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also activation proximity needs looking at .. if an warrior has too get to within 1km before he can shoot .. but actually has 4km range then how does that make sense???

also the ranges on the scouts - heavies should reflect their races weapon types

warrior ...........750 optimal 3.5km falloff
hobgoblin...........1250 optimal 1.6km falloff
Hornet...............1650 optimal 2.5km falloff
Acolyte..................2750 optimal 1km falloff

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.




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 11.46% 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)




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.

and the heavy drones will still be trash, because they take up too much bay and are destroyed too easily and have no tracking and go too slow. wtb 15% per level bonus for 50 bandwidth.

So question on this.

Combat Drone Operation is currently a 2x Int/Mem skill. When this splits to Light Drone Operation and Medium Drone Operation, will these both become 1x Int/Mem skills with half the total skillpoint requirements, or will they remain at 2x skills?

If the first, there's no real different in SP. If the second, we run into the same situation we did with Retribution (I believe) where Destroyers V and Battlecruisers V became racial skills, and training them before the patch allowed players to get "free SP".

Can we please confirm this, as it has a significant impact on training plans.

Normal Drones:

I don't think it is a good idea to split combat drone operation into 2 new skills, since depending on the ship and race you can use light or medium drones on the hulls and it would only add more training time and confusion to new players for no good reason.

The in the middle drones(caldari/amarr) should receive something to compensate to make them more useful(since the question is always max dps or max speed/tracking vs frigs). A lot more shield/armor HP and better tracking than even minmatar drones have would make them more attractive in situations where you want to clear firgs fast and expect your drones to get shoot, like in a solo/small gang pvp brawling fight or where people try to clear the field with smart bombs. Another option would be reducing her volume to 4, 7,5 and 20 m³ allowing you more dps in hulls with 20 or 45m³ drone band wide and providing more options for spare drones, what could be a good argument in her favour in situations where you expect to lose some. The faction drones should have a bit more speed than the T2 ones(5-10%) to make them more attractive overall even if you already can use T2 drones(given that you still lose 8-10% damage).

Integrated drones should have a lot more speed and HP over the T2 equivalent(if the only reason to use them is that you lack the skills for T2, they are pointless) with the current damage. Augmented ones should deal at least 10% more damage than the T2 ones with spec on 5, brining them in line with faction ammo and other stuff, providing a real advantage. Also drop rates of the BPCs should be improved a lot to make them more a expensive extra option instead of a rarity they are today.

Heavy Drones need work, while the changes to speed are a good start, they need more HP(at the very least as much as sentrys got, probably more), better tracking and a bit more dps to be a reasonable alternative over Sentry drones in PVP(at least small scale) and PVE again. Currently they are to easy to remove from the field by smart bombs or weapon fire(even if it is just NPCs) compared to sentry's that are nearly all the time in scoop and deploy range.They should provide 15-20% more dps than sentry's because of her rather limited uses(not good enough vs smaller ships, slow, easy targets, clear able by smart bombs very easy) and the massive opportunity cost that you have to chose between heavy drones or sentry's on all non drone focused hulls. Edit, oh you already tackled this one.

Sentry Drones:

The change to the range of faction sentry drones is very good, since this was more often then not the real deal breaker compared to T2, instead of the DPS.

Sentry drones still lacking Integrated and Augmented variants, more range on Integrated ones and a bit more dps of Augmented ones would be cool features.

You might, but the speed difference between minmatar and amarr is relatively small now.

4620 vs 5040. Also considering Amarr have a better multiplier 1.68 vs 1.56.

I imagine a lot of people will still go Minmatar for the , **** it I wanna shoot anything mindset, but I think a lot of people will now go with a more hybrid approach (no pun intended) of using Caldari or Amarr drones for more damage and better speed compared to Gallente drones.

Like these changes

Don't think the Nerf to fighter bomber base DPS is really necessary though.

I'd love to see drone control units become a passive mod as well, depending on whether or not that can actually be coded.

maybe they're going to announce a massive nerf to links and snakes tomorrow

I too would rather medium drones on cruisers, by extension I would like the Algos to be a light drone ship.

Drones were out running their own tracking before this change, now they're just going to get worse.

Just remove tracking from non-sentry drones, and use the same missile formula used for Fighter Bombers. Honestly, the only drones that should have tracking are Sentries. Lights, Mediums, Heavies, and Fighters should all be moved to the same missile formula that the Fighter Bombers were moved to.