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THIS.
Please make heavies and sentries actual battleshipweapons and not OP cruiser weapons. They already take no Fittingslots or CPU/PG nor ammo/cap. This already allows for so much utility or overtanking on droneboats.
And now you are going to add even more DPS and fittingoptions with lowslottracking and faction DDAs.
While there may be a nerf to T2 sentry dps there is still no other weaponsystem able to compete.



Also will the new light/mediumskills be the same rank as combat ops is now (so two times the SP)?

The 'fix' to these drones isn't going to change anything. Most damage? Stick with gallente. Fastest? Stick with matari. Anything in-between is pointless with your proposed change. Either give them all the same damage output (just like fighters enjoy) and adjust their speed versus their resilience (because withstanding damage is a thing drones need to do nowadays) or just give amarr 50% more armour and caldari 50% more shields. Heavies and even mediums deployed in missions get shredded pretty quickly. If I'm deploying amarr drones, it's because they should be tougher dammit. Simply having the option to choose damage types between races would prompt people to use different types for different situations.
Me? I'll be sticking with gallente as thermal is the most useful and they'll still be the putting out the most damage after summer. EM is still the worst type to deal overall, and Kinetic is just behind it.

Signature sizes on heavy drones seem a bit too large - perhaps shrink them a little? They're not the same size as a cruiser, as it happens.

How about offering some racial t2 resists for t2 drones? Just a little bit, even 20%/10% would be useful

Good to hear you're finally reducing supercarrier drone numbers while doubling damage, the hamsters are rejoicing even now. It's also nice to have clarification on fighters and bombers. Sure, they're drones, but they're people too . Hopefully carrier pilots might start using them again, especially with drone damage amps. Nice one.

I think I too would like to see drone ships have bonuses limited to their size, instead of a blanket bonus to all drones. Domi's with bonused light drones is weird - that's a FRIGATE weapon. Domi bonus should be to heavies and sentries and nothing else. Same with Vexors and the like - bonuses to mediums.

Any chance you can do the fighter bay/drone bay split on carriers and supers? Go on, you can squeeze it in

Oh, before I forget - consider the +100% damage/reduce drones by 5 thing for carriers too to have the maximum impact on reducing drone lag on the server.

Also add ammo Bars to the drones, so the drones have to fly back to your ship to fill up.

Broadly like the changes. Haven't read the comments so far. I use drone ships for a variety of activities, from ganking to PVE to solo PVP. I have little fleet experience in drone ships.

The skill changes are a huge improvement, with the benefits of training Drones/Drone Interfacing being more front-loaded.


Questions:

1) My understanding is that the Augmented and Integrated drones are not going to perform better (for a high skilled pilot) than tech 2 drones. Why is this? These are low end and medium end deadspace drops, and in most situations low to medium end deadspace modules outclass mass produceable tech 2 modules.

2) Has consideration been given to making one of the racial sentries a role as the long-range answer to frigates? (Lowest damage by far, good tracking, long range)

3) Currently a decent Interceptor pilot is a hard counter for a drone ship (I'm not claiming this is a bad thing). What are your feelings on this?

4) Will there be low-end named (meta level 1 to 4) Drone Damage Amplifiers and other drone paraphenalia? These would certainly be of use, probably as low skilled or low CPU alternatives to DDA2s, but also possibly as invention consumables.

5) How do you feel about the state of the various drone-related rigs?

It's useful on the live server for ganking Mackinaws (using a Vexor). Amarr drones do the best damage against most tanked exhumers, due to the natural resists of the Mackinaw and the typical tanking modules and rigs fitted to exhumers that expect to be visited by Catalyst pilots.

That said, I'm not masochistic enough to have trained it beyond level 4.

As someone who has the t2 medium amarr drone bpo

Someone's never tried using SDAs with DDAs!~

So, most folks aren't aware of this, but there is a cross-penalty between SDAs and DDAs: since DDAs objectively offer more of a bonus, a decent droneboat aiming for maximum DPS will throw at least 2-4 of those on.

After 4 DDA2's are on the ship, each SDA rig will be subsequently 1-2% effective. That is, it will change your overall drone DPS by...maybe a couple points at best. Single digit differences. (This is why you always see sentry guys, who are worth their weight in salt for DPS, never wasting rig slots on SDAs.)

While SDA rigs work perfectly well when tested on a naked ship with only the rigs [and no DDAs fitted in the low slots], the minute you stack 4 DDAs on, those SDA benefits drop to ~0.

TL;DR - SDA rigs are complete garbage. Pretend that they don't exist, because they may as well not exist to begin with.




That's like a DPS loanshark coming up to a sentry pilot, beating the stuffing out of them with a nerfbat, and then saying, "Well, look at all these tactical advantages you've had - guess what? You ALREADY paid for them before (what with having less DPS than heavies), but now you're going to have to pay for them - AGAIN - BY LOSING EVEN MORE DPS!"

and mining drones too

i hope that doesn't become a thing, would be such a pain to fight against without big numbers

Yet, the logs still show nothing...