Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I think you are confusing at least three different things here.

Tiers, Racial Skills, and Specialization Skills.

Swap racial drone specialisation skills for role spec skills? Have a +1

Perhaps, I was just using the same term they used when they changed the turret skills. Perhaps I should have said drone skill rebalance




because there is nothing "racial" about the drones, they have no racial pre-requisites, they all pretty much behave the same.
Its not like gallente hulls have gallente drone bonuses. No ship of race X has any particular affinity for using drones assigned to race X.

The way it is now, might be analagous to having a "gallente ships" skill as opposed to a "frigates" skill using your logic, but its not

Drones are a weapon system, not a ship type.

The behavior of one light drone to another is not sufficiently different to warrant a separate skill like lasers vs projectiles.
It would be like getting rid of light/Heavy/cruise missile specialization, and adding Explosive missile spec, EM missile spec... etc
Or gett rid of the small/medium/large artillery specs, and add EMP artillery specalization, Fusion Artillery spec .... and so on.
However, there are much greater differences between the drone sizes, rather than the racial drone "flavor"

Drones are a weapon system, and the different drones are analogous to different ammo types.

They now want to emphasize speacalization, rather than grinding through tiers (although I'll admit that these racial things don't really form a tier structure)

If I fly an Ishkur, I want to specalize in light drones, I don't want to train to better my medium and heavy drones... but training any racial drone spec does just that, while leaving 3/4ths of my light drones unimproved (ok, maybe only 2/3 as amarr dones are crap and why would anyone use them - and even more lenient 1/2, as most go for minmatar or gallent drones, and skip over the caldari drones in the middle of the speed vs damage range)

I wondered about that as well.
I mean we can swap readily but apparently CCP wants you to ship specialize with the req changes to bc/destroyers

Drone skills are fine.

Amarr drones need a damage buff.

Heavy drones need some work now that sentries are so good.

And better hull bonuses.

I think the Eos has a bonus to heavy drone MWD speed, and one of the new destroyers (do those count as part of the rebalance process?) has such a bonus.

The MJD has been an indirect buff to sentries, as has the domi hull bonus (since the domi is the most common user of them, I think)




Amarr drones do need a damage buff.

Heavies do need some work - I'd say heavies should be like blasters, and sentries like rails, so I have no problem with garde's having the range they do, but maybe their tracking needs a nerf - I'd double the heavy's optimal and falloff, and give them a speed boost + wider orbit, but thats a different thread.


The skills are less "fine" than T2 gun skills were, and those got changed.
4 skills for 1 weapon system makes no sense.
The different drone flavors are like the different missile or projectile flavors - they shouldn't have their own skill based upon damage type, ammo properties (like DU vs fusion having better damage application depending on target range and speed)
They should be divided based on size, like any other weapon system.

Light drones = small weapon system
Medium drones = medium weapon system
Heavy drones = Large close range weapon system
Sentry drones = Large long range weapon system

* gives me an idea for a drone overhaul... split lights into close range and long range variants... have spec skills for each... the would not quite be sentries... but perhaps for lights and mediums, the amarr and caldari are one type, gallente and minmatar are another..... one type has short range, high tracking, high speed, the other variant has long range (like 125mm railgun range for lights, 200mm rail for mediums), but a relatively low MWD speed.
the close range ones need high MWD speeds to keep within range of a MWDing target to apply DPS, the long range ones wouldn't need to get very close, thus wouldn't need to travel far, and would have large orbits.

had a random thought about this

if your going to compare Scout/heavy drones to other weapon systems
they are much closer to missiles than turrets

Sentry Drones, Lasers, Hybrids & Projectiles all have a fixed range and instant damage application within that range

Scout & Heavy Drones are launched, travel to the target, where thier dps is applied in a small localised area
Drone Control Range is directly analogous to velocity * flight time