Are you saying that the incompetence was so bad that Fed Navy Omni's no longer have any bonus over T2's?

This is worth repeating. Fed Navy Omnis are now trashGǪ
On my Rattlesnake I run two faction omnis with a t2 scope chip. After the nerf, here is how gardes are affected. 40% reduction in tracking, and 20-25% reduction in effective range, from 59+12 to 45+21 (once you're a few km into garde falloff you're better switching to different drones). The optimal range nerf on scope chips and omnis is so heavy that they're giving up all their tracking bonuses and still lose a chunk of range even with scripts.

Since ISD is all over locking the GD thread what does anyone think the percentage chance that Fozzie will come to this thread and address these issues is? I'm going with 0%

He did respond in my GD thread before ISD locked it down.
Standard "I did what I said I was going to do. Drones are competitive with other weapon systems now".
I believe he was talking about rockets and light missiles, but can't be sure.

Drones just became un-op.

Since when was the rattlesnake OP?

What does this have to do with the Rattlesnake? It's only one of a handful of ships that will be affected.

Can someone tell me when the change was made to sentries that made them so over powered? In what patch did they receive this large buff that lead to them being over powered?

no no .. its not Sentries that were ever the problem.

there are two contentious drone issues ...

Issue 1. The Dominix and the Ishtar have got hull bonuses that have made them ridiculously good sentry boats and they have become the drone mission/rat boat of choice.

2. in fleet battles people started assigning sentry drones en masse to "assist" a single fast locking FC who then fires all the drones at once, creating server issues and seriously upsetting the GSF who for reasons of their own do not want to adopt this doctrine and have trouble countering it.



However I doubt this change is about those issues. The omni change have made the Domi and ishtar even MORE the drone boat of choice than before (the nerf mainly effects unbonused hulls not teh Domi/Ishtar) and it is unlikely the change will have much effect on drone assist doctrines at all (bouncers firing at 150-200km are still fine after the nerf for example) .

What is actually more likely is this change is nothing to do with omnis/sentries being OP at all ... but is instead part of an overall "dumbing down" we are seeing where all modules and ships are getting "balanced" to be more and more similar ... presumably to make it "easier" for new players to get into the game.

Rattlesnake is actually indicative of the capabilities of most sentry platforms, if it isn't OP, it's pretty hard to argue drones are OP.

And the armageddon, gilla, nestor, stratios, drone proteus, myrm, eos and anything else with a drone damage bonus and no sentry application bonus I may be forgetting could equally be substituted in the sentence.

Sounds like the issue is more, heavy drones are crap so the only large drone is sentries.

The OP part is was having a passive module that gives a 25% bonus to optimal and tracking at the same time.

Heavy drones are crap, but that mainly has to do with the limitations and mechanics of non-sentry drones. Heavies, no matter how well balanced, aren't practical long range weapons and as such, can't supplement sentries the way you seem to insinuate they should.

Not saying that heavies should replace sentries as long range weapons, but then again 20k is not long range for a battleship weapon, but it is long enough to not want to use heavy drones for.

One alternative that might see more heavy use is allow the mobile depot to facilitate swapping drones between cargo and drone bay.

Tried the new omnis on an Ishtar in a. C3 w-space site last night. They still work. There's more to do since the Ishtar now needs to swap scripts and maneuver. Previous setup was single omni plus dual prop. Will probably change to single prop dual omni just to save the hassle of switching scripts.

This change is unlikely to affect the general greatness of sentry doctrines. For that they just need to remove drone assist for sentries.

While Ishtar and Dominix will "still work" as you have stated, all the other drone boats will terribly suffer.

This was not a goddamn sentry issue, it was an Ishtar and Dominix bonus issue. These 2 ships had really unlogical hull range bonuses over the other drone boats.

The other problem i have is, that this change is very poorly implemented. I mean we cannot even tell in space or in hanger what the range or tracking bonus is with these new modules. And this from a game i pay every month for....

And still no response from any Dev so far!

I actually agree with you. I mercilessly exploit the domi and ishtar sentry range bonus every day in w-space PVE because it's logical to do so.

This does not mean I agree with the way these ships were changed.

Tracking bonus for all drones makes sense. Range bonus for sentries turns the dominix into a pirate-battleship-beating point defence system. It feels good to be a domi pilot exploiting this nonsense, but in my guts I know it's bad for the game.

Nothing should ever be nerfed because its too good at PvE. PvE is at best tertiary content (behind PvP and industry and hell probably even scamming) in this game and has clearly been an afterthought of the devs since WH space was introduced. The Domi isn't even close to OP in pvp and this was a completely unnecessary nerf that raped the ships that were previously "rebalanced" with drones as a primary weapon system but not given a range/tracking bonus to the hull.

I'm not sure I agree with that. Given that we have the ability to slave sentry drones to a SEBO'd FC in a cruiser I'd say that a domi fleet is the fastest way to burn through an opposing fleet of the same size at any range below 140km.

Even 2 domis or ishtars with a TP amongst them are deadly to any HAC within 100km.

Oh noes, my overpowered toys don't work anymore i better quit the game!!!!.

Themepark carebears are really disgusting.

This is primarily a pvp game Br0beans. The challenge is balancing the two- hence the word: balance.

The concept of balance is a fools endeavour....

If CCP attempts to start this process with their game to try and attract new player or to please the PVP crowd. They will drive their game into the ground.