The Isthar changes are a little lackluster, especially when compared to the VNI. There is nothing heavy nor assaulting about it.

The vexor is gun bonused and sort of expected to use them, the ishtar is not. You can fit a 1600mm plate based tank and "basically anything you want" to the vexor already if you don't make much use of the highs, or you can fill your highs with utility modules at the cost of a lighter tank and tighter fitting. It's a fair trade off.

Bingo...The Ishtar has always had huge CPU issues, and this does nothing to change that.
And forget about the Ishtar being used in action that requires high speed.
You can't kite with it, and you can't close with it to brawl.

Seriously the drone bonus on the Ishtar

How would you feel about giving the zealot 1 gun and then giving it 1 gun per level in HAC's? Its a really silly bonus.

Deimos
Heavy Assault Cruiser Bonuses:
10% bonus to Medium Hybrid Turret falloff

The Ishtar's bonuses - just like the Domi's - are taylored towards sentry drones, while the VNI's are leaning towards heavy and med's. The main reason why you're not seeing the different flavour is that heavy drones are pretty useless right now, so VNI pilots still use sentries despite wasting part of their ship's bonus that way.

GǪor, hell, just to enforce the whole GǣT2 = specialisationGǥ angleGǪ

How about having the Ishtar reduce the CPU need for drone mods? That way, the ship can maintain its limited CPU to keep it from being too versatile, but you can still pack it absolutely full of the very specific set of mods that are related to its niche without making those available to every ship out there.

At -10%/level, that would mean Omnilink IIs at 29.5 tf, Drone link IIs at 27.5 tf, and Drone damage amps at 15 tf when you have HAC V.

I'll look at the Ishtar fitting. To me it seems like one of the stronger HACs already and it gained a bonus to damage projection and application so I didn't see a need to give it even more buffs. I don't think of it as a ship that ought to be running medium sized mods in all its high slots. All that said, I'll have another look.
for the way tracking works to find out why.

I'm currently chatting with CSM and some other game design folk about working on the Ishtar a bit. Probably no update on what we come to as a conclusion until tomorrowish.

We, the Gallente, have been forgotten about in regards to our secondary dps type: drones.

The interface hasn't changed at all in how many years? While the guns et all get fancy tooltips and crap.

You can also run a perfectly good ishtar with hac 1

Because its gallente cruiser bonuses are ridiculous

Ishtar has mostly structure hp and got more? for what fitting reinforced bulkheads?.

...and suddenly a Huggin decloaks and you are going nowhere...

Nope they won't help either, since most of the time you want to be in scram range anyway.

Thing is, I still don't know what a good bonus for HACS would be but some of the afore mentioned ideas sound more promising than an ab bonus without a significant base speed buff.

Why on earth did you have to ruin the Ishtar.

One less slot for drone ships is the most ******** thing in EVE, what is the reason for that? Because your main damage can be destroyed? Because it is slow to apply?

AB Bonuses are BAD.
I thought we went through this the last time with the Assault Frigates

And just to sum up the thread;
Leave the ******* Deimos as it is right now. If you need to make a change to it, give it more agility and stop ******* with it .

It is a hundred times better use of a role bonus compared to a mjd bonus.

Perhaps with the ishtar you could give it a unique role focused on medium drones.
Ofc you would have to increase medium drone engagement range to allow for the range increase and add a drone falloff skill. and a drone orbit velocity skill would be nice too. Although looking at medium drones optimal and falloff ranges they could use a big buff there .. well that drone overhaul would be handy about now anyway.

ISHTAR
Role Bonus: 50% reduction in MicroWarpdrive signature radius penalty

Gallente Cruiser Bonuses:
10% bonus to drone tracking and optimal and falloff range to medium drones(was 5% bonus to Medium Hybrid Turret damage)
20% bonus to drone hitpoints and Damage to medium drones

Heavy Assault Cruiser Bonuses:
5 km bonus to medium Drone operation range per level
20% bonus to medium drone orbit velocity and mwd velocity

Slot layout: 4H(-1), 5M, 6L(+1); 4 turrets(+1), 0 launchers
Fittings: 700 PWG, 285 CPU
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 1400(-6) / 1600(-18) / 2300(+191)
Capacitor (amount) : 1300(+175)
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 185(-6) / .52 / 11700000 / 8.43s
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 50 / 200
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 60km / 294 / 7
Sensor strength: 16 Magnetometric
Signature radius: 145

well you seem to have missed something there light drones aren't mentioned in my post :)
also i think you would still get a good 500 dps or more on top of any dps from rails
The idea being medium drones could orbit said target at say 9 or 10km and do solid dps along with the ship firing rails

Indeed ewar drones are like multispecs of old. Remove genaric ecm drones and replace with race specific drones... Like white noise ecm 300 or ladar ecm 600...

OMG will you stop calling it the Ishkur. It's hard to take you seriously when you can't even talk about the correct ship.

Hey guys, another short update.

Spent most of the day yesterday on prep for the Alliance Tournament and of course today and tomorrow will be spent on 64 total AT matches. Fozzie and I are still talking a lot about this rebalance and have some good ideas going forward but because of the tournament you will have to wait until the start of the work week.

Check out the AT in the meantime =)

i like the idea... though i would prefer more in this direction... IMO ab setups are fine... its the mwd that needs the cool bonus and a warp scram immunity would do the trick. though just my opinion... still like your ideas too.

gardes are better than heavy drones

i would support this...

have a light assault crusier (the attack version)

then heavy assault crusier (the combat version)

though that would require more skills and that just might upset some people but i say **** it... lets get it done.

Gallente keep whining about their 2 BCs having tanking bonuses... For a good reason.
Let's not gimp Ishtar or Deimos with a bad active armor rep bonus please.

Don't touch Ishtar's gun damage, leave it in place.

Fun fact: most people struggle to fit a single medium turret on their Ishtars, somehow magicking 4 railguns on it as suggested by Rise is frankly ridiculous idea.

Losing all utility slots for 0.25 more purely theoretical damage is just ****, and is my main gripe with the suggested Ishtar. Yes, utility highs don't matter in blob warfare, where the new Ishtar will actually be very good. For my use, solo and small gang, it lost a major part of it's appeal, which was versatility.

I don't think of it as a ship that ought to be running medium sized mods in all its high slots.

Kirimeena D'Zbrkesbris I fit blasters on the Myrm as well, balancing ships to use off-racial weapons is really not a concept that should be taken seriously.



And I don't think drones are viable as the single damage source in small gang PVP with their current stats, mechanics and UI.

Which were supposed to be looked at along with the Domi changes.

Sentries are shockingly effective these days. I know AT isn't a great example of small gang fights but god damn those sentry domi are effective.

The Ishtar has 125 bandwidth. You should had known that.

TBH this idea is really fringe and quite ridank. Its just an uber VNI, while the Ishtar should be... Something more?

Deimos 6-4-6 (+1 High Slot)
Gallente Curiser
+5% Medium Hybrid Turret Damage per Level
+5% Armor HP per level (Yes a Armor HP bonus, would make one want to use this over a Proteus)
Heavy Assault Ship
+5% Medium Hybrid Turret Damage per Level
+7.5% Medium Hybrid Turret Tracking per Level
Role Bonus +100% bonus to the Velocity Factor of Afterburners

Ishtar 4-5-6 (+1 Low) Drone Bay 375m^3
Gallente Cruiser
+10% Drone Damage and HP per Level
+5% Drone MWD Velocity
Heavy Assault Ship
+10% Drone Tracking and Optimal
+10% EW Drone Strength and Logistic Drone Strength
Role Bonus +100% to the velocity factor of afterburners

HULL TANKING

Just tossing that out there...

Change Deimos MWD bonus to +10% to hull resistances per level.

Just trying to think outside the box a bit.

I see no reason to buy the currently proposed Zealot when the Omen Navy Issue exists.

And as luck would have it, THEY ARE FITTABLE ON CRUISERS. Battleships just have enough power to have more of them fitted.

Well at least you are taking that idea and running with it.

You know what armour for space craft really is? It's three or four layers of thin material with gaps between then, the first couple absorb the directed energy, and the last two protect the hull.

Can you at least tell us if these latest pass puts HACs into a role that is not completely overshadowed by other ship?