Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I've heard some folks suggest that tracking disruptors should be given scripts so that they're consistent across weapon types and I think there's good reason to do just that but I find myself wondering if it would make the game too homogenized?

There's an important distinction to be made between homogenization and consistency. Homogenization is bad because it makes everything the same with no variety, but consistency on the other hand is good because it keeps the game balanced, logical and fair. E.g. CCP could make caldari ships immune to ECM and that'd make things less homogenous but that doesn't mean it's a good idea because it wouldn't be consistent because other ships don't have similar ewar immunity based on race.

As for weapon EWAR... the available EWAR for missiles and turrets are not consistent because defender missiles are so painfully far behind the curve of tracking disruptors. If tracking disruptors could affect missiles would make the game more consistent, but possibly too homogenized.

Another issue is that even if they affected missiles, TDs wouldn't necessarily affect drones. These days when I roam in a TD-ship I find myself running from drone boats more often than missile boats. The existing option would be to put a smartbomb on your ship but in a frigate that won't help me against a tristan's drones, so a frigate's best option to deal with drones is just outrun them. Only larger ships have a reasonable hope of countering drones with smartbombs. This isn't consistent because a frigate can't deal with another frigate's drones in the same way that a battleship can deal with another battleship's drones. If CCP added ways to disrupt missiles that aren't as unusable as defender missiles, I'd want to see better drone disruption too.

I think the simplest way to fix the problem of inconsistency would be to create TD scripts for each weapon system but a better, less homogenizing option would be to create alternative weapon disruption systems that work.

1) Missiles - I'd get rid of defender missiles entirely and replace with it a Chaff system that reduces the effective explosion radius and/or explosion veloctiy speed of all incoming missiles. So basically, the opposite of a target painter. Missiles would still always hit, but each hit would do less damage. Would ideally have scripts so ships can decide if they want to improve their speed tanking or signature tanking. This is very different from tracking disruptors because they can't make the weapons miss entirely, but they will almost always reduce the damage at least slightly.

2) Drones - Create a "lock-breaker smartbomb" for anti-drone ewar. Instead of doing damage to drones, it temporarily disables drones. The length of time they're disabled and/or chance of being disabled is determined by comparing the smartbomb strength to the drone's sensor strength so frigate smartbombs could actually help against frigate drone boats. This would make anti-drone defense more consistent across ship sizes.

Options like these would give players consistent and non-homogenous methods of dealing with enemy weapon systems.

1. would make missile and below cruiser below op. I am looking at my tengu. Could even be cerb. I am seeing barring being webbed down current missile damage take is already small. Chaff would drop it to why bother shooting it territory fast. BS has issues as well. That torps only work under very ideal setups (slow and lots of paint) is known. Chaffing the torps would jsut add more issues to the mix.


2. an aoe solution not a very universal solution. I'd see people having non aggressed alts/buddies in the area to wait for the smarty to hit and concord/gate guns does the ganking for you.


That and you went on that frigates don't have counters. They do. Web the drones not the drone boat. While not the easiest of targets SOP is to tackle the boat, high speed orbit it and pop the drones it pops out with web assist till they don't pop out anymore.

If drone frigates were invincible worm would be having 10's of threads calling for its nerf. Its the other way around. We have threads saying buff it as with all the changes to the other frigates its a shadow of it former self and not exactly a great frigate to run these days.

I don't disagree, it's why I think missile EWAR should be done in combination with creating mods to improve missile damage projection and application. That's on a different thread somewhere I'm sure.



You're totally right in the case of ships that don't have bonus hp to drones. The worm does not get the same drone HP bonus that the tristan and other drone boats get, thus its drones are actually quite easy to deal with. It also suffers from a lot of other issues like, speed & fitting.