When npc's are 70km away... it's hard to recall drones faster, so you loose all heavy drones.

As this is a nerf to drones and fleets, maybe a balancing buff is needed for both. Suggestions:

Drones can already auto-aggro anything that is attacking me. Change it so I can order them to attack anything attacking me without the need to target lock. This would be good even if I do not get to select the target, just the ability to say "Pick one and go!" would be good. Edit, or just change it so drones on auto-aggro do this when initially deployed. Right now they sit and wait until a new target attacks me.

Define my drones and members of my fleet to be "cooperative targets". They cooperate with me in getting a target lock, allowing me to lock my drones and fleet members faster. This would help with remote reps.

Its almost like you could add a target painter and a web to a Rattlesnake to make killing tackling frigates easier

NPCs switching targets in some of the more difficult complexes is going to be troublesome for sure.
I know lots of folks rely on being able to manage who the structures/npcs are shooting at.

Sites like

• The Maze (final room)
• Dread Guristas fleet staging point (final stage)
• No Quarter (final stage)

put out an astronomical amount of DPS. A dedicated tanking ship is usually required.

The tank-ship (often a pimped-out Tengu or a capital ship) typically sacrifices dps for tank.
The high-skilled tengu-tanker takes the aggro and lower-skilled players warp in with whatever dps ships they have.

Managing who that structure fires its Citadel Torps or Siege Railguns Batteries at is pretty key.

It is going to be interesting to see how this works out. We're going to have to come up with new techniques on the double.
Hopefully it won't lock lower-skilled players out of participating in these harder plexes entirely.

On a related note: Along with the heavy missile dps nerf this is another hit to nullsec player income. We could sure use an isk buff out here!

I pride myself on being able to set up and implement solutions to PVE related problems/content , in other words adapting. The 1st thing I thought when i hear dof the proposed Heavy Missile nerf (while others screamed blood murder) is what i could do with a Tracking comp'd up Navy Raven lol.

But done wrong this change could make high end null sec exploration content seriously bad and broken beyond our (often incredible) ability to adapt. The 1st 2 rooms of guristas maze are bad, but doable even with switching, but that last room would be impossible if you can't control or predict where that torp is going to go......\


.....and as I was typing that I thought "maybe I could put a smart bombing rokh between our dps ship and the station... see, still trying to adapt lol. But if the rokh takes torp aggro and dies, blegh.

Yea, we'll see, hope CCP thinks this all the way through.