CPP.How about module that repair drones/figthers on board of ship?

By the way when are we gonna get a new dev blog about the inventory system? It would be nice if you guys fixed one catastrophe before making a new ones.

That would work except the acceleration gate lands you within web range of the station. So you warp in and are immediately webbed down to about 3 m/s. So your initial tank will take that first couple torps, and then you'd have to pray the logi can burn out past the 60KM range of the stations torp before it gets target switched. All while somehow having the logic magically tank all the NPC's that will switch to it, who won't be able to be ranged tanked.


Of course this is doable, but now you come across the real kicker. You'll need 800-1000dps to break the tank on the station. Weapons systems with >60km range from one ship won't cut it.

you don't have scout drone operation to 5? shameful, get some t2 drones all up ins they are amazing

I have just a simple idea ,AI changes doesn't include drones.Agro from drones is counting as agro from host-ship.This will be fair to all drones ship, becouse AI cant just focus fire on your missiles launcher or turret and take it down.

Soundwave is a game designer and he's been championing making PVE more like PVP. So, this looks like a step in the direction of what a game designer, the lead game designer, has stated as a goal for the game.

A sea of tears over this... you should have seen what else we wanted the NPC to do.

Concord is attacking players? I mean come on this is pathetic. Creating bugs out of thin air for no reason. I don't see Soundwave's signature on this either.

God.... noone will use gallente....

I assume more pilots could do these sites. Maybe we just need to accept that like high end W systems and incursions, these complexes are fleet content.

When you're playing with NPC AI in what amounts to delta or alpha code on a test server, this isn't even unusual.

Now, if CONCORD started behaving that way on TQ, it'd be really funny a serious lapse on CCP's part.

So, the NPCs will switch targets and have a chance to target drones at random and kill them...

God.... noone will use gallente....

...and where were these stated goals in the release notes for Inferno? Where did it say we are going to release new mining changes, mods, fixes, and DRONE AI? This is deviating from the set goals posted in this release and creating new bugs and unforeseen consequences in HighSec PVE, null sec ganking, DED sites, Eve economy, and a direct impact on player count, and eve itself. Where are any of these changes helpful? I don't see a game designers hands on this at all, and much has been left unconsidered in the impact this seemingly small change is really producing. This idea should be completely scrapped and is taking way too much dev time away from serious issues. Concord is attacking players? I mean come on this is pathetic. Creating bugs out of thin air for no reason. I don't see Soundwave's signature on this either.

If they do this, they need to up the rewards significantly or they'll never be worthwhile to run (with a baseline being afk ice mining in hisec)

Do me a favor before you guys go live with this stuff. Run anoms in a drone boat and then run them in the racial BS that is best against the local rats and compare the bounty ticks. I would think that a Navy domi versus a Navy Apoc against Sansha / Bloodraiders for example would be a decent comparison.

The way things are now If you are a Minmatar pilot you can go to Angel space and do well. If you are Amarr then Bloodraiders or Sansha space is good for you. For Caldari obviously it's serpentis/guristas. Drone boat's however have no race that they do well at killing. The advantage currently is that they do decent at all of them.

I understand that the Gallente have Hybrids as well but the caldari are more rail focused and blasters really aren't any good for PvE. The amount of time you spend traveling to the target costs you more dps than if you could hit from further out. Projectile pilots have ships like the Machariel and Vargur to make AC's usefull in PvE and the Amarr have scortch ammo and the NApoc to make Pulses good. Heck even ships without an optimal bonus like the NApoc can do well with Pulses. Blasters however, I know of no ship that makes blasters a viable option for PvE when we are talking isk/hour or isk/tick as the judging factor.

Please experiment with isk/hour potential of Gallente and drone pilots versus everyone else. Other wise you are giving Gallente / Drone pilots a serious ass pounding. Isk per hour is the almighty equalizer of everything in game. If you make half as much that means you can afford to loose half as many ships which means you'll get half as much experience and be half as good as another pilot of a different race with the same amount of game time as you. Keep that in mind.

These changes are not for Inferno, they are for our winter expansion which has not been named publicly. Where did we say we are going from new mining changes, mods, fixes, and drones? Here right now.

Everything we do has the chance to create bugs, even fixing bugs has a chance to create bugs.

Where are these changes helpful? With changing up our PvE gameplay and moving it in a direction where we can continue to improve our PvE gameplay. The current AI that all the NPC use is not something we can really change. If we want to improve our PvE experience the first step is switching it to this newer AI so that we can make changes.

Not sure why you think no game designers touched this. I am a content designer, this is what we do. While our title is content designer we are game designers that just focus on content instead of gameplay features.

I am sorry you consider the CONCORD issue being pathetic, but we actually already had a fix ready before you saw this dev blog. It just happened to miss the deployment to Duality. This is exactly why we need to do this though. As I said before we can start making more changes to our PvE content we need to have the AI upgraded and deal with these problems. This must happen first. Along with the future better it leaves us with less code to maintain as we no longer need to maintain the old AI code. All of this is a good thing.

Again, everything we do has a chance to generate bugs. This all does have a reason and I hope this post helps bring some of that out. :)

Also, Soundwave most certainly did sign off on this as he does for all the design stuff.

We have been running missions with lots of different configurations. Including drone boats, logistics, missile boats, and other stuff. The one thing I really still want to test more is some of the 10/10 DED complex. This is one of the reasons we are doing this now though because it will be something coming out for our winter release. This means we have plenty of time to test it.

You want to break current PvE so you can make it better sometime in the future?

No, please make all changes together so we can see why it is better.

Currently I see only broken gameplay for some groups of players and no improvements in making PvE fun.

We have been running missions with lots of different configurations. Including drone boats, logistics, missile boats, and other stuff. The one thing I really still want to test more is some of the 10/10 DED complex. This is one of the reasons we are doing this now though because it will be something coming out for our winter release. This means we have plenty of time to test it.

Don't forget various 8/10s (Serpentis particularly), the escalation complexes (final stage of Fleet Staging Points, final stage of Military Complexes, etc), and so forth. It's not just 10/10s.

so all this work to just get people to stop using drones.