These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

EVE Information Portal

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Dev Blog: Giving Drones an Assist

First post First post
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Chainsaw Plankton
FaDoyToy
#181 - 2014-04-01 20:11:39 UTC
CCP Logibro wrote:
Chainsaw Plankton wrote:
CCP Logibro wrote:
As someone that actually has Amarr Drone Specialization V, I'm happy that I can finally get some use out of that skill!



woah, it must be like april first or something


No joke I seriously have that skill (and Caldari Drone Spec V)



those are on my to do list somewhere in the distant distant future, everything at lv5 someday soon™

@ChainsawPlankto on twitter
The Cue
Violence is the Answer
#182 - 2014-04-01 20:12:09 UTC
Omnathious Deninard wrote:
Tippia wrote:
MeBiatch wrote:
Ccp why you hate medium drones?

Both medium and heavy have the same sig resolution. 125m

That's not so much hating mediums as giving silly preferential treatment to heavies. 125m is exactly what you'd expect from a medium-sized weapon. Heavies really should be bumped to the proper 400m.

To do that though they would have to make medium drones viable.


Fixed that for you.
Bryperium
xXPlease Pandemic Citizens Reloaded Alliance.Xx
#183 - 2014-04-01 20:14:34 UTC
Will the carrier/SC pilot's skills/modules effect delegated fighters?

-
Joker Dronemaster
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#184 - 2014-04-01 20:15:33 UTC
If this is an April fools joke I must warn you Fozzie.

I will be seeing you again this year at Vegas. :)

On a more serious note will there be any changes to make it so drones will match speed with their current target? As it stands a MWD battleship can outrun Valkyries.

The mechanics behind this are as follows

1. Tell Drones to engage fleeing BS

2. Drones activates MWD and burns into range.

3. Drones get into range and deactivate mwd

4. Battleship burns outside of drone optimal and takes 99.9996789% less damage.

5. Jump back to step 2. (and add a 30% chance to end cycle here)

This KILLS applied DPS against even large slow targets.

Can haz fix please?
Joker Dronemaster
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#185 - 2014-04-01 20:17:14 UTC
CCP Logibro wrote:
Chainsaw Plankton wrote:
CCP Logibro wrote:
As someone that actually has Amarr Drone Specialization V, I'm happy that I can finally get some use out of that skill!



woah, it must be like april first or something


No joke I seriously have that skill (and Caldari Drone Spec V)


So I'm not the only one in the game!
Ayeshah Volfield
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#186 - 2014-04-01 20:18:01 UTC
Why not simply get rid of sentry drones as they are now then split racial drones into 2 short ranged variants (higher dps or speed) and 2 longer range variants (longer range at the cost of dps and speed) for each drone size ?

EVE is what happens when the rule of law does not apply and Darwinism is allowed to run freely.
TrouserDeagle
Beyond Divinity Inc
Shadow Cartel
#187 - 2014-04-01 20:18:05 UTC
Joker Dronemaster wrote:
If this is an April fools joke I must warn you Fozzie.

I will be seeing you again this year at Vegas. :)

On a more serious note will there be any changes to make it so drones will match speed with their current target? As it stands a MWD battleship can outrun Valkyries.

The mechanics behind this are as follows

1. Tell Drones to engage fleeing BS

2. Drones activates MWD and burns into range.

3. Drones get into range and deactivate mwd

4. Battleship burns outside of drone optimal and takes 99.9996789% less damage.

5. Jump back to step 2. (and add a 30% chance to end cycle here)

This KILLS applied DPS against even large slow targets.

Can haz fix please?



the lazy/easy fix is to just increase the gun range on combat drones
Querns
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#188 - 2014-04-01 20:19:28 UTC
Dinsdale Pirannha wrote:

You and your kind only look at new players as cattle to exploit.

Wrong.

From our founding, we have focused ourselves, laser-like, on the New Player Experience. We are its largest champions. (There's also a lot of us as well.) Your assumption is that NPE can only exist in highsec. This is wrong. We have spent the better part of a decade making nullsec accessible to our new players.

A personal example: I, myself, having only played eve for a little under four years, spent absolutely no time in highsec when I first started, podding myself to the recently-acquired VFK-IV station under 48 hours of my start date. Check my employment history if you don't believe me.

This post was crafted by the wormhole expert of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal, the foremost authority on Eve: Online economics and gameplay.
penifSMASH
ElitistOps
Deepwater Hooligans
#189 - 2014-04-01 20:21:54 UTC
Echoing others: please make Drone Control Units a passive module
Chirjo Durruti
Doomheim
#190 - 2014-04-01 20:22:29 UTC
Well, what can I say. As a Gallente heavily invested in drone skills, i'm very pleased with these changes.

HOWTO: No More Tears (solo) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdA4ciUrH-k If you can get me a better crew than THIS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPrtQ9AdoM0 convo me.
Beekeeper Bob
Beekeepers Anonymous
#191 - 2014-04-01 20:25:31 UTC
I too think that Drones needed balancing more than a COMPLETE OVERHAUL.

Stuff some glue in the cracks and call it an "Expansion".

I hope this is an April fool's joke, but sadly CCP's track record seems to say otherwise.....

Signature removed - CCP Eterne
Baracuda
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#192 - 2014-04-01 20:25:48 UTC
"This change allows Supercarriers to deal the same damage as they currently enjoy [...]"

"Fighter Bombers will need Drone Interfacing 5 and two Tech Two Drone Damage Amplifiers to slightly surpass their current damage rates [...]"

Do you see a conflict here?!

Keep nerfing supers. Thx.
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#193 - 2014-04-01 20:25:59 UTC
Oh, actual question: will the “could use it before, can use it after” rule for skill replacements apply to these changes? You mention that T2 sentries, for instance, will require the racial spec skills, which they currently don't. Will those be handed out in the cases where people haven't trained the spec skills but can currently use those T2 drones?
GeeShizzle MacCloud
#194 - 2014-04-01 20:26:02 UTC
so, if this isnt an april fools dev blog...

CCP Fozzie wrote:

We are also reducing the maximum number of drones available to Supercarriers from the current 20 to 10. To compensate, all Supercarriers will receive a 100% damage bonus to Fighter and Fighter Bomber damage, and the hitpoints and volume of Fighter Bombers will be doubled.


if you're doubling the EHP and damage of FB's surely that equates to a general jump in size to FB's. Much like the gap between battlecruisers and battleships, the doubling of DPS and EHP equates to a jump in hull size. and with that you have an increase in the 'SIG RADIUS'.

so with the doubling of EHP and Damage for FB's it makes logical sense to increase its base sig radius from 125m to 250m, in line with the changes.
Daedra Blue
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#195 - 2014-04-01 20:29:01 UTC
EvE mass/speed ratios normally dictate that the heavier the object the slower it moves naturally.

Hence why i find it strange that the tiny Ogre moves at half the speed of the huge cruiser sized Fighters....
Dinsdale Pirannha
Pirannha Corp
#196 - 2014-04-01 20:30:43 UTC
Methonash Qorranto wrote:
"CCP Fozzie" wrote:

We are swapping the position of the Bouncer and Curator sentries in the damage ranking, and adding tracking to the Bouncers to compensate


I LOVE YOU, CCP FOZZIE!

I've been silently screaming about this [in the back of my head] for SO many months now--and I didn't even have to write a(n) F&I post on the forums [and get subsequently pooped-on by drone-haters and bouncer-addicts] to finally see this slated for a patch.


"CCP Fozzie" wrote:

We will be keeping the 20% bonuses to hitpoints, tracking, optimal, and falloff that Tech Two enjoys over Tech One; but instead of the current 20% increase in damage over T1, we will be increasing the base damage multiplier of Tech One sentries and limiting the Tech Two advantage to the 2% per level gained from the racial Drone Specialization skills that will now be required to use T2 sentries.


Baby, why must you do this?

By effecting this change, there is *LESS* motivation to train from tech1 to tech2 sentries when aiming for DPS--sure, you'll now get that 10% bonus from drone specializations, but the T2 sentry bonuses just got halfway-shelled into oblivion.

Why must sentry fans look at their heavy-drone cousins and weep [internally] as they now lag behind in DPS, even more-so than they did before (as in, now)?

Current max-skilled Dominix with Ogre 2's: 845 DPS
Current max-skilled Dominix with Garde 2's: 800 DPS (currently -5.3% relative to Ogre 2's)

Under the new drone damage scheme for heavies and sentries, tech2 sentry pilots will now fall 16.67% under their heavy cousins' DPS values.

This is silly.

Please consider giving that tech2 damage bonus back--there's really no significant rationale to cull it.

And if you MUST cull it, consider lessening the blow: perhaps a 13.61% tech2 sentry damage bonus (down from 20%), rather than the currently slated plan of 0% bonus? That would guarantee the same percentage difference in DPS between current sentries and heavies.

(1.1361 / 1.2 = 0.94675 = 1 - 0.05325)


"CCP Fozzie" wrote:

removing falloff from the Curator sentries


Was wondering how much falloff would be removed from the laser sentries, and then I saw this in the dev blog's spreadsheet:

Garde2 optimal: 24 (unchanged)
Garde2 falloff: 18 (+50% -- wow!)

Curator2 optimal: 42 (unchanged)
Curator2 falloff: 12 (-50%)

So...the blaster sentry gets 50% more falloff than the laser sentry? (...really?)

The Garde line of sentry drones is well-understood to possess the highest DPS, and therefore exchange that DPS for the lowest optimal range and falloff. This change does not seem to jive with that. In parallel, we do not see blasters out-ranging lasers' optimal or falloff when it comes to guns, so why should the contrary be witnessed with sentry drones? The answer: it shouldn't.

Please revert this change.

The current falloff parameters for the Garde and Curator sentry drone lines (10/20 for Garde1/Curator1, 12/24 for Garde2/Curator2) are perfectly fine.


All other things considered:

I absolutely love this dev blog post! It's high time that drones get their love and attention, and I'm very happy to see that being done.


The wrecking of T2 sentry damage was another direct attack on PVE income, primarily high income, though I have used T2 Gardes in low sec many a time. So don't expect this guy to back out the damage nerf.

The buffs to heavies and mediums is a PvP thing, because thanks to his wrecking the NPC AI 2 years ago (remember how that was supposed to be the 1st of several steps), do nothing in the PvE environment. Lights are still instapopped, and still no one will sen out their heavies any distance at all.

In fact, good luck EVER finding a nerf he rolled back. Rise has rolled some back, but not this guy.
He revels in wrecking income for anyone who does not have systems to rent out.
The Cue
Violence is the Answer
#197 - 2014-04-01 20:32:28 UTC
GeeShizzle MacCloud wrote:
if you're doubling the EHP and damage of FB's surely that equates to a general jump in size to FB's. Much like the gap between battlecruisers and battleships, the doubling of DPS and EHP equates to a jump in hull size. and with that you have an increase in the 'SIG RADIUS'.

so with the doubling of EHP and Damage for FB's it makes logical sense to increase its base sig radius from 125m to 250m, in line with the changes.


Except this isn't a change of lore, like a battlecruiser to battleship, it's a change for lag. Similar to the change that introduced the Drone Interfacing skill. The point is to just combine two FBs into one, making for less lag. This is a least-difference change for lag's sake, not balance.
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#198 - 2014-04-01 20:37:03 UTC  |  Edited by: Tippia
Dinsdale Pirannha wrote:
The wrecking of T2 sentry damage was another direct attack on PVE income, primarily high income, though I have used T2 Gardes in low sec many a time. So don't expect this guy to back out the damage nerf.
Why would they? And what's so special about PvE that it should not receive balance adjustments every now and then?
Also, you realise that it's a continuation of an “attack” on PvP where sentries have been dominant for a very long while now, right?

(Btw, a 6.5% reduction is not a “wrecking” of the damage.)
Baracuda
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#199 - 2014-04-01 20:48:14 UTC  |  Edited by: Baracuda
"The result is that drones have earned a reputation as a weapon system that is not suitable for new players."

Oh, and why fukking older more skilled players again, by nerfing their Skillpoint-Advantage?
Dorian Wylde
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#200 - 2014-04-01 20:48:52 UTC
So many awesome things! Keep up the good work CCP.