Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hello everyone,

I would like to talk a bit about the current state of drone boats and a way to possible get them into a more fun and less OP state. And yes im going to tell about how overpowered they are and these suggestions are indeed nerf, but as it stand they are just too strong for what they are. Which can already be noted from the fact that you probably do not want your ship, in which you are winning almost every fight, to be nerfed.

As it stands the Ttristan, Vexor and Myrmidon are incredibly strong for their class. Sadly I do no know much about the Dominix so I will skip that one but the same idea might be applied to it.
So, what does make the 3 ships named above so strong is that they get their main DPS out of drones and their secondary dps out of guns. Or, if content with the drone dps, an insane amount of control in the form of energy neutralizers.

The Tristan already gets a bit limited on the dps from it's highslots by only having 2 guns and not having any damage bonusses. Still, having 3 highslots to put in energy neutralizers makes the neut variant in my opinion just a tad too strong leaving the opponent without a real chance to fight back.

For the Tristan I suggest removing one highslot, keep the 2 turret highslots. That way the possible damage output stays the same but it removes a bit of the overwhelming energy neutralizer power it has so that the Tristan is more fun to engage.



The Vexor is a bit of a different story in that it actually gets 2 damage bonusses. Although my main focus is the energy neutralizers for these ideas, the Vexor is also capable of getting a ridiculous amount of dps. Only to be out done by the Exequror Navy Issue and the Vigilant, while still have a t1 cruiser compettive tank.
Besides that the energy neutralizer variant of the Vexor is in my opinion it's strongest form, having access to 4 neutralizers. Which is, just like the Tristan for frigates, capable of drying out almost every t1 cruiser while still being very decent on its damage output.

So for the Vexor I am also suggesting to remove an Highslot, with the fitting costs for it reduced aswell. I think, to keep the Vexor still interesting, it would be nice to see for the 3 remaining highslot to only have 2 turret hard point. while getting its damage bonus for guns increased to 15% per level. That way the total possible damage output is slightly nerfed to having 3,5 effective guns but still stays relevant. While also pointing the fitting ideas for a vexor towards energy neutralizers by having that one utility highslot. But not making it uncounterably strong.


The Myrmidon is mostly known for it's amazing repairing power, and although in my opinion that is a bit to strong, I do not want to touch on that further in here. The Myrmidon has actually a pretty decent, but certainly not (too) high, damage potential. So for that I would like to keep the Myrmidon the same, but with its 5 midslots and 5 highslots is exceptionally good at energy neutralizers while still maintaining it's core use, active armor repping. As seen from most PvP Myrmidon fits the highslots are either used for energy neutralizers or just filled up with whatever size guns managed to fit.

The Myrmidon can, in my opinion easily lose 2 highslots to keep it's energy neutralizing part in check. In return, to compensate the damage potential, increasing the drone damage bonus to 12,5% or even 15%.


In closing, I would like to see the droneboats overall lose some highslots, with their fitting costs, and in return get their ship bonusses slightly increased to compensate for the loss in damage potential.

Wow, really?


It seems pretty clear to me that his problem is with the drone boats' ability to so easily put aside their turrets to get more utility highs.

A drone ship loses less weapon power from the loss of a turret than other ships do. I don't feel that drone ships are overpowered (I think they're balanced in other ridiculous ways such as making the drones weak or reducing their base powergrid), but their balance is so broken that they don't even fit in the regular ship lineup. You can't compare their raw stats with other ships to determine which is stronger, because the baseline ways they operate are alien and incompatible. The only way CCP is able to balance drone boats is by buffing or nerfing them based on how the playerbase uses them, and I've a hunch the balance isn't the same between Tranquility and Serenity--yet both servers get the same balance changes. And all those changes accomplish is make some fits underpowered while leaving some fits slightly overpowered (like neutralizer fits), and none of it is actually balanced.

Not convinced there is a problem here that needs to be solved based on the kill boards I see and my personal experiences with my low sec character. Setting that aside and going with the spirit of discussing your idea anyway.

Drones in their current form always have been and always will be a balance nightmare.

If you balance the ships at the beginning of a fight, then the loss of even a single drone tips that balance against the drones ship, this is essentially what would happen with your idea.

Make the drones ship slightly OP to start and as you note above the non-drones pilots have a big hurdle to clear just to balance things.

So the real question is how do we deal with this fundamental aspect of the drones problem?
One way is to make drones indestructible, makes balance in combat easy but raises some serious concerns for the market side of the game.

Drones and or the ships that use them could have a damage / hit point modifier that changes based on the number of drones in space thus eliminating one balance hassle but raises concerns for more than a few additional balance related hassles.

If the real problem is the utility high you speak about then perhaps a better idea would be to remove a mid or low slot on the other ships and add that utility high slot.

Neuts are very powerful against active tanking in a 1v1. Might it be you're trying to fight ships that hard counter you in a situation that suits them well?

Neuts are pretty grid intensive as well. A vexor that wants to fit 4 med neuts is left with very little room for tank, prop mod and the booster needed to run those neuts. So compromises are made.

Howabout Pilgrim light?

It may allow for more active countering of drones if drones worked in 'wings' like fighters and could be locked in groups.

Honestly, this is nothing more than a poorly veiled nerf call based on some kind of personal issues had when you were pvping.

I am so happy CCP does not give this kind of post more merit than it deserves which is none.

I don't know if its that big a buff even if you can rep them. They don't broadcast for reps and you cant watch list them. Anyone trying to solo with drones and rep them is losing valuable neut slots (lol) and non-dedicated logi don't have much range on RR. What are you gonna do have your logi wing pre-lock them up instead of more valuable ships?

Its also easier to alpha a drone from a swarm so it can't be repaired.

Im seeing little down side.

Edit-they also reduce server load.

The server load is the big thing behind it. It would turn most boats from 5 individual drones to 1 swarm.
And the way objects on grid interact make it a variant of the handshake game, which is an exponential curve, not a linear one.
So dropping 200 drone boats on grid dropping 5 drones each for 1200 objects to a mere 400 objects is a huge performance increase.

Exactly how important this is now that TQ3 is here, and 200 Domi's can no longer crash even a reinforced node by dropping drones all at once, that's a different question, but that is likely where fighters grew out of, and with fighters they probably already have a lot of the initial code needed to do it.

Fly something bigger or add more alts. Problem solved like most pvp situations... soon you'll learn about the blob.