Player Features and Ideas Discussion

What if you could scoop any sentry drone? That would be fun.

Edit: I mean even if they are not abandoned.

Introducing a stupid mechanic is not the way to fix balance issue. If you have enough people to scoop the drones without gettign wrecked, you might as well put them in Ishtars and kill your enemy...

The whole issue with drone balance stems from the way drone size progresses up the ship hierarchy, since you are getting the biggest size of drones on medium ships, whereas with any other sort of weapon platform you'd have take one step up the ladder to get a ship to get a weapon system that can match the same DPS output - rebalancing the drone bandwidth of cruisers and adjusting the bonusses on some of them to settle them in a more appropriate place would fix this issue more cleanly, but would require a not quite trivial amount of work to get just right.
A more blunt balance pass like this one will likely still be effective as a way to tone down the power of ishtar doctrines, but it hurts other parts of the game that were fine with the state of sentries before the patch(ie sentry battleships, sentry Rattlesnakes are hurt quite badly in particular since they get no tracking bonusses).

what kind of sentries do you feed your rattlesnakes?
And are you fitting any kind of tank to it at all?

Well, with the kind of application you'd be getting for that, you might as well fly a dread.

It is data compiled from http://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/2xd0vn/cruisers_online_fixed_a_graph_ccp_released/

The original can be found here http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/balance-changes-coming-in-scylla/

http://cdn1.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/66946/1/STEVE_7.png

Light blue are Drones, Orange - Energy Turrets, Dark blue - Hybrids, Yellow - Projectiles. CCP is wise not to release graphs with any scale, apart from proportions.

I did say on paper....

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There are no missiles on that chart..........This one is better http://i.imgur.com/yfeQpc4.jpg

as someone who both reguarly flies and goes up against mostly sentry drone based fleets I would love to see some further changes, it feels so very, very stale to be pretty much assured that no matter what fight you go to it will be based around the use of sentry drones.

whilst I like their utility and damage application as well as their reliability and disposable nature, they do bore me to death. it seems that the only real way to break this cycle currently is to bomb the drones off the field using throwaway bombers or your own sentries to nail them before they nail yours.

I would even go so far as to say that an ishtar "seems" far more reliable than a dommi when it comes to these fleets, and although its insurance is naff it generally has much more of a chance to survive a fight due to its smaller size, faster aligns and native HAC resists if you do not factor in logistics.

I am fairly old school in what I enjoy, I like fast and furious fights at medium/short range not stagnant sentry stand offs, I consider it a treat to see other ships on the field these days and would like to see more variation in fleet compositions than the current meta calls for.

Whether this is a problem with sentries themselves or the hulls that use them I cant say for sure, but one thing I know is that sentries have a very, very reliable use for a very low cost and they rarely fail to get the job done with minimal risk and effort, something needs to change to encourage more diverse fleets.

All said and done however fleet doctrines will ALWAYS favor the most reliable and cost effective way of applying murder or hunkering down, nerf-batting sentries will just push people into some other cookie cutter doctrine that will then eventually fall under the same bat whilst the people spamming sentries just move on, those using them for more conventional purposes will also take the hit.

My only suggestion would be to push the effective range of them down allowing more counter play, forcing engagements of this type to happen at a closer fighting distance allows more ships to shine in battle as well as more options to counter the over-bearing use of sentries. If people wish to hit out to such long ranges with their sentries then I would suggest that they fit for the job and are made to pay for that long reach, just the same as artillery fits do.

Basically what I am saying is that these drone boats get a huge range at no cost, even straight out of hangar and unfitted they can hit to 50km+ with little to no problem, they need to be penalized the same way as long rage fittings for other races are to balance the field and promote diversity, not encouraged to fit tanks and still hit way out to 100km when fitted whilst still being mobile enough to dodge.

Worst idea on this thread so far
It would be much simpler to you know, buff battleships?

While I disagree with most of what you are saying I want to give you a big kiss for suggesting a sentry drone abandonment range. Imagine if people had to actually stay within say 10km of their sentries. Incredible idea.