Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This would almost be evil, but one thing CCP could do to keep drones from homogenizing everything is to give every ship with a drone bay a role bonus to its faction's drones--or, more draconian, require a mod or a rig to control another faction's drones. This could be waived for dedicated drone boats.

To keep that from being a total nerf, the drones themselves could get a looking-over. But that's another topic.

If you changed the role bonus to a greater % chance of success per Analyzer or Codebreaker cycle, that would be awesome. Also, what MotherMoon said.

How about giving them a role bonus that decreases the speed penalty while under cloak? since these ships are the precursors of true covert ops ships, having this bonus makes sense.

Example: 10% reduction in speed penalty when fitting a prototype or tech II cloaking device.

This would actually be a useful bonus to these ships, as a common tactic in exploration sites is to warp in, cloak and then approach the target containers. This shortens the time spent in transit to the containers.

Increasing the range on Analyzer and Hacking modules is not a useful effect. Increasing their success chance per cycle ... now THAT is useful. Maybe if it would be too much to do 5%/level, that could be a 2%/level or 2.5%/level increase.

Also, I agree with Mother Moon about science-type vessels need to have more EHP, but not firepower. Put it in the hull, they have large cargo bays to justify the additional hit points there. Large drones bays too. Those both say ... there's more structure here to blow up, but it's non-volatile stuff.

I didn't think about that with drones.

I totally forgot that drones are getting a bit overused. I actually liked the old Probe with its 10m³ drone bay.


It is probably a long shot to say this, but drones should actually be a Gallente aspect aside to their common x-tra dmg/hp bonuses. But that is a different topic. It is just unfortunate that a ship will only really gain fame when it has at least some 3 or 5 drones.



Makes sense in my eyes. I indirectly wrote a small idea for the scouting frigates regarding "stealth fighters".
Nevertheless, having better cloak speed - without cloaked-warp - makes sense.

The rationale behind these ships using drones is that they let you pick a damage type appropriate for the region you're operating in.

I too thought these frigs looked very similar to each other and was going to suggest the Magnate to use lasers instead because they don't consume ammo, but then realized this would make the Magnate suck in Caldari and Minmatar space.

Where's the fix for em and kinetic drones by the way?

With the Helios specifically, it kinda depends on what you're going for right? The only thing that the Helios can't really do is fit cloak + prober + cov cyno. But if that isn't what you're after, it makes a fantastic frigate with a great slot layout...

-Liang

For PvP. combat, the slot layout is fine, because it has the drones. But as a support ship, or an exploration ship, it suffers. In PvP support you can't fit cloak/probes/cyno, and in exploration, you can't fit cloak/probes/salvager.

Eventually, yes. They are great in a BS or a BC. My problem is that this ship has more drones than a Caracal, the next step in the line of Caldari missile ships. That SP would be better placed in missiles for a young player.

There also is a question of scaling. Drones do not scale well with Caldari. If they make exploration a line of ships, then an exploration drone cruiser makes even less sense for the Caldari. I would like to see exploration become more than what it is. It should be a viable alternative to missions.

That I can explian: the Imicus has 4 drones.

All of the others have 3 drones and 3 highs.
All of them have 6 total offensive... thingies. o.O?

As for the Helios, it and T2 ships will be tweaked (at least slightly) down the line. T1 needs to be first though.

It is nice to see drones on these ships as you can assign them th a friend and allow one to do their work

And a drone bay of a good sizes means options of role for this support ship

Ah yes. That does make sense.

-Liang

One thing to think about is an exploration frig can only make use of 2 of the 6 site types: Mag and radar. The grav, ladar, combat and wormhole sites will not be accessible content to a frigate. (Unless the pilot likes exploding). Although the changes to the frigates are nice, they do not address this one issue. For a new explorer it is frustrating. Scanning down site after site that you cannot do anything with is not good game play. (Ive gone to using a T3 so I can do the combat sites, and skilling to use deep space probes so I can sort out most of the sites I do not want).

The changes needed to address this are not changes to the frigates though, but to exploration itself. It sure would be nice to have something like the old observer probe back. It gave you absolutely no information on site location, but it would tell you all the site types.

Or if the site type was shown at lower signal strength. And wormholes had a different type than combat sites (Say "Unstable").

Another thing to consider is low, null and W space operations. There you need 3 high slots: Cloak, probe launcher, and salvager. Not all these frigs have 3 highs. The result will again be: You scan a site and find its non-accessible content.
Edit: The salvager drone actually may resolve this issue, Load in one of those and you can live with 2 highs.