Or we can call it a sort of PvE buff. I know, EVE is all about PvP, and PvE boats should wither and die at the approach of a PvP ship's aggressive intention, but there are a great many pilots that enjoy exploring and exploiting the environment that CCP started to build into this game but then pretty much dropped all development on it in favor of the PvP stuff.


As a PvE pilot, I also despise this version of the AI, because it eats drones like candy making my prefered ships all but useless except in PvP, where they were never that well suited due to smartbombs and people just shooting my damage out of space.

Bottom line is that the AI needed, and still needs, fixing--- and a good deal of that fix involves things not attached to the AI directly, like making drones WAAAAAAAAAAAY tougher than they are, or at least alot less hittable, adding in some aggro mechanics probably in the form of new Ewar to attract or re-direct target locks, allowing larger ships to tank for smaller ships based on signiture size (Frigate hugs up to a BS and shots directed at the frig hit the BS instead), and/or a whole host of new things that EVE should have had long ago had any Devs thought that PvE was worth anything if someone wasn't shooting you over it.

Part of your loadout when hunting ratters should obviously be some way to handle the rats. You should have options other than tank it, though that should be viable (most rats do the same damage they are weak against, so your opponent will often be doing the same damage as the rats if they have the option--plan accordingly). If you had a way to shed target locks, or hide in the shadow of your larget target, or redirect your locks to your target, etc, the game would be more fun because more options on doing a thing means more fun getting it done.