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Katran Luftschreck
Royal Ammatar Engineering Corps
795
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Posted - 2013.01.28 03:30:00 -
[31] - Quote
Raw Matters wrote:There is a very simple fix to re-balance drones: prevent NPCs from targeting them.
Actually the real problem isn't that they're being targeted: It's that they're being insta-locked. I've seen light drones come under fire not two seconds out of the launch bay, and by cruisers no less. I've seen sentry drones come under fire in less time than the lag between my pushing the "attack" hotkey and them firing one shot. No player ship can do this!
25m signature = 0.1 second lock-on time? My ass. And once they get locked the rats never miss. My ass x2.
EvE Forum Bingo |
Serina Tsukaya
The Milkmen
Test Alliance Please Ignore
19
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Posted - 2013.01.28 13:31:00 -
[32] - Quote
The lock time should be looked at, and perhaps the tracking aswell, but for frigs to be effective at killing the larger drones isn't a large surprise at all.
Can I also point out the fact that when the drones use their microwarp drives, their sig radius explode? Just, in case you weren't aware.
One might want to have a look at the drones resists (assuming they vary racially) to figure out what to use. Alternatively, use them high slots for autocannons or blasters to blap frigs before putting out the drones. |
Josef Djugashvilis
Acme Mining Corporation
945
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Posted - 2013.01.29 08:43:00 -
[33] - Quote
On the good side, CCP obviously recognized the massive demand form the players to do something about overpowered drones and decided to address it in a well balanced and nuanced way.
CCP just had to respond to the large number of players who threatened to quit if the all powerful drones were not nerfed.
Horrible drone UI and virtually useless heavy drones, nice work CCP.
Sigh...
This is not a signature. |
Draek Andorii
Black Salmon
1
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Posted - 2013.02.02 05:04:00 -
[34] - Quote
It really is broken in a lot of ways. Granted, drones were kind of mind numbing dps in a lot of ways... but aren't all weapon systems kinda like that? Drones should take a small portion of my concentration, not constant staring and being afraid to blink (because if I do 5 million isk can be gone by the time my eyelids come back up).
I think that we certainly should be fielding the correct drones for the correct situation but the solution to that problem was not to make them evaporate when you aren't paying attention.
I'd also like to point out for some of the above posters and a lot of the forum trolls that just because *one* certain drone is viable 33.2 seconds into a fight if you're an armor tank on a friday in caldari space with 47.3% capacitor remaining doesn't mean drones are balanced. It means they have a ridiculously tiny niche and that's not what drones are there for.
There's no reason for me to be able to let my drones out to 65 km when I can rest easy at night knowing that even if I recalled them as soon as they got there, not a single one would make it back to my bay. Either take away my drone link aug or make it useful, please.
Small drones are vastly too squishy for the amount of aggro they generate and are overpriced.
Medium drones do proportionally bad damage, are *still* squishy, are overpriced, and are probably all dead by the time you notice they've been aggro'd and try to recall them.
The real people who are hurting are the big ships that *aren't* drone boats but rely absolutely on said drones to take out the frigates that are endangering their ship. I ran into a situation in my Raven in Worlds Collide (with the bug where the entire room aggro's) where if I pull out my drones they're instapopped, but if I don't I'm going to be warp scrambled into next month and I'm going to lose my ship. This very situation shows just how broken drones are in this regard players in big ships and *especially* missile boats rely absolutely on those Light drones to keep the frigates off of us, but when their damage is mediocre and they're killed instantly there's not much we can do but watch our ship get torn up by frigates and hope they all get bored of warp scrambling at the same time.
That said, i wouldn't mention all these problems without taking a stab at some solutions:
Make correctly sized drones meaningful by changing their damage rather than their durability. E.g. make sure light drones excel at frigates, but anything bigger than a bc and you won't notice the effect. The same for each other type of drone. That way it still stops people from afk'ing missions (a heavy could never take out a frigate, a light could never take out a bs) and it would also make drone use more engaging for drones boats (they'd need to pay attention and swap drones).
As mentioned above, lock on times for npc's targeting drones needs some fiddling. Additionally I think we would profit greatly from a little red aggression icon next to our drones that showed us when they were being target locked. It seems like a fairly simple thing to add and a pretty understandable request.
Aggression really does need some kind of change as well. I'd suggest having one or two boats per group that target drones of their size and the rest ignore them. As stated in CCP's blog post on the new AI, their AI is in templates so this wouldn't require a redesign or anything; just a new template.
Drones need to slowly repair inside your ship. It just needs to be that way. Not quickly enough that you can just swap them in and out mid battle and never have to worry about it, but quickly enough that they're at full health between missions.
This is my first post on the EVE forums and I apologize for the giant wall of text. I only post because I feel that this really needs a change (and hopefully before I lose my Raven because I've lost 15 hobgoblin II's trying to kill the frigates warp scrambling me). |
Draek Andorii
Fail Force 5
You Failed the Mumble Test
1
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Posted - 2013.02.06 04:58:00 -
[35] - Quote
Did I derail this thread? I would have thought people would be replying. |
Sedstr
18
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Posted - 2013.02.06 16:07:00 -
[36] - Quote
I've lost a few drones since the change, its not so easy any more, not sure if its broken though, but certainly more difficult.
I don't see the point in making PVE more difficult, PVE needs to be made more like PVP, smarter AI, less is more...
People talk about risk vs reward, 3 words: off grid boosters!
EVE is not based on risk vs reward, its based on time vs fun. |
Dyvim Slorm
Coven of the Morrigan
96
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Posted - 2013.02.08 14:26:00 -
[37] - Quote
Sedstr wrote:
I don't see the point in making PVE more difficult, PVE needs to be made more like PVP, smarter AI, less is more...
Can't say I agree, pvp is combat whereas pve is a way to grind ISK like mining or trading. Personally I found the AI changes just made missions even more tedious than they were before, rather than challenging.
I did like the suggestion earlier in the thread, to remove the AI change but make drones manually controlled.
Before the AI change you had to manually control them a lot of the time or they had the habit of wandering off rather than targeting as a group, so just make all drone targeting manual and that also removes any issues of afk missioners.
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Tauranon
Weeesearch
126
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Posted - 2013.02.15 07:56:00 -
[38] - Quote
Katran Luftschreck wrote:Has anyone else noticed that everyone who says that drones aren't broken always talk about "Dominix + sentries" and nothing else?
Post patch I have used.
myrmidon + sentries - ded 4s and vigils - this was a refit from a rails/mixed drones fit that worked terribly post patch, and is now better than it was prepatch in terms of completion times.
vexor with sentries - ded 4s in blood space (this never worked with mobile drones!).
ishtar with sentries - ded3s, 4s, 5s all over the place, as well as various unrateds, high and low.
vexor with blasters, heavies, meds and lights - ded3s, ded4s, vigils and associated escalation - serp space.
dominix with sentries, L4 agents in amarr and gallente space.
navy domi with shield tank, sentries and 425s L4 agent gallente space.
navy thron with blasters and 5 heavies, L4 agent in gallente space.
In most cases, simply being at sentry range allows me to fit 1 more damage mod.
The 'thron does >1000 turret dps and thus 5 heavies go unnoticed against its royal facemelting, but be aware of the dangers of sending the heavies on a mission unless you are royally facemelting a whole bunch of something elses at the same time. Don't send them 30km away whilst you are still mwding towards targets yourself.
The blaster vexor is the hardest to use, but its most common job is a close orbit on the serpentis phi overseer, where it subsequently holds aggro long enough to kill the only important ship in pocket. The drones survive individual frigates - which usually go to the hammers and not the ogres or the hobgobbie. No other pocket gives any problems with drone aggro, and the vexor often nearly gets pasted - routine for me to overheat the tank doing that. |
Jalxan
knights INC
Ad-Astra
6
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Posted - 2013.02.23 00:35:00 -
[39] - Quote
Here's a simple thought; re-balance the shielding resistances on the four different racials of the existing drones, based on their damage type?
For example, Hammerhead II's have a default resistance of 60% exp / 40% kin / 20% therm / 0% em. With the changes, since the Hammerhead does Thermal damage, it should have base resistances of 60% therm, with the others determined by both relativity to existing NPC tanking amounts, and relative to their historical prejudices.
Proposed Resistances:
Amarr (EM): 60% EM / 40% Kin / 20% Therm / 0% Exp
Caldari (Kin): 60% Kin / 40% EM / 20% Exp / 0% Therm
Gallente (Therm): 60% Therm / 40% Exp / 20% EM / 0% Kin
Minmatar (Exp): 60% Exp / 40% Therm / 20% Kin / 0% EM
This change would affect how these would be used in PVP, but most importantly, this would give a huge boost to drones and their ability to resist traditional missioning NPC's damage toward drones. This will mean that if you're facing Caldari NPC's, they'll be dishing out and be receiving mostly Kinetic damage, and thus your kinetic drones will be more effective against them. |
Canthan Rogue
Perkone
Caldari State
1
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Posted - 2013.02.27 10:27:00 -
[40] - Quote
I'm still pretty new but my experience so far is that when I do level 4 missions and bring out my light scout drones to kill frigates, the frigates will immediately switch targets to the drones. I can then order them back into the drone bay but that defeats the purpose of using them to counter frigates. I'm not saying those drones aren't effective but it's almost inevitable that you will lose some drones in a mission with lots of frigates unless you have crazy micro-management. I think if CCP wants us to think of drones as being expendable like ammo, they should bring the price/cost of production down a bit. |
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Katran Luftschreck
Royal Ammatar Engineering Corps
1083
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Posted - 2013.03.06 08:25:00 -
[41] - Quote
Someone said Domonix. Now tracing IP and heating up rusty tools on open flame.
EvE Forum Bingo |
Katran Luftschreck
Royal Ammatar Engineering Corps
1083
|
Posted - 2013.03.06 08:38:00 -
[42] - Quote
Back on topic:
#1) Drone Implants. +5% bonus to damage and hitpoints.
#2) Auto-target your own drones for free, instant lock, without taking up actual target slots. I should not have to waste five of my all too finite number targeting slots and wait fifteen seconds to be able to monitor & repair my own dang drones.
#3) Drone Durability Skill buffed to at least 20%, up from current (and useless) 10% per level.
#4) Drone Accuracy Skill. Sharpshooting only effects optimal range. What about tracking? OmniLink is a drag. +10% drone tacking speed per level. Hit more often.
#5) Drone Shield Skill. Increases rate of drone shield regeneration 20% per level.
#6) Drone Evasion Skill. Reduces drone signature radius by 10% per level. Harder to hit.
#7) Drone Repair Module. Heals damaged drones while docked.
#8) Replace drone MWD with Afterburner. Maybe not as fast but not a big bullseye marker either.
EvE Forum Bingo |
Gypsio III
Questionable Ethics.
Ministry of Inappropriate Footwork
552
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Posted - 2013.03.06 14:32:00 -
[43] - Quote
Drone implants and the auto-repair module are a good idea. All the others are unnecessary and seem really to be intended just to make mission-runners' lives even easier. |
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