Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Just to be clear since there seems to be some confusion: effects from web drones and the like are indeed subject to stacking penalties and this is indeed a big part of what makes them worthless right now.

Well, if you can think of a better way to get them usable and get around the stacking which cripples them - I'm all ears.

Quite seriously - because I think fixing stacking just for these would be a horrible recode.

Also, my vagabond can use an ogre, I can't use a gecko. I fail to see the main issue to be honest but I suppose if it kept you happy to be able to use the 3 webbers or painters - a new drone could be introduced which is upscaled.


Edit: I don't pretend my solution is perfect - just seems the most likely way we will see change to these without fundamental overhauls of a) drones and b) stacking on these specific ones. That seems like something it'd be foolish to bank on happening any time soon. This I would expect to be a fairly simple property change, on the other hand I've been wrong before

because what about ships with 10m3 drone bay?

you see why this idea simply doesn't work; you either exclude ships from using the drones all together, or you introduce smaller more watered down variants and... oh we're right back in the situation we started with.

i'm not saying it's a bad idea; i like it. however, it simply won't work.

Why would anyone be using three Damp drones in the first place?

Well there is precendent of removing abilities from ships - for example the Gila losing sentries.

Keep in mind whilst it wont work for some ships - but if no-one is using them now - is anything of value lost?

Perhaps CCP would be good enough to look at and fire some stats our way?

Anyone else have any feedback/ways to improve viability? This board moves quite fast

So, here's a thought!

(Since I really like your idea)

But, instead of 5x'ing the drones, just double them so that you only need to previously have been able to fly 2 drones to field 1 EWar:

1) Adjust the bandwidth of EWar drones to force people to use ONE OR TWO where they previously used 2, 3, 4, or 5. (e.g., 10, 20, 50 mbit)

2) (OPTIONAL) Adjust the 'size' relationship between damage drones and EWar drones to make them about 2x bigger (10, 20, 50 m3)

3) SAME HP (so they are weak) but adjust the effectiveness like this:

SUGGESTION

2 New light drones should be buffed to the strength of 5 old lights drones without stacking.

2 New medium drones should be buffed to the strength of 5 old medium drones without stacking.

2 New heavy drones, well, they should be about as powerful as 5 heavy drones without stacking, unless this is too much.

The desired result is this: EWar drones get buffed. And, to compensate, fewer of them are fielded and thus are easier to kill.

EXAMPLES

NEW (OLD) [old total (5 drones) --> new total (2 drones)]

Webbing Drones (Max Velocity Bonus)
Light: -12.5% (-5%) [-13.4% --> -22%]
Medium: -22% (-10%) [-25.5% --> -41%]
Heavy: -45% (-20%) [-45.9% --> -67%] (max -80% with 6 drones)

TP Drones (Signature radius bonus)
Light: 10% (4%) [11.8 --> 19.5%]
Medium: 20% (8%) [24.57%--> 40.8%]
Heavy: 33% (20%) [69.3% --> 71.2%] (max 130% with 6 drones)
(A T1 TP is 25%, so TP drones were already powerful)

Vamp Drones (no stacking bonus here!) (All cycles are 6seconds)
Light: 13 GJ (5 GJ) [26 GJ]
Medium: 25GJ (10 GJ) [50 GJ]
Heavy: 65 (25 GJ) [130 GJ]

SD Drones (Targeting range bonus)
Light: -18% (-8%) [-20.8 --> -34%]
Medium: -25% (-12%) [-30% --> -47% ]
Heavy: -35% (-25%) [-54.4% --> -54.7%] (max -68% with 6 drones) (again, gotta be careful with this one)


(Someone needs to figure out how much to increase the strength to keep things the same with ECM drones.)


EDIT: Fixing the math.