Hey wanted to check in again.

We've been talking about these ships quite a lot the last day or two and still aren't settled on making any changes. I think we're in a relatively good spot, which is great. We do have some minor concerns about the power level that comes with a resist bonus and a full drone bandwidth allocation. That said, with no projection or application bonuses and larger sig there's still no way the Stratios can compete with the Ishtar at a fleet level so it's just a matter of figuring out if it's too much at a smaller scale, which is debatable to say the least.

We are also talking about the virus strength issue and there's good arguments on both sides. I think any change here will wait until we decide about the rest of the ship and be made in relation to those changes (for instance if it lost any damage output it would seem very sensible to increase the virus strength).

For now, I want to let this sit a bit longer while we think things over and see how the sisi feedback plays out.

Thanks for the discussion!

Alright, after a lot of feedback and discussion I'm going to share what will likely be the last set of tweaks to the Stratios and Astero before launch.

We feel that while there are significant weaknesses in the cruiser that do balance it against major abuse, it's simply too strong in its current state. The combination of the covert cloak, black ops portal access and extremely high damage potential make for a ship that does a bit more than we are comfortable with. To tone it down slightly we are going to lower the drone bandwidth to 100m3 and the drone bay to 400m3.

The ship will still have very high damage potential and will certainly still be very powerful overall.

This also makes me feel better about some other small changes that improve the ship, so we'll also be increasing the virus strength bonus to +10 and changing the laser cap use bonus to a medium energy turret optimal range bonus of 50%. We will also extend the virus strength bonus to the Astero.

Please post with feedback, but keep in mind that these changes are made after processing tons of feedback from the forums, my visit to EVE Vegas and a lot of internal discussion.

Thanks