Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Well if it stays the same, after all the comparisons with the navy scorpion I had a good look at that. Oh! Really!
Sort of has no longer any reason to exist it seems. just a less well done, CN scorpion with awkward sentries now.
But we can hope I Guess

We are in complete agreement.

CCP rise We need decent super drones, Please make it happen Even if you have to drop sentries to do it.

While I think the Gila Medium super drones scale better, some use at all ends of the spectrum, The Gecko idea could work equally well.

The sentry bonus works.... Not at all,

Supersentries give absolutely no benefit or interest at all. I have nothing against keeping them If someone needs a security blanket and to stop any complaints, but a better alternative is ANY form of mobile super drone. First choice 5 Gila Superdrones, Second choice A pair of Gheckos. I have some concerns how they will deal with the small end of things but go for it, Worth trying and bonus speed or tracking of them if it shows up an issue.

What are the stats on the Gecko? I'm not in front of a client but the only place I can find them doesn't seem to instil confidence in them being much of anything special.

Edit: Nevermind, found the thread on it. Data I was looking at is either old or wrong.

Edit 2: Apparently I've missed a great deal of semi confirmed speculation recently. I have failed in keeping up with the greater goings on around here.

I'm not really convinced that a lackluster missile ship at range makes a good PvE boat. At long ranges the heavy bonus is very situational and risky for your drones even with the speed buffs and superdrone bonuses. At that point, unless I'm in something that has the ability to close range like a Mach or TFI, a good portion of my targets will be primarily engaged with missiles. And that begs the question, why not use any other missile boat, marauder or not?

Yes, this is on the RS, It's basically why I'm against removing the sentry bonus. As it it props up what the missile side is lacking with supplemental DPS. Potentially annoying to micromanage supplemental DPS, but bonused supplemental DPS, defining it from the Fleet Phoon, and partially making up for the 0.5 difference in effective launchers from raven-kind ships and their missile centric bonuses (alongside the advantages of having your fit revolve around a single weapon's system without neglecting bonuses).

I can see them not being particularly exciting, but at the same time, without them it's just a 3rd tier missile boat at range. But I suppose it would in a way be fitting as the Gila has similarly been pigeonholed into one kind of drone and the use cases that come along with it.

The "Amarr drones suck" doesn't quite hold to sentries (assuming the rats have EM as primary resist hole, if not I swap to whatever primary/secondary is).

My Garde IIs have an optimal of 39.somewhat with 2 fed omnis , that's fair enough, and over half a minute for Ogre IIs to cross without nav mods, unless I'm mistaken..
Inside 50km (and outside 6-7 km) I use my Gardes against orbiting Battleships (apart from Angels), and they pop smaller rats admirably if you have a starting range advantage (LMJD), before most of them have time to start orbiting..

...
But I do agree, sentries in general are a bit meh, if I'm going to sit still anyways, might as well do it in an EWAR-immune Marauder.
They also LMJD around faster.

I think the main reason people use sentries is because heavy attack drones are complete and utter shít. They should have a significant range to balance out their slowness. I think heavy attack drones should have something like a 10-20km range, so while they may take a bit of time to get to a group of targets, they won't have that lag between targets once they get there because once they finish off one target, they will already be in range of the next one. But with their tiny range I feel like I get more net DPS against battleships with medium drones just because they spend so much more time shooting.

I think of heavy attack drones had 10-20km range, gardes had about a 50% range boost and or a 50% tracking boost, and the Amarr/Minmatar drone discrepancy were fixed, then large drones would all of a sudden be great, and smaller drones would suddenly become well balanced. Then we can stop allowing cruisers to field 5 large drones and leave that job to the battleship drone boats. They wont need 5 after the fix I suggested, 4 will be plenty for an Ishtar or Myrmidon and the Vexor can do with 3 like it used to have.

That would work too, but I like the idea of giving them a bit of range.

Putting Gardes on a dominix to improve their range and tracking isn't a fix to their bad range and tracking. I can also put curators on a dominix to get more range and tracking on them as well.