Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Not sure what's so ridiculous about my comment. Sentries are too effective while un-bonused. Their damage in non-sentry hulls needs to be anemic, like 50 DPS. Non-sentry hulls meaning any hull that isn't specifically intended to have good sentries. Ishtars are enjoying sentry use by virtue of being Gallente and having the bandwidth, but I think I showed a good fit example of how the Eos is liable to be just as guilty of Null-wide use.

Ishtars and Eoses have heavy drone bonuses, so I assume they aren't intended to see so much action with sentries. I think damage nerfs to un-bonused sentries is the answer because touching bandwidth affects use of heavies.

The main difference between sentries and heavies is reaching through forcefields, and instant turret damage. It's not crazy to say sentries are the superior drone over heavies.

Sentries are too good in any ship with sufficient bandwidth, the smallest being Ishtars. It's sloppy role assignment. If Then Else failure.

If bonused,
Then 700 DPS
Else 50 DPS

...is what the algorithm should be, instead of

If 125 drone bandwidth
Then 700 DPS

Been awhile so I will inject this again.

Remove the ability to set drones to assist another ship.
This eliminates the possibility that anyone in a sub cap ship can control more than 5 drones.
It requires the (insert drones ship of choice here) pilot to stay close to the battle because they have to control their own drones.

Remove the aggressive mode.
This prevents the drones from attacking an un-targeted ship.
This makes the (insert drones ship here) and it's weapons as susceptible to EWAR as most other ships.

Besides the list of positive changes in the PvP arena these changes would have minimal affect on those who use drones for PvE activities. Yes the PvE crowd is going to complain about these changes and as a PvE player myself I will be first in line to say tough crap, sometimes we have to give because it is broken in the PvP arena.

On the other side of that is you as PvP players need to give as well and in this situation that means we try things that might balance the situation but have minimal impact on the PvE side of the game like my suggestions above before we jump off into the nerfs posted here, some of which would have huge impacts on the PvE side of the game.

Under most conditions, large Ishtar fleets neither assist drones to anyone (because spies + a few enemy ewar ships = damped/jammed assists), nor have them set on aggressive in order to avoid accidentally shooting at blues or ships other than the primaries.

And the last time I flew Domi fleets (it's been quite a while), we were instructed to have drones on passive, and everyone targeted their drones individually because the enemy had spies in our fleet and would put a dozen damps on any person to whom we assisted as a group.

So I'm not sure exactly what your proposed changes are meant to accomplish. They wouldn't meaningfully change current sentry use with Ishtars in large scale combat, and the smaller the gangs get, the less important assisting and volley damage gets.

And it would kill off the use of sentry drones assigning for PvE using alts, but that's not a huge deal. Or you could change the number of assisted drones to say 15 from 50 and get most of the same effect.

Rain6637
Anhenka
I understand your points, I do not believe you are correct but that is only my opinion.
Before I go on based on my personal experience in low sec as well as that of 8 of my real life friends that live in nul the Ishtar / sentry combination is not OP, it is odd, it presents a unique challenge and it requires a unique response to counter it. We are few in number but there are many others posting here and on other sites that agree with us so I know we are not alone in our beliefs.

Having gotten through that let me proceed.
Bottom line still remains unchanged, the nerfs/changes that are being generally discussed in this topic would nerf sentry drones in general and the Ishtar and Rattlesnake specifically to a point where they would be nearly useless for many PvE activities. While the vast majority of PvP players could not give a damn about the PvE crowd as long as we all have to share common ships and fittings the needs of the PvE crowd MUST be considered equally to those of the PvP crowd until such time as it is proven by real players on TQ that further changes must be made.

I have spent considerable time reading every post here as well as those on several other forums and despite your claims to the contrary the primary issues that come up repeatedly are the non-targeted damage ability, the immunity to EWAR both of which are a direct result of the aggressive mode, the abilities to assign drones to another ship or ships and then warp off or move out of range, tracking speeds and DPS output. Come to think of it the ability to assign drones to assist is also part of the immunity to EWAR that people complain about.


What my proposal is is a carefully though out set of changes that tries to address as many of the PvP related issues I have seen posted as possible while having as little impact on the PvE side as possible. Will these changes be enough to bring balance? well that all depends.
To those who share my experiences and thoughts the answer is they are not needed at all.
To others like the two of you it is likely they will not be enough.

And so we get back to my primary point. Instead of hitting an entire group of ships with a huge nerf bat, let us first take a small swing at it and then wait a bit and see how it all works out. If CCP makes my proposed changes and we are still having this conversation two months later then I will no doubt surprise the both of you as I will be lending my voice to the next logical progression in addressing these issues.

Last thought for now. It has been many releases since the Ishtar re-balance the fact that CCP has only made one small adjustment to the Ishtar and nothing since gives us a few clues on what they may be thinking.

A. CCP does not consider the Ishtar / sentry combo OP and no matter how much you complain it is likely that it will not see more changes.

B. trying to bring the balance that you seek to the Ishtar / sentries has broken so many other ships in the game that CCP has decided to let sleeping dogs lie as the saying goes, at least for now.

C. further changes to the Ishtar in specific and drones in general are a part of whatever they are working on for nul / low and they are comfortable leaving them as is for now.

And then sentry nano snakes would be the new thing, and you'd be back here in a month complaining that they're OP and broken and CCP should nerf them because you can't 1-volley them with your megathrons and apocs even with a sig radius the size of a small moon...

Today I Learned: Advocating for sensible change instead of constant whining to mommy = angry.

If you take sentries from sub-BS ships like Ishtars and Vexors, you'd better be willing to give them a buff to their other types of drones, and you'd better believe that they will swap instantly to those types. Gilas + Hammerheads already do 800+ DPS and can push 100k EHP, imagine if that becomes more mainstream.

You (tried to) patronize me and talk down to me. I'm not going to polish your boots and thank you for the kind words.

You can drop bombs and smartbomb sentry drones as well. There was a recent battle where a single bombing wave obliterated an Ishtar's compliment of sentries, with a battle report on TMC with accompanying video.

e: And sentry drones have a cycle time as well. Generally if you're using a drone blob against an enemy fleet, they're not spread out over the grid so travel time is negligible.

....it would be more mainstream if it was more effective.

You really think the Gila price tag is what stops Nullsec coalitions from using them?

Or any well established group, really.

You can also bomb sentries in stealth bombers with relative ease as it would take them awhile to lock you up. You could also bomb the Ishtars themselves, as sniper ishtars are very very paper thin on tank. If you keep pressure on them and force them to keep moving, and warping you can easily counter all sniper fleets regardless of setup and ship type. While ishtars are powerful, they are no more OP than other ships of the same class, nullsec entities use them mostly because drone boats are the easiest for 'newer' players to use in PVP.

I personally believe that the only problem is still drone assist, and though I don't want it nerfed anymore it is the reason most people think that sentries are OP. You rarely see a Ishtar fit for pvp trying to solo snipe with sentries, in fact you generally don't see ishtars on there own at all because that is just how you fly them. I see no problem with some ships being better suited for fleet ops like the Ishtar is, it also makes perfect sense that because of this the perfect counters are also fleet op ships.

Take that as you will from someone who uses drones as their primary weapon system.

If the Drones are at 100km + get to 151km and warp on top of the sentries and shoot them.

Or better yet, fly out of their range and force the Ishtar to gather up the sentries...and when they try...warp to them. Now you are on top of the Ishtar and the sentries.


Not sure why you are sitting in their optimal and expecting to win.