Player Features and Ideas Discussion

-1 to the OP.
Almost useless against anything but sentry drones as you would be damaging you own fleet mates, and possibly even yourself.

I am still seriously confused on the whole Ishtar "problem" anyway. What it all comes down to is everyone hates sentry drones and not the Ishtar specifically and yet sentry drones are extremely easy to kill with the proper fleet set up. Since they are perfectly still in space they are literally like shooting fish in a barrel and they vaporize when hit by any of the larger artillery and cruise missiles can wreck havoc on a flight of sentries almost as quickly. Many friends of mine are in low sec corps and they use exactly these tactics to counter sentries from Ishtar and Dominix alike and they are extremely successful with it. So I am given cause to wonder, is there really a problem with the Ishtar/Domi and sentry drones, or only a problem caused by those that will not adapt and overcome.

Been said before and will say it again. Remove the aggressive mode and the ability to assign drones to aid another ship and your drone problems become extinct without adversely affecting the use of drones, Ishtar and Domi in the PvE environment.

Have you ever been subject to AOE? It's pretty brutal if there's more than a handful of people being hit by it. More AOE is an invitation for an even lower threshold for TIDI, and it's not something that we need more of. Pipe bombs are pretty easy to avoid if you've prepared for the fight ahead but if you do land in one, or show up to a fight where a party is trying to firewall, or smartbomb during a large fleet, the TIDI is unbearable.

Also, ishtars aren't the end game of eve, they're just versatile for medium fleets to use and they're a forgiving doctrine; they're not the best for everything, they're just pretty good in a lot of places without being over specialized. Many null residents have drone skills already trained for ratting so they're easy for players to adapt to. For large gangs, tengus, napocs, prots, TFIs and eagles are superior for holding ground in a fight, and will win if ishtars decide to commit. Zealots can wreck them with dictor support and a good FC. Ishtars are very vulnerable to bombs, not because they're good for destroying drones, but you can force ishtars off the field with bombers. They've only got 3 flights without dropping depots and when they're off field an FC should massacre the sentries that are left behind. Almost any cruiser doctrine can force ishtars to abandon drones by simply warping right on top of them and free firing.

If anything, blame the devs for a cap use bonus on the zealot (I really hoped that they'd take the right approach and bake it in to the hull) and 3 mids or anemic powergrid on the muninn- which would be devastating if they could mount a decent tank.

HM, LM, and RLM, doctrines are perfectly viable, and rockets and HAMs are perfectly good for small gang and solo stuff. HMs could probably use a slight DPS buff, and torps would benefit greatly from a slight tweak so they can perform well without the aid of bonused painters. Other than that, all missiles should really have are analogues to tracking computers and enhancers(and yes, every ship type benefits from webs and TPs already.) Sure, they're not vulnerable to TDs, but they've got delayed damage and firewalling against them.