Player Features and Ideas Discussion

That shows me that Minnie and Calgary are used more in blobs and Gallente are more small gang

I think you misunderstood, all those numbers show is on top of the small gang use for the Minnie and Caldari ships they array used loads in blobs as well (whelp canes, drake fleets etc.) this skews the numbers heavily as 100 drake killing a single ship will add 100 to that number of Caldari kms. Its flawed statistics and in no way shows what is op just what the latest fleet fotm is.

Also my phone autocorrecting caldari to Calgary every time I use it is effing annoying

In my opinion those drake changes are the worst idea in eve ever.
Why do all ships have to be the same?

I like the drake because it can tank. I'd keep on liking it if it did less damage. But if it does more damage and tanks less i couls just as well fly every other BC.

I like it if differen ships are different.
I hate it if everything has to be made similar, just with different skins.

The caracal sucks, the raven sucks, all those tank by dps suck in my book.
While I own a variety of ships including faction BS I use my Nighthawk to fly missions and the nighthawk or drake for trips to low or WH space because they can tank stuff.

Please don't start what killed other mmos --> by taking the differences away.

*snip*

And regarding the drivel about how they should be making the Drake different - they are. With this change, it would be more than just an upgraded, missile spewing Ferox.

Read the original thread, didn't read the replies, tl:dr all of that.

Anyways, my two bits. The drake tank, isn't the resists or the missiles, blah blah blah, the only reason it's "Tank" is so strong is the amount of passive resistance it can get due to the base shield recharge rate. Now that is the one thing about it that is off balanced. The recharge rate was or is a bit higher than other ships default, I haven't looked in a while or maybe made my calculations were incorrect. But this means that by fitting the exact same shield modules as any other ship, it will have superior defences. Take a raven with hardeners, dual LSE, etc. It's passive recharge rate is less because the base hp's are about the same to a drake with the same shield hp, but less recharge rate.

Now that being said, that is the problem with all of the passive shield ships. Not the shields, not the ships, but the LSE. What is needed is the recharge rate for an LSE and the CFE rig need to modify the recharge rate. The way to do this would be instead of the recharge rate being time based, it actually needs to be a rate. Get rid of the 12k hp in 1000 seconds or whatever. Make it peak recharge (30% sheild) of 10hp/s So if you got 500k hp of shield, you still recharge the same. This puts it on par with armor ships in small gang. Large fleet warfare, primaries are not alive enough for recharge to matter.

This might require other tweaking. I would need to look it up, but I believe the shield extenders don't give an hp bonus matched to their armor counterparts, and if so, that would need to be tweaked to give an increased hp bonus. We cannot nerf something because it is popular we need to look at the whole of the design. In the case of the drake, it isn't the ship itself, but the extender.

Personally, I like the drake. But I don't fit the extremely high double LSE/relay fit for small gang. When I am only with a few people, I prefer a higher damage output fit. Typically one LSE/resists, and the mwd/point. for mids. Offensive, a ham drake can put out excellent dps. Not worrying about a high recharge, suddenly I have lowslots. This can allow for a pair of BCU, and the other slots for maybe a pair of nano on the ham drake and/or pds for more powergrid, dcu, kinda depends on my mood. Haven't flown it in a while cannot remember my fit off top of head.

Point is, that this fit is quite fun, and effective. It also doesn't have the massive dps/passive tank in small scale pvp that makes the drake get called O/P

Anyways, final words, Fix passive recharge, not drake. Better missile combat too! Bout time they remove that damn kinetic only bonus.

I dunno if the drake needs to be balanced. I think the issues that need addressing here are passive shield tanking issues. A drake shouldnt be capable of 100k passive tank or a 350/sec passive regen tank. That makes things unbalanced IMO. 0 cap spent no speed lost and low slots to push out dps makes armor tanks crap for fleets unless they are bait. Rebalancing the armor tanks against shield tanks would make people use a larger variety of ships.
Also the op has a point. 13 minmatar ships in the list... thats a sure sign of unbalanced game design. The drake is good because its got an actual tank and *MISSILES* they hit and do damage irregardless. Any rookie can hit f1 and orbit at 20. Guns miss and lose out on dps. They get outranged easily. Also as far as I can see majority of fleets are using the LOLCANE cus its so damn fast. It outruns all other bc's and outranges gun bc's with good dps.
IMO cane needs a rebalance. That or more buffs for amarr and gallente bc's. Even with shield tanks amarr and gallente are both still too slow to catch canes easily and with crappy range comparison... yeah

If theres gonna be ANY battlecruisers nerfed I say speed drop for drake and cane. Or a lower shield tank because they are so damn fast. Wont do much for fleets, but it might balance the numbers from small gang warfare.

let me repost what i was trying to say, as it seemed some people didnt comprehend the thought. its not about leaving overpowered ships on the top. rather than nerf something, which only creates animosity to the pilots of those ships, buff other ships to create the ballance you want. as far as drake goes, i do see your guys point about passive regen, but i dont feel making such a drastic change would be a good thing. Id rather just straight up see another ship, if they are trying to change its role in anyway.

personally i disagree with most peoples arguments of ships being over powered which somehow unbalance the game. its not like you cant train to fly it yourself. if you dont like your race, why did you choose them? I'm all for having ccp design a gellente and/or an amarr bc overpowered in their own way. I say things are too even, and should be more diverse.

I have to say... raw numbers never give the truth in-depth.

The drake is a strong candidate for pvp because it has a great slot layout, great bonuses for a tier 2 BC, and is easy for PvE players to switch into.

Ask yourselves this:

What do all of the other Tier 2 BC's have for bonuses? exactly.

When was the last time this ship was nerfed? k.


I mean, if you're going to argue that the ship shouldn't be nerfed, bring more to the table than a single list of kills. There is more at work in each kill involved than is stated, which can give people a biased decision.

CCP also nerfs ships on occasion and buffs them. Deal with it like everyone else. One niche ship should not stay niche forever. the minmatar ships work well in pvp because people simply don't have the patience to combat fast ships correctly (at least in my experience with fleet warfare).

All CCP really has to say is "The Drake does not follow the standards of Tier 2 Battlecruisers." and the nerf ensues.

-Personally, I don't want the Drake to be 'nerfed,' but realistically.... you have to have seen it coming eventually... people have been complaining about its capabilities for ages.

Only the ones who suck at flying them. For the rest of us, this change is actually a huge buff.
(Oh and the carebears flying them in level 4s I guess, but the Drake sucks at that anyway so this'll be doing them a favour.)

With the proposed changes, why would you fly a Drake when you could fly a Naga? HAM kiting? wtf drugs are you people on? A Caracal could kill a HAM Drake with the proposed changes. HAMs only go about 20km currently. So you get an extra 25% range total, which is what an extra 50% velocity would give. Now you can hit at about 25km. Hooray. That's not kiting. That's spitting into the wind.

Caracal gets 50km with fricking standard missiles. 115km with heavies. Only 30km with navy HAMs, and that is with a 10% per level missile velocity bonus. So what do you think a 5% per BC level boost will do? Crap, that's what. Worse, HAMs don't do spit vs frigates. At least with heavies you can kill frigates.

Yes, I know. Drone bay.

Have any of you actually tried to fit a full set of HAMs and 2x LSE IIs on a Drake? It r4pes the PG so badly you have to pull 2x BCS for Reactor Control Units.

The entire concept of repurposing the Drake for some sort of aborted HAM kiting platform is so r3tarded I can't even begin to rage enough about it.