Another huge disadvantage to sentries as a long range weapon system is the fact that unlike other long range weapons which can engage out to your ship's full target lock range unless you start filling your high slots with drone links your "long range" drones aren't even going to engage a target more that 50something KM away.

But at this point it seems we are basically pissing into the ocean because the changes are on the test server and Rise hasn't made even a comment for days much less provide some actual evidence to justify this change.

Sentries as a whole are effectively a long range system, gardes functioning like the short range ammo for that group. Their base range is 24km by the time you can use them and their falloff is actually 12km.

Wonder if any battleship weapon platform should be able to one-volley a t1 frig at 70k. Using shortest range ammo at 70k... or way worse, being able to track ewar frigs at ~100k using curators.

use link augmentors and get ewar drone interfacing towards V.

If I throw a bomb towards the general direction of any other battleship, will I take out his guns or missile launchers?

Maybe I can target each missile bay/turret individually and shoot them with my drones?

Drones have a tradeoff for being able to do what you have posted.

Wonder if any battleship weapon platform should be able to one-volley a t1 frig at 70k. Using shortest range ammo at 70k... or way worse, being able to track ewar frigs at ~100k using curators.

Not sure there, but perchance do you have hardwires on TQ but not on sisi? It's the only thing I can think of that may account for both the cap and minor PG/CPU variances in the screenshots. Or maybe skill differences?

I guess the easiest way to tell would be to look at the base ship stats and compare directly between the 2.

Sentries as a whole are effectively a long range system, gardes functioning like the short range ammo for that group. Their base range is 24km by the time you can use them and their falloff is actually 12km.

Glad someone else remembers this =)

Either way, Gardes are fine. They are directly comparable to Pulse Lasers, except for the differences between sentries and turrets. They can be stretched out to enormous ranges for their damage, but only with the dedication of a specific ship, multiple mid slots, at least one high slot, and a rig or two. I daresay you would see similar results if you did the same for Pulse Lasers, except you have more options and flexibility in the use of the lasers.

I'm not saying there is an issue with them, neither was Malcanis from what I could tell, he is of course free to correct me if I'm wrong. The issue being taken is viewing gardes as a weapon system in isolation to justify comparisons for DPS across SR weapons systems. Even your own standard draws upon the outlier by far regarding optimal range to make the relation. In contrast sentries as a whole clearly operate at LR gun ranges with Grades doing well to replicate the lower range ammo end.

I gotta admit I was wrong about that one, I thought that bombing would preclude Dominix doctrines and that they'd only be used for brawling and PVE.

I still don't like the change, because I'm worried it'll make the Ishtar obsolete the Domi.

Only because the declination you use of a word is widely accepted in the community doesn't make it correct.
That's like saying that voting for ****** is the correct thing just because the majority of people did it.

We are obviously aware of the conversation around drone assist and this change doesn't really aim to have a massive effect on sentry-doctrines as a whole. Drone assist is a much larger issue and we aren't looking to make any changes to it for 1.1. We would love to do work on drones overall, but for now I can't make any promises about when that will happen or how it will look.

Please take a look at the drones' targeting timers. They are all set to 2 seconds. Does this really still reflect the current state?

It seems as if these timers were set with the idea that drones would always only be used against their primary targets, i.e. light drones against frigate and sentries against battleships and so would all take about the same time, but it does not seem to reflect the whole truth. Light drones are also used against any other targets where if they had to full locking mechanics implemented locked their targets much faster. The opposite is true for sentry drones. With the new bonuses to drone tracking will these more often be used against smaller targets and an increase in targeting time would more accurately reflect it.

Seeing how drone assist mechanics are also more often being questioned could a change of these targeting timers be helpful, too. Even fighters and fighter bombers have a 2 seconds targeting timer, which seems incredibly short.

Here a suggestion:

Light drones: 1 second
Medium drones: 2 seconds
Heavy drones: 4 seconds
Sentry drones: 5 seconds
Fighters/bombers: 8 seconds

Who should drone ships suffer from double targeting times?

this.

for a dominix to unleash it's drones on a cruiser takes something like 8 seconds to lock the cruiser, plus another 2 for the drones to lock it and engage.

10 seconds seems like a hell of a long time if it's you in the dominix.

Drake is still epically better than the ferox

I really isn't an elegant solution, and it really screws it over for solo play. However one could argue that they only lock once if there's another person in the fleet because they can just assign.

It really is a damn shame. Aside from hard limiting the number that can be assisted, I can't think of any way to nerf blob drone assigning without hurting the solo/small gang pilot more.

this.

for a dominix to unleash it's drones on a cruiser takes something like 8 seconds to lock the cruiser, plus another 2 for the drones to lock it and engage.

10 seconds seems like a hell of a long time if it's you in the dominix.

. Even your own standard draws upon the outlier by far regarding optimal range to make the relation. In contrast sentries as a whole clearly operate at LR gun ranges with Grades doing well to replicate the lower range ammo end.