Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I think most of the folks have a clear understanding of the difference between OP and FOTM.

Take the current worm. It's incredibly wicked and powerful. Is it OP? Heck no. It has counters. There are reasonable ways to effictively fight them. It's a powerful ship, but not OP.

Similar arguments for the orthrus. It's murder against frigates and even many cruisers. Again, there are reasonable counters. Not OP.

Pro tip: reducing the damage from BS damage to slightly less BS damage isn't going to fix anything as long as the ishtar can race out of combat range (or start there and stay there).

The dps change is a decent start but not sure if it's enough on its own, a large portion of the Ishtar's sentry issues is the range bonus so dropping that (makes little sense for a Gallente ship to have a range bonus anyway) a bit would probably complete it.

CCP Rise, I sincerely hope that you take the time to appreciate the nuances of the situation which the players are describing to you with the Ishtar; it truly is not as straightforward as ‘the ship does too much damage,’ though 700 dps from Gardes is above and beyond what a Deimos with heavy neutron blasts can do with void. The true issue, as others have stated is its incredible skirmishing ability. No other cruise in the game can run its microwarpdrive almost permanently while keeping a hundred kilometers or more away from the target and still apply the level of damage which the Ishtar does, which is the fundamental problem. This isn’t an issue which can be fixed with a simple reduction in the magnitude of its damage bonus, though said reduction is absolutely warranted.

A number of radical and impractical suggestions such as removing drone damage amplifiers or changing fundamental properties of sentry drones have been suggested, and none of those are realistically going to happen. What should be done is to look at the specific reasons the Ishtar is overly strong:

Speed & Mobility: the Ishtar has the ability to run its microwarpdrive near permanently allowing it to maintain range without having to fit any capacitor-related modules or sacrifice active hardeners to do so. No other HAC can maintain the speeds which the Ishtar does for as long as it does, and ease with which it can be made cap-stable with a 100mn afterburner leads to some very effective ratting setups.

Suggested change: increase the raw capacitor buffer, but lower the recharge rate so that the Ishtar can run its MWD for a time in line with other HACs but eliminating the unparalleled range dictation capability it currently enjoys.

Damage Projection: While the change to bouncers will reduce the damage which the Ishtar is capable of dealing at range, the combination of base targeting range, drone control range bonus and ample fitting room for a drone link augmenter allow a HAC to compete with long-range battleship fits for ability to maintain range while applying its damage. Since the physical position of the sentry drones does not affect whether a target is within drone control range, the Ishtar has significant freedom in how it moves around grid without a care for tracking or range envelopes.

Suggested change: reduce base targeting & drone control range so that the Ishtar’s engagement envelope is comparable to HAC/T3 platforms which deal comparable dps; comparing a high-dps platform like the Ishtar to Eagles (a dedicated sniping ship) isn’t reasonable, but it shouldn’t out-perform beam zealots or Muninns to the degree it currently does.

The Ishtar currently enjoys the DPS of the Dominix (which is about to be reduced), along with comparable application range & tracking while dramatically out-performing it as a mobile skirmish platform.

The weakspot of the ishtar seem to me that those sentries are shootable. So i can destroy the dps when fighting against an ishtar. Sentries do not move, so i can hit them jsut fine.
To everyone: start shooting those drones!
To CCP Rise: lower the hitpoints (or just hitpoint bonus) on sentries. raise their signature radius. Also raise the required material to build them. imho It should cost a lot to deploy and leave (/loose) them.
Now the dps on paper is still good, but ishtars will be very weak. more depth.

ps.: consider this.

The sickest irony about all this is that when heavy missiles were overpowered* CCP nerfed the missile and fundamentally broke every ship format that used them. Now we see the pendulum swinging and the heavy nerfs are still not coming. The range, power projection, selectable damage type, damage application and raw damage of the ishtar far outweighs anything I ever saw in those dark times.

I wonder if heavy missiles were returned to their previous stats under the current ship balancing would CFC and friends be quick to re-adopt drake fleets? Cerberus fleets? HML tengu fleets? Or has the meta evolved so far beyond that even a substantially cheaper setup for SRP like drakefleet would still not be warrented because coalitions have amongst other things so much money that you should always run the most cost effective fleet and that it would still be the ishtar?

Show me a time ever when drakes did 700dps to 100km. You simply can't. Show me a time where heavy missiles still worked in pvp when the firing ship was jammed or damped into uselessness. You can't. Show me a time where heavy missiles could ever compete with the sentry drone for attacking small craft at fleet engagement ranges? You can't.

And what about today? You can't firewall sentries. You can't put remote repairers on missiles in flight. You can't feasibly damp or jam every sentry drone on field. In my mind it is very clear, the only balanced drone ships out there are the guristas ships and only because neutralising one of the drones the host is using is gutting a large portion of its DPS. On an ishtar you maybe disable 20% of the ships damage output, on a rattlesnake jamming or TDing a sentry might very well cut 25-40% of the ships dps instantly.

Want your favorite BS's back???


Sentries to 8s ROF and 1400, 425, and Tach tracking levels (respective of racial types). Ishtar DPS is cut in half for them, they don't **** everything in sight and BS's get useful.


Give Rattlesnake, Geddon and Domi ROF bonuses to bring Sentries back to 4s ROF.


Please drop the PG on the Tach, 1400 and 425's so ship gets some tank with it's punch instead of loading up on RCU's and Current Routers.

Still not enough. Scrap the sentry bonus from Ishtars entirely.



Here's an idea. Force those Ishtars to stay near their sentries and they're no longer the ultimate sniping fleet.

Another suggestion could possibly be to spilt Drone Damage Amplifiers into 2 different modules, Combat Drone Damage Amplifiers and Sentry Drone Damage Amplifiers. There already are specific rigs for Sentry Drone Damage. By Creating a Different Sentry/Combat DDA then Sentry Ishtars who use 3x SDDAs would be a lot more vulnerable to fast tackle as they would have to either give up Sentry Damage for CDDAs or use non damage amplified Warrior/Acolytes, and having something like 2x sentry sets + 2x gecko + 5x light drones or w/e would make their current power in a variety of situations much weaker. One of the biggest weaknesses of other LR damage Ships such As Zealots, Oracles, Nagas etc. is their lack of options against smaller craft and ships which are able to get on top of them, The Ishtar currently does not face that problem since Triple DDA light drones destroy everything smaller than a Cruiser with ease, the Ishtar would still have better options than other LR ships.

This would also allow better balancing options as damage & fittings on SDDAs and CDDAs could be adjusted independently of one-another.

Ishtar without sentries just wouldn't be the same. Its problem does not lie within an ability to field sentries by itself, but within the ability to quickly switch range and damage type by deploying different sentries. And that problem plagues pretty much all drone boats and makes drone meta so popular ever since CCP introduced Drone Damage Amplifiers - they do way too much DPS which isn't restricted by damage type, capacitor, or even EWAR. And since Gallente ships generally don't get a bonus to projectile weapons and we don't see explosive damage bonuses on Caldari ships, I don't see a reason why an Ishtar could use Bouncers so effectively. I reckon that ships of The Best Race™ would be just as broken if lasers could switch their damage type instantly (although you could still shut them down with neuts or EWAR, which tends not to be the case with drone boats). So, instead of removing sentries from Ishtar entirely, why not simply restrict Ishtar's sentry damage bonus to apply only if sentries are using Kinetic or Thermal damage? That would be in line with other Gallente ships.