EVE General Discussion

Comparing a Rattlesnake (with drones) and a Carrier (with fighters), I come to the conclusion, that the new fighter mechanic is two steps backwards.

I kindly ask CCP to change the behavior as follows:

1. Give fighters the ability for autoagression or at least "keep moving".
2. Allow to form fighter groups with arbitrary number.
3. Provide better feedback on fighter status, wrt shield, armor, hull.

Reason:

1. Once a fighter group finishes a target, it speed changes to 0, sitting there as lame ducks and practive targets. Drones behave more intelligent and look for the next target. I never lost a drone, but I alredy lost several fighters under identical circumstances.
2. Why can I only target and fight 3 targets? Any drone boat can do better. And in PvE I have to deal with a lot of frigs, where the firepower of a whole squad is overkill. Again, under indentical circumstances, a carrier is worse than any other drone boat.
3. I see "something is damaged". The next I see, is "fighter has gone". Drones give precise feedback, when the right time has come to call it back. I do not see, why a carrier, precisely designed for the role of controlling fighters, gives me less situational awareness.

In General: should a carrier not be better at controlling fighters, than any other ship controlling its drones?

Another suggestion: provide a "drag and drop" function, to drop fighter squad icons on target icons.

in short words you forgot to read OP...

to OP: CCP changed carriers to lower load on servers.... So we won't get more squads soon. Carrier: 3, super: 5. That's all.

Agree with you about stupid fighter behaviour. But personally i almost never lose fighters. You just watch them and always keep in work.

Not sure what you want to get from shield/armor/structure indication tho....

I've never flown carriers and that still sounds stupid, lol. IMO, at the very least, they should return back to the carrier until further orders are given in order to 'keep moving'. Drones do that, I believe.

I think the thing that always bothered me about drones in general is functionally they're very automatic and I'd much prefer to assign 'acting orders' that they follow under certain conditions unless I override with manual input. Stuff like, "If health <50%, return to carrier and dock" or "If no target, attack target firing at parent" sort of deal. Amazes me how these advanced factions come up with drones that don't even have basic programming. The Fighters should have -no- excuse.

Ya I'd like to see fighters keep moving/orbit after the current target is destroyed. Stopped is just lame.

Also for damage. Having to hover over and wait.... wait... wait.. oh and wait for the pop-up to tell you the % is also lame.

How to not lose fighters

If your current target is almost dead tell your fighters to orbit the next target that will keep them from stoping after killing

If it's anything like drones, they will still stop, but for a more brief moment since the command is more likely to catch the next server tick rather than several later like it normally does without manual control.

This does help, though, so not to count this trick out, but honestly a system like this shouldn't rely on tricks to make it work. I'm fine with how drones work when you're not paying them any attention, just not so much when you're actually taking the time and effort to micromanaging them.

I'm guessing you have never used fighters. They use an entirely different interface to drones. There is no automatic aggression functionality for fighters. Also, I'm not sure what your asterisks denote but I could suggest "efficient", "overpowered", or "really good isk".

I doubt CCP will add such a function. But an automatic 'return and orbit' would be better than nothing, especially given the annoying delay between the NPC being killed and the fighter cycling down. They often take damage if frigates are on field regardless of how alert you are.

I try to watch them too, but with the same amount of effort / attention, I never get into trouble with other ships, that use normal drones.
shield/armor/structure indicator is not necessary, but I want a better feedback on the damage %
Could also the single red bar, but filled proportionally to the total damage.

Well.... I remember when Rattlesnake and Gila got their drones halved in amount and doubled in DPS/HP. At that point of time it was given as "every drone is an object in space and needs special processing, etc...". I remember it well that i was sad losing my personal 'swarm of drones'.

I might be wrong for sure but i believe that carriers lost their drones at the same time. And it was done for the same reason. (Yes, yes, AFK too but it could be solved another way?)

Why other ships still have full amount of drones? I don't know. Maybe i'm wrong about Gila and Rattlesnake? Or maybe server load is no more a problem? Or CCP found new thing to switch to?