Wormholes

But I also wonder about the “target for capitals“ part. The drifter appears to be way too fast for it.

What I noticed was that it completely ignored my Loki and aggressed the Paladin 100% of the time. Maybe just coincidence... if not, that could be the way to go... put some Capital as a Tank to absorb the neuts and damage while tackling and webbing it with something small.

Seems easily abusable though... capital could be again just one and the real work is done by small cheap ships fit for max dps.

Edit: I suggest you give the drifter a set of secondary weapons and neuts which target smaller ships when available. The neut can be strong enough to suck a subcap dry but should have long cycle time, so the tackler could bounce back with vampires enough to not drop the points and webs on the drifter.

The secondary damage to subcaps should be strong enough to require a proper expensive fitting but survivable with strong logi / Faux support (but not local subcap tank because of the slow-cycling but very strong neut). Only as long as capitals draw the fire of the main weapon, of course.

This way we would need both capitals and subcaps to kill the drifter and they have to work together and are all threatened.

This is very interesting change i know that i as for a lot.
But can we have few different boss NPC that can spawn?
If there will be always one type, people will find optimal way to kill it - like burners, and it will never be real challenge.

True but I'm predicting the majority of people will not bother shooting/spawning the drifter unless it is in their own home system... The more daring people may choose to bring a dread into their static but is it worth it for an extra 400 mil and increased time?

We are being pushed into running sites in our static, and for that, it will be more efficient to use a bunch of battleships to complete the basic waves and move on without worrying about the powerful drifter and escalation sleepers.

There's currently a bug that causes the Arithmos to sometimes accelerate to 200,000 m/s while fighting. We have found the cause and are getting it fixed right now.

I ran a few sites last night to test out the new drifter. I used the double rr rattlesnake fit that has been circulating around reddit for a bit. I was doing about 2500 dps cause I was in a C5 mag. It took about 15 minutes to go through the shields, 25 min for the armor, and about 2 min for structure. The damage the drifter put out wasn't too bad, it was the neuting that really hurt. It'd take half my cap every 10 sec or so. At first I had to pay much more attention to my cap management, but about halfway through the drifters shields I figured out a routine that worked well but was very boring.

If the drifter is intended only for capitals, I think it is fine in its current itteration. But if subcaps are supposed to be able to do it I think it is very overpowered. You would need a significant fleet to defeat it, at which point you could just burn through normal anomalies instead. So the change to having it spawn when you shoot the structure is an important change. If anything, maybe reduce the ehp of the drifter if subcaps are intended to be able to kill it.

So you killed it with just two rattlesnakes? That surprises me. How much does one of those rattles cost?

What was the name of the drifter? To check if I got the same one.

And yes, I assume the drifter is NOT supposed to be killed (efficiently) with subcaps.

edit: And how did you tackle it? It should warp off if you didn't.

They weren't passive. They were cap transfer rattles with pith x type xl shield boosts. I also had high grade crystals and shield links. Could tank it fine except for the neuts which required some pulsing of the booster instead of constantly running it. I did not notice the drifter repping while I was shooting it. Each rattle was about 800mil tq prices.

I also had 2 warp disruptors on each rattle so I could keep the drifter on field.

I think that goal of CCP was not replacing capital escalations with something that can be easily run in 2-4 sub capitals.

The problem is that you can scale the cost, and reduce time needed bit by adding 2 next rattlesnakes.
Maybe we don't need 2 next rattlesnakes, but 2 pure dps battleships and 2 T2 logistic cruisers downgrading cost of the whole alt fleet to under 2bil mark.

Cap batteries provide resistance to neuts, guardians and basilisk could easily manage neuts especially when they get some cap from the battleships.

If people managed to find "solution" for the boss drifter, before it left SISI then it need a rework.

Compared to what? I'm not sure if you are saying the doctrine is bad or the isk payout isn't good enough.