Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I don't see why.

I will grant you that with the way drone assist has evolved into use, the full 500% bonus the snake deserves would be a poor idea. a 400% bonus would be appropriate, or even the 275% they have now on sentries, and a 500% bonus on Heavies.

Working the HP bonus up separately from the DPS bonus is an option as well, as is done on the Gallente Frigates.

Well, i was trying to be reasonable, not match the vindi 2k+ paper 15km dps at 50+km :)

Agreed. It's going to be better with missiles, but not necessarily great at either drones or missiles (without at least compromising one of the weapons).

Except you eliminate a significant amount of EHP by utilizing your rig slots for drone durability and rigors.

Whos talking gardes, you propose ~1400dps from heavies + ~700 dps from missiles with the possibility to fit it on top of a 5 slot shield tank on a shield resist bonused ship, before any pvp consideration even comes in.

After playing around with the Gecko for a few days I've come to the conclusion that I'm no longer as excited about them as I once was. Here are the things I really like about the Gecko:

• It looks totally bad a**, and watching it fly and perform acrobatics is quite entertaining
• Matches the color scheme of the new Rattlesnake

These are the things I'm not ecstatic about:

• Cost; yes, it's free initially - but so is the first hit of crack *******... (seriously, c·o·c·a·i·n·e is on the ban list?)
• Damage application until you get into hull is abysmal
• It attracts NPC aggro like no other drone, and this means all the aggro in the new Rattlesnake
• While it's faster and more resilient, if you bury one 50km+ deep it's still hooped

Damage application is fine - it's chewing through the disadvantaged shield and armor layers that's time consuming. Sentries can (and do) lock much, much quicker and apply damage several magnitudes better. So while it appears to have a fairly good dps, it's very much a paper tiger. The only application I really see these excelling at is PvP and structures - and maybe that's their intended purpose.

What I really despise is only being able to field one of these - because that's a huge loss of dps when you have to recall it. Every other drone-based cruiser (with the exception of the Gila) has the ability to field two of these, lessening any dps loss. Speaking of the Gila, man are they getting hosed on this - they can't even field one! The Stratios gets 2 and even the Vigilant and Cynabal get 1!

This thing feels so gimicky...

It's a gift. Don't look a gift drone in the bay.

With Heavies you have the other drawbacks of drones, notably travel time though this is being partly addressed in the drone update, and the fact that they can be destroyed or individually disrupted with ECM a fair bit easier than the mother ship. They don't apply nearly as well to smaller targets, and with the competition in fitting they won't be getting much better at it. Although you *can* send them out 60km, it's probably not a good idea, especially if tackle is available to the enemy---at the current bonus level it will be trivial to pop one, and even at 500% it's not going to take long, though against NPC's they will be much more survivable.

Of course the Gecko seems gimmicky... it's a gimmick, like all the other anniversary presents. Mine are all stored in the Voidstar Museum of EVE history in Duripant with the rest of the holiday and anniversary stuff I have been granted. When BPC's start dropping, we can discuss the Gecko as the savior of Drone Kind.

The Megathron has 8 lows and doesn't need fitting mods to fit a rull rack of rails, unlike all laser/artillery BS which need at least one. The Apocalypse needs THREE unless you use faction hardeners. That means it gets a minimum of +2 low slots over all of its armor tanking competitors, which of course more than makes up for having 1 less gun. A rail mega just completely outperforms all the beam laser and artillery BSes, and if for some reason you want to brawl close up, blasters are of course > *.

A rail Mega has superior DPS, range, tracking, speed, signature radius, scan resolution, and cap stability than even a navy armageddon with an identical fit, just swapping rails for tachyons and one heat sink for an RCU to actually fit the guns. The navy armageddon only wins on EHP, but that's obviously because it has 6000 more armor and 3000 more shield/structure as a faction BS.

Tempest needs a grid mod to fit artillery and is left with 8 low/rig slots to fit both tank and damage mods, the Megathron has 11.

It massively outperforms the Rokh at all of these stats at all ranges under 150km, and past that doesn't matter because they can probe a warpin on you in seconds. A mega with 2 MFS does more DPS at any range under 150km than a Rokh with three, all you have to do is go down one ammo type to get the same range. And since the Rokh needs an injector it's reduced to an 8-slot tank (counting rigs) while the Mega can run a 9-slot tank to compensate for the resist bonus, and then still have a sensor booster and tracking computer on top of that. Oh yeah, and it has half the signature radius of the Rokh.

The Maelstrom is the closest competition because it has high alpha, but its tank, dps, and tracking are vastly inferior and it has a gigantic signature which gets eaten up by bombers.