and the boats that get direct bonus's to these and instead of following the old way of doing things and just nerfing these ships into nonexistance they are actually trying to apply a nerf but still make them usefull if you so chose to use them.


The most obvious problem with this being that in any world where the domi and ishtar are balanced against their peers, all other sentry users are absolutely dead in the water.

Fleet ships need to be able to project damage. So long as these ships have huge boosts to tracking and range, they'll never not be the choice for said fleets because it allows you to either a) outrange the competition or b) out tank the competition at the same ranges.

As I said before, do you honestly think that if ishtars and domis were deleted tomorrow, the meta would move to geddons? To VNI? Not a snowballs chance in hell, is my guess. Some people might use fleets of geddons, but it wouldn't dominate and crush the meta like the current drone ships are.
Hexatron Ormand
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#283 - 2015-05-22 09:17:51 UTC
And all the time the site and missions pilots get nerfed and nerfed again, as they are unimportant. As everything revolves around the PvP balance.

Sentry boats, especially the Dominix are very widely used ships for those purposes. If i see that right you will lose 3% dmg per sentry... times 5 (as they use 5 sentries).. so thats over 15% on DMG loss? So pure sentry boat mission runners gets the shaft again, just cause they are overused in PvP?

Guess financing the PvP runs gets also more and more hard work, taking longer and longer. For me personally, this will mean cutting back in PvP runs, as i have less ISKs to spend and burn on them. At least for me this is, how i was earning my cash for the "fun times".. running sites in a sentry boat.
xttz
GSF Logistics and Posting Reserves
Goonswarm Federation
#284 - 2015-05-22 09:25:55 UTC
Hexatron Ormand wrote:
Sentry boats, especially the Dominix are very widely used ships for those purposes. If i see that right you will lose 3% dmg per sentry... times 5 (as they use 5 sentries).. so thats over 15% on DMG loss? So pure sentry boat mission runners gets the shaft again, just cause they are overused in PvP?


Where the hell did you learn math?

If a sentry drone does 100dps and you reduce that by 3%, that goes down to 97dps. If you're using 5 drones, you go from 500dps to 485dps. That's still a 3% drop.

Do you think that if they cut drone damage by 50% you'd end up doing 250% less damage for using 5 sentries?
xttz
GSF Logistics and Posting Reserves
Goonswarm Federation
#285 - 2015-05-22 09:29:54 UTC
Max Kolonko wrote:
The problem is not really ishtar bonuses. Its a fast kiting ship being able to field that powerfull weapon. Once you limit sentires and heavies to bs and capital hulls most of the priblem is solved and we than have a healthy discussipn about whetever or not sentries are op or not.


This seems pretty plausible to me. It's a battleship-class weapon on a hull with decent durability and cruiser mobility.

What if we had small / medium / large sentry drones, with the Ishtar / VNI getting class-appropriate bonuses / restrictions for these?
Kitty Bear
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#286 - 2015-05-22 09:30:34 UTC
Valterra Craven wrote:
Kitty Bear wrote:
Lady Aesir wrote:
Ishtar

A Cruiser should not be able to field sentries PERIOD


oh noes ... the stealth bombers .....



Yeah a whole class of ships designed to die if a flea landed on them... again not comparable.


yes it is ..

the point raised was
cruisers should not have access to battleship sized weapons

but without a supporting thread demanding the removal of battleship sized weapons from frigates
the point is redundant
Basil Pupkin
Republic Military School
#287 - 2015-05-22 09:36:26 UTC
Hexatron Ormand wrote:
And all the time the site and missions pilots get nerfed and nerfed again, as they are unimportant. As everything revolves around the PvP balance.

Sentry boats, especially the Dominix are very widely used ships for those purposes. If i see that right you will lose 3% dmg per sentry... times 5 (as they use 5 sentries).. so thats over 15% on DMG loss? So pure sentry boat mission runners gets the shaft again, just cause they are overused in PvP?

Guess financing the PvP runs gets also more and more hard work, taking longer and longer. For me personally, this will mean cutting back in PvP runs, as i have less ISKs to spend and burn on them. At least for me this is, how i was earning my cash for the "fun times".. running sites in a sentry boat.


3.3% damage loss is 3.3% dps loss, it does not depend on the number of sentries.
That said, I'm A LOT more concerned with tracking loss. After the last nerf, hitting certain frigs orbiting a close-range ship sitting on the anom already became impossible for a support domi from ANY range - 50, 80, 100km regardless, a problem which wasn't there before. Now I guess the npc HACs are going to become invulnerable to a support domi in pve, unless they burn in his face, which is still a nerf due to even further damage reduction.

Maybe we should stop gimping the already-****-dps battleship when balancing a cruiser?

Being teh freightergankbear automatically puts you below missionbear and minerbear in carebear hierarchy.

If you're about to make "this will make eve un-eve" argument, odds are you are defending some utterly horrible mechanics against a good change.
Omnathious Deninard
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#288 - 2015-05-22 09:48:12 UTC
Jeremiah Saken wrote:
-25mb bandwidth on cruisers class.
Compare Stratios vs VNI. Same bonus to damage. Few hundred alpha less on Stratios.

Stratios though gets a covert ops cloaking device, gets 5 high slots and has 4 turret hard points as well as a tanking bonus.

If you don't follow the rules, neither will I.
Kitty Bear
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#289 - 2015-05-22 09:52:24 UTC
Maximum Bandwidth by base hull and core design role

Is a Drone Boat
Frigate/Destroyer - 25
Cruiser/BC - 50
Battleship - 125


Not a Drone Boat
Frigate/Destroyer - 10
Cruiser/BC - 25
Battleship - 50


Drone boats then can be diversified by any applied bonus
HP, Tracking, Damage, MWD Speed, Optimal/Fall-off etc


if you gave Give the Dominix a HP, Tracking & MWD bonus, and the Navy version a optimal/fall-off bonus & Damage bonus
one would be better with heavies, the other with sentries.

the whole sentry-Ishtar meta becomes moot as it would no longer be possible
Omnathious Deninard
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#290 - 2015-05-22 09:58:29 UTC
Kitty Bear wrote:
Maximum Bandwidth by base hull and core design role

Is a Drone Boat
Frigate/Destroyer - 25
Cruiser/BC - 50
Battleship - 125


Not a Drone Boat
Frigate/Destroyer - 10
Cruiser/BC - 25
Battleship - 50


I could get behind something like this, but it would require another complete rework on drones themselves.
In terms of medium drones as a medium weapon system, they are lacking. Light drones are almost there and heavy drones are underpowered as a large weapon system but not as bad off as medium drones.

If you don't follow the rules, neither will I.
Max Kolonko
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#291 - 2015-05-22 10:19:57 UTC
Kitty Bear wrote:
Lady Aesir wrote:
Ishtar

A Cruiser should not be able to field sentries PERIOD


oh noes ... the stealth bombers .....


Bad comparison. Just like no one us arguing against using large weapons on tier 3 bc's.

Both stealth bombers and bcs are weak in tank. Are bound location wise to their weapons. Have no racial lock (there is almost equally powerful variant for each race).

Ishtar on the other hand is:
- free to kite while their drones that deal damage are far away from him
- one race only
- tanky for a hac with both shield and armor working for him.

Compared to otjer hacs is the only one that can fiekd bs sized weapons (5 h/s drones with two spare sets)

From where im standing ishtar is a special snowflake. And i would also argue on removal of sentry/heavy capabilities from all ships smaller than bs.

Read and support: Don't mess with OUR WH's What is Your stance on WH stuff?
Miner Hottie
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#292 - 2015-05-22 11:25:53 UTC
Basil Pupkin wrote:
Miner Hottie wrote:
Umm the goons preferred PVE boat is an Ishtar, good native resist profile for fighting Guristas and heavy drones/sentries don't care about being jammed.


That's what they say and you repeat after them like a parrot. They never speak truth, so don't. What they rat in are carriers and rattlesnakes, the lies about Ishtars is needed to try and convince people that there are no slow and blingy ships ratting there, which has been proven wrong a buttload of times. Doesn't stop people who are gullible enough to listen to a gewn from believing in the Ishtar myth and other bull.

Aaaaaaaand guess what? Wardens aint nerfed. There are goonie ears sticking out of this change, how unexpected, yet another nerf-everyone-but-gewns change.

Ok, just so this post doesn't get moderated, I'll be mild: curse you all.



Ok. Firstly: look at my corp history, I left the Swarm last week. Goon PVE Ishtars run heavy drones, Wasps to be specific, as they eat frigate rats for breakfast, which Wardens can't do, unless they are 70km away from the rat who has 0 transversal. There are carriers and vindis and Rattlesnakes ratting in Deklein, but they are idiots. You get nearly as good a performance from a T2 Wasp equipped ishtar as a carrier, for far less risk.

Finally, you need to drop the mental conditioning which says goons always lie. They only usually lie and you won't find much lying from them in these threads. Freaking need chribba to come in and mine all this tinfoil. Finally, seeing the Ishtar nerfed to the pack with the other HAC's would make me very happy. Drone doctrines aren't that great and encourage a pretty limited skill amongst all the players.

It's all about how hot my mining lasers get.
Kitty Bear
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#293 - 2015-05-22 12:01:49 UTC
Max Kolonko wrote:
Kitty Bear wrote:
Lady Aesir wrote:
Ishtar

A Cruiser should not be able to field sentries PERIOD


oh noes ... the stealth bombers .....


Bad comparison. Just like no one us arguing against using large weapons on tier 3 bc's.

Both stealth bombers and bcs are weak in tank. Are bound location wise to their weapons. Have no racial lock (there is almost equally powerful variant for each race).

Ishtar on the other hand is:
- free to kite while their drones that deal damage are far away from him
- one race only
- tanky for a hac with both shield and armor working for him.

Compared to otjer hacs is the only one that can fiekd bs sized weapons (5 h/s drones with two spare sets)

From where im standing ishtar is a special snowflake. And i would also argue on removal of sentry/heavy capabilities from all ships smaller than bs.


nope.

your argument is literally
cruisers shouldn't use BS sized weapons because they are cruisers

taking that into account
tank is irrelevant
faction is irrelevant

your providing no substance or anecdotal references to support your statement
All I'm doing is pointing out the precedent CCP has set for BS sized weapons on non-BS sized ships



i'll give a you a free anecdotal reference
r.i.p Myrmidon
Sticky wizzleteats
Doomheim
#294 - 2015-05-22 12:42:04 UTC  |  Edited by: Sticky wizzleteats
The range and tracking bouncers and curators are a bit to good in the current pvp meta, gardes are not used that much (not sure why they are taking such a high hit to optimal), but everyone knows that the problem lies in the sentries in bonuses hulls. That is where they are op. Wardens sucks, and after this patch so will the gardes. The bouncers and curators will still dominate the meta for the bonused hulls, wardens will suck still and now gardes will not be used because the the harsh nerf. Thank you for pushing my choices to 2 drones in the name of "balance"

Rip gardes
I miss you wardens
Brown Pathfinder
Black Spot on Parchment
#295 - 2015-05-22 13:02:15 UTC  |  Edited by: Brown Pathfinder
Why do you want to nerf my poor Prophecy Fozzie? Cry
Can't you touch the hulls instead of the drones? P
Amarisen Gream
The.Kin.of.Jupiter
#296 - 2015-05-22 13:18:33 UTC  |  Edited by: Amarisen Gream
I would like to echo the 2nd post...

What about introducing new sized sentries...

Small - made to work with frigates and destroyers.
Medium - made to work with cruiser and BC ships.
Large - current ones but designed to be deployed by BS sized or bigger ships only

This would give players two choices in drones.

Mobile drones or Sentry drones in all sizes...
Could make for some really enjoyable meta/doctrines of ships as well as game play.

edit:

What if this was also done on all drone types...

Sentry Salvage drone.
Sentry Mining drone
Sentry Web drone
etc

and yeah, it would add a lot of new items to the game, but I feel it would add some really fun options for players as well.

"The Lord loosed upon them his fierce anger All of his fury and rage. He dispatched against them a band of Avenging Angels" - The Scriptures, Book II, Apocalypse 10:1

#NPCLivesMatter #Freetheboobs
Lavayar
Haidamaky
UA Fleets
#297 - 2015-05-22 13:19:49 UTC
Keep going this way P
Phoenix Jones
Small-Arms Fire
#298 - 2015-05-22 13:23:40 UTC  |  Edited by: Phoenix Jones
Oh good grief.. This again.

To do list, nerf the issue with the ship, adjust role, provide buff for other ships.

1) reduce the bandwidth of heavy drones to 20 (from 25)
2) reduce the bandwidth of the navy vexor and the Ishtar to 100 (from 125)
3) reduce the dronebay of the ishtar down to 225 or 250 (backup drones they can swap out via depot).

What you do is move the navy vexor and Ishtar away from sentries by reducing their dps by 20%, by removing the ability to drop 5 sentries (now 4), but they keep their total dps when using heavy drones (they can now launch 5). The proteus, vexor, prophecy, stratios, myrmidon all gain bonuses to their max drone layout because of the heavy drone bandwidth change.

Yaay!!!!
MechaJeb Kerman
MechaJeb Kerman's Thrasher Fund
Novus Ordo.
#299 - 2015-05-22 13:33:38 UTC
Amarisen Gream wrote:

What if this was also done on all drone types...

Sentry Salvage drone.
Sentry Mining drone
Sentry Web drone
etc



Oh yes, Sentry ECM would be glorious. You get a permajam! And you get a permajam! EVERYBODY GETS A PERMAJAM!

I'll crudely Photoshop an image of Helen Thomas onto a picture of your choosing for 30m. PM me.
Sven Viko VIkolander
In space we are briefly free
#300 - 2015-05-22 13:34:45 UTC
This is another good change IMO. Now all we need is another 10-20 small nerfs across the game and we should see a lot of the power creep of the last year or so removed and the game much improved. Let's see, up next, nerf the worm, nerf the garmur/orthrus, nerf links, etc.