Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The whole "Light Drones vs Interceptors" debate is utterly pointless for the simple fact that Light Drones can't catch Interceptors to apply any damage to begin with, regardless of whether or not they're bonused.

Now, when 10 Inties jump on some idiot in an anom, he dies. After the patch, when 10 inties jump on some idiot in an anom, he dies. No change.

Is the missile bonus intended to be universal? That really seems odd. That's a far greater range of application than I would have expected.

What they have done is changed a Pirate Drone Battleship into a Pirate Missile battleship.

Fit for missiles, throw a few flights of ecm, logi or even scouts or mediums into the drone bay - the Raven and many other battleships survive well with unbonused drones.
The Missile bonus makes it the ideal mid to mid long range missile slinger that can also fit a pretty reasonable tank.

3 BCU + 2 Nano + DCU - You have Dps, Agility and Resists (or 4 BCU + 1 Nano)
TP, Prop mod and Shields - Target assist, Speed and Tank
Cruise Missiles - Dps out to around 150k

Not what I wanted for my Rattlesnake but as has been said many many times - Adapt -
- Drones Primary weapon to Missiles primary weapon is a big adaptation but it is seen by devs to be the way to go, who are we to question ...

- How about Mediums - Post rebalance the only way medium drones will "shred" Frigates (or anything else for that matter) would be if it is Webbed and Scrammed. Drone Activation Proximity ensures survival of all but the slowest targets.
Drones do not engage while in mwd mode and the fastest of the medium drones has an orbit speed of 600m/s, which means, for your drones to be applying consistent damage (maintain orbit and shred), the target needs to be going less than 100 m/s.

Choices and compromises - Guristas Pirate Drone boats are now more suited as Missile boats - Adapt, fit accordingly and move on.

Quote of the day "There are none so blind as those who will not see"

Alvatore, Somehow i post yet another long post explaining the whole situation and you totally ignore what I say to keep to your previous preconception of what you think I mean.

Are you sure we are speaking the same language?

I specifically address these points, and bring them to attention, and somehow it is me who does not consider them?

Anyway, that aside,

For the hard of understanding, EPICURUS does not want an extra buff, I put that in the beginning in case reading is hard m'kay?

Please read on now.

Putting these ships out as they are, will be like opening a bridge without it's structural supports, it will not end well.

Unless the issues discussed are dealt with,
The superdrone concept will now not have the chance to be cleanly evaluated.

If what you want is a high DPS missile boat-you are happy with a missile boat.

Fine all is good, we will all adapt to your play style as to disagree with you is somehow "not EVE" *sarcasm*

We disagree with your concept that chopping 2 legs off a table and moving them all to one side makes it somehow balanced, because it doesn't have too many legs....

However if we ignore the issues that are staring us in the face to give you, your "super-buff missile boat with drones too! ™" , the rage against superdrones will be horrific to witness, and the superdrones will be entirely the wrong target and wrongly despised.

Instead the indisputable fact will be that the pillars of drone support will have been eliminated to give you your shiny missile buff.
Making the overall drone weapon system unbalanced.

That is not balance. That is robbing Peter to Pay Paul. Edit:- more details here Opinion of this balancing philosophy

The superdrone Idea is an excellent one, it will particuarly change the way we use drone cruisers, free from the shackles of nurse-maiding sentries, free to roam the battlefield.. CCP Rise has hit the ball out of the park with this one, it is an excellent idea. And valid on all classes of ships as well.

But if it is not implemented as PART of the drone weapon system, retaining the pillars of supporting smaller drones, and control range that matches the range of the drones it fields, then it will appear to fail. It will fail because it was not implemented well, to satisfy those who wanted extra DPS at all costs. Believing that somehow hurting the drone systems, will balance out the extra power given to the missiles.

It will be an opportunity lost forever, CCP will NEVER get a second chance to make a good first impression, they will either drop it, or be forever playing catch-up.

That may or may not be what you want? Or possibly you just do not care.

So in a nutshell, retain bonuses to drones smaller than the primary weapon system (Keeping the same number of effective light drones) , retain the drone control range currently utilised by players with the fitting of 2 DLA. Give a reasonable buff to missile damage or application, not an extra launcher.

CCp rise Getting the maximum DPS is secondary to this, please do not destroy your own excellent efforts, by ignoring the breadth of the drone weapon system to satisfy those who would demand max damage and to hell with other playstyles.

Appologies, I haven't read the last bunch of pages, just putting this here, as in the cruiser thread I've been a bit ....well... hostile towards the changes...

So what I can see the Rattler do after this differently:
Should my sentries catch fire, I don't need to recall them that fast, and cruise missile dps will be better, so more power to BS/BC rat slaughter - good.
Cruisers will die at the same pace, frig rats are left to the LMJD.

Or I can put a twist on things against angels, go with 5RH or cruise launcher, forsake the leapfrog tactic and superb range, get in the thick of it, and deal quite a bit of damage...
...at the cost of having some trouble handling the really small ones.
Interesting.

I've never had issues fitting a snake before (and I had a twin XLASB one once for the sake of laughs), don't know how a 5th launcher changes that.
Bay is 3.5 times the bandwidth, that is generous.


...
Now if only Rise could help me in the Cruiser thread finding the mirriad - correction, the word he used is plenty - of PvE uses for the Gila he claimed it will have...

As a long time user of the Rattlesnake I have two concerns below. Overall I do like the direction the pirate BS are going. I want to be sure the Rattlesnake isn't being pigeonholed too drastically into specific roles. I love the current versatility with missiles and drones, which was what prompted me to train all the way into the Guristas ship line.

• The 275% drone damage and hitpoint bonus only applies to heavy and sentry. I can understand the reasoning for not stepping on the toes of the Dominix, but this does reduce the versatility.


• Increasing the missile slot layout to 5, combined with the missile damage bonus does give a solid damage increase. However, The loss of a high slot for two drone control units is a nerf for sniping. Others have suggested adding an additional high slot. This could be a possible solution, but may make the ship overpowered. Adding a drone control range bonus could be another solution.

Disclaimer: I edited out a few lines and some childish behavior from the following quotes. It's enough a wall of text as it is without perpetuating the nonsense too.



Considering that I have explained what you want is are bad and you keep insisting that it is deathly necessary or somehow the Rattlesnake will "fail"? I'm really not sure we're speaking the same language. To be honest, I'm not even sure you aren't some kind of incredibly dedicated troll. You just keep repeating yourself endlessly, attempting to drown out all dissent and I keep refuting your demands the exact same way again and again. Hopefully an ISD will ban both of us from posting in this thread forever.



Did you say somewhere that you want the missile bonus, the shield bonus or the role bonus removed in exchange for a drone control range bonus and/or in exchange for a bonus to Light Drones? Perhaps you can point me to one of your posts in the last 44 pages that says "remove the missile bonus and give it a bonus to drone control range" or "remove the super-drone bonus and give it a bonus to light drones" or, you know, something along those lines.

Asking for a drone control range bonus to be baked into the hull on top of the bonuses it already has is asking for an extra buff. Asking for a bonus to light drones on top of the bonuses it already has is asking for an extra buff.

The benefits you get from a DLA are not a ship buff. Don't get confused and think that the ship has a certain inherent property just because you absolutely always fit it a certain way. That's a module, not the ship.

Also, the "super-drone" mechanic can be "cleanly evaluated" just fine. Get into attack range and let them do their thing.




So then, what you're saying is... people are going to hate the super-drones? People are going to hate the super-drones because light drones aren't bonused? How does that even work?

Attempting to avoid the "too many quotes" error, I removed the "pillars of drone support" thing. I just want to address it with one question: If light drones so badly need a bonus in order to protect the ship from frigates, how do unbonused lights do such a good job protecting my TFI?



Why are you even bringing up the Gila in the Battleship thread? There's a cruiser thread for that. Go over there. In this one, stick to the Rattlesnake.


Somehow I'm not over the quote limit yet so I'll just quote this last one as a great big block.



You don't need bonuses on smaller drones. Unbonused lights do just fine as long as you're paying attention to them and have done for a very, very long time now (to be clear, this is against NPCs in frigates. Against players in frigates, you're pretty much done for - and pretty much stupid for picking a solo fight with/getting caught alone by frigates).

I don't know what exactly is going on in your head, but there's no "first impression" here. The Rattlesnake has been around for a long time. If it needs to be looked at again in the future, they'll look at it and change the stats as necessary. You can leave the histrionics out of this.

So in a nutshell, CCP has decided that the current Guristas line is too close in form and function to the existing T1/T2 Gallente line and came up with an innovative (and I dare say very risky) way of differentiating the two. They've created a very unique line of ships with very interesting fitting choices built in. They've even gone so far as to make sure the ships can be flown more-or-less the same way they already are, so long as their pilots are prepared to compromise.

Unfortunately, this seems completely unreasonable to some.

I'm amused. I am, for once, actually amused by something you've written. That post was so full of theatrics, hyperbole and baseless assumptions that I simply can't not be amused.

Power creep. It's bad. Very bad. It's also what you're asking for.

I'm just not understanding what is wrong with 81km drone control range (my skills + T2 DLA) and great DPS. What efficient play style is really bring handicapped by that? I'm talking about both PVP and PVE here. Particularly for PVE, I just don't see the problem. Rats are rarely further than that and if they are, they'll come closer.