So my exploration Ishtar is going to do 748 DPS instead of its current 800 DPS, assuming I train for 19 days to get Gallente spec up to 5. That blows. Starting to look like its gonna take 19 days and 400mil in faction DDAs to make my Garde IIs perform the same as they do now. And I still won't be able to control them via F1-F5 like any other weapon in game. Or move around while using them. Arg.

Looking forward to all your feedback. CCP Rise and I have been working hard on these changes and we think they'll be great for the drone ecosystem as a whole.

:Edit:

I'm seeing a fair bit of confusion about the details of the Sentry changes. I left the nitty gritty details out of the text section of the blog since they don't lend themselves to easy summaries and the actual numbers were in the spreadsheet, but I'll go over the end results of the changes to T1 and T2 sentries here so people can see the whole picture. These numbers assume max skills:

Curator I - +15% tracking, -50% falloff, +18.15% damage
Warden I - +40% falloff, +12% damage
Garde I - +50% falloff, +2% damage
Bouncer I - +60% tracking, -12.5% optimal, +14.3% falloff, +2.86% damage

Curator II - +15% tracking, -50% falloff, +8.31% damage
Warden II - +40% falloff, +2.67% damage
Garde II - +50% falloff, -6.5% damage
Bouncer II - +60% tracking, -12.5% optimal, +14.3% falloff, -5.71% damage

your complaint is "isboxer exists" and "bombers exist"

these changes help by making isboxer bombers less effective on fbs sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Exactly.

Right now a Cyclops has 20,000 HP. The other fighter-bombers have 19,500 HP (Mantis and Tyrfing) or 20,500 (Malleus). After the HP is doubled, and the drone durability skill takes effect, their ability to take damage will substantially increase.

A Cyclop's lowest overall resist is against thermal. Its thermal EHP is ~24,500. With Drone Durability IV and the HP doubling, the FB has a new EHP to thermal of ~58,800.

Not to mention your fighter-bombers will be faster than before. So they'll do slightly less damage. Overall I think it's a buff.

A Cyclop's lowest overall resist is against thermal. Its thermal EHP is ~24,500. With Drone Durability IV and the HP doubling, the FB has a new EHP to thermal of ~58,800.

.

Given the cost of T2 sentries and the training needed to get to Sentry V to qualify, I can see the use of T2 sentries dropping off as more and more newer players look at it and decide to stick with T1. T2 probably are barely worth it under new rules unless you already have them trained.

If I get the gist of the original blog what they wanted is new players to be able to train interfacing to IV and Sentry to IV and still be almost as effective as a fully skilled player. Currently taking those two skills from IV to V gives you something like a 50% total damage hike.

You realize how many bombs that number damage you quoted is right?

A scorch bomb applies 2,000 thermal damage to a fighter-bomber (6400 base * (125 m FB signature radius / 400 m bomb explosion radius)). Let's make an assumption that one out of every four stealth bombers is a Nemesis with Covert Ops 4. That raises the average bomb damage to 2,100.

24500 / 2100 = 11.67...
12 scorch bombs to destroy a non-MWDing Cyclops prior to the changes.
Two bomb runs of 7 can easily do this (two of 6 can but the 7th is a backup).

58,800 / 2100 = 28
28 scorch bombs to destroy a non-MWDing Cyclops with Drone Durability IV after the changes. 30 with Drone Durability V.
You need four bomb runs of 8 to destroy this.

heaven forbid you need to run a small antisupport wing to fend off bombers

hint: bombers need to come within 30km of whatever they are bombing

They'll also be up to 25% faster now.



"But what about the small guys", he cries. The small guys have so few supers they can't refit in space off each other when they cyno in, so you're really just nerfing them. Right?
I'm kind of wondering though just how much two extra low slots for tank actually helps these small guys when their supers get caught.
Also to mitigate this problem we do have the mobile depot, although it comes with restrictions that limit its refitting abilities much more than having more supers does.

MAJOR PROBLEM DETECTED!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fighters have a Signature Resolution of 125m !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


That is Cruiser sized! That means Carriers with tracking mods will be able to PERFECTLY hit cruisers with fighters.

This needs to be adjusted before this change goes live. Bump the Signature Resolution up to the level of Sentry Drones, 400m.

That will make them fully effective vs Battleships but less so as ships scale down down in sized.

MAJOR PROBLEM DETECTED!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fighters have a Signature Resolution of 125m !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


That is Cruiser sized! That means Carriers with tracking mods will be able to PERFECTLY hit cruisers with fighters.

This needs to be adjusted before this change goes live. Bump the Signature Resolution up to the level of Sentry Drones, 400m.

That will make them fully effective vs Battleships but less so as ships scale down down in sized.

MAJOR PROBLEM DETECTED!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fighters have a Signature Resolution of 125m !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


That is Cruiser sized! That means Carriers with tracking mods will be able to PERFECTLY hit cruisers with fighters.

This needs to be adjusted before this change goes live. Bump the Signature Resolution up to the level of Sentry Drones, 400m.

That will make them fully effective vs Battleships but less so as ships scale down down in sized.

I'm fine with FB damage getting nerfed, but i think having to use 2 DDAs to get the current damage seems a to much.

Would adjusting the FB damage from 1400 to 1600 be a fair compromise? With 1 DDA you still do less damage but its nearly the same.

You do know that they have a signature resolution of 125m currently, right? Their tracking isn't changing, and their base speed is so poor that they will still struggle to even keep up with a cruiser that doesn't have a prop mod. They aren't a threat to cruisers currently and it is unlikely they will be one after this patch.

we are expanding all universal drone bonuses from skills and modules to Fighters and Fighter Bombers.

To compensate for these changes, the base damage of Fighters and Fighter Bombers is being reduced.

Exactly - and if you take a detailed look at the developers' spreadsheet for the upcoming drone changes, you'll see that the faction sentries are even BETTER than their tech2 counterparts in most areas: they get double the shield/armor HP, slightly reduced structure HP, and 5% better tracking! They're almost universally superior, when other things [such as damage] are held equal between the two.

The only condition under which tech2 sentries will still outpace their faction counterparts is when considering damage bonuses from the racial drone specialization skills, which will add another 10%. So, is it worth it? ... Certainly not in the short-term, but in the long-term, it can be.



Yep - Drone Interfacing 5 gives a (2/1.8) modifier bonus, and Sentry Drone Interfacing 5 gives a (1.25/1.2) modifier bonus, plus the tech 2 (1.2) damage modifier bonus, so...

(2/1.8) * (1.25/1.2) * 1.2 = 10/9 * 5/4 = 50/36 = 1.3889

Thus, it is a 38.89% DPS increase to spend ~1.5-2 months to train both skills up to 5 - and it actually makes the skill point investment sound - yet now tech1 pilots and wealthier capsuleers (who're willing to fork over the ISK for faction sentries) instantly get near-maximum DPS projection levels.

This is part of a movement that is [not-so-subtly] wrecking the value of skill point investment--instead, we are bearing witness to instant-gratification DPS for level 1 sentry drone users.

So much for being a veteran!

Ugh.

Thought it may not be perfectly apparent to the average bitternoob, Fighters are getting a COLOSSAL buff by way of support skills and modules. As stated in the dev blog, the only compensation for the changes is the base damage which will be reconciled by skills alone.

Skill bonuses:
25% max velocity
25% max hit points
25% optimal

Potential module bonuses:
Damage
Tracking
Optimal Range
MWD speed

If you check out the spreadsheet in the devblog you'll see that fighters are pretty damn fast. 2000-2500 m/s max velocity (mwd i assume) and 225-300 m/s cruise speed (not sure if the skill will affect cruise speed or just mwd). These are faster base MWD speed than the new heavy drone speed and just slightly slower base cruise speed. Also the base range on a Dragonfly is 5000+3500 so imagine with skills and modules.

When you add all the skills and Modules to together you end up with an amazing fighter buff.

When you then add on top of that a Signature Resolution of 125 meters, then you have the conditions for this to get out of hand fast.

Do you guys disagree with these points?

Don't you think an unused weapon system needs a buff? Fighters haven't been used on TQ in years, this buff opens them up to at least experimenting with. They still lack the orbit velocity to make any damage at all, but if it's fixed we might actually see Thanatoses fielded in some situations.

stuff...

Yes, It needs a buff and is getting a buff and i'm glad.

However, because of it's current Signature Radius it has the potential to have much greater utility than necessary.

Think about it in this way. Heavy Drones and Fighters will have the same Signature Resolution and very similar stats across the board with the exception of damage and range. After the buff Fighters will not be able to utilize modules as well. This means that fighters will overshadow Heavy drones in pretty much all cases.

Is there a reason for Fighters to have a Sig Res of 125m? Does that help fighters apply damage to Battleships with 400m sig radius in anyway?

Is there any reason not to alter the Sig res of fighters to 350-400m?

If Fighter sig res would be 400m, they wouldn't be able to hit anything, not even immobile battleships like they currently can.