Basically, sentries do have hard counters but few choose to use them because it interferes with how they want to fight otherwise. Unless there is a reason that particular bubble of space is more valuable than your own, make them come to you. Sentry boats are not as mobile as others.

You cannot remain 100% effective while your drones are being killed. We can talk when everyone has guns that can be shot off one by one.

If ishtars are so wildly overpowered, then why are we seeing them in killmails? As losses?

if u make it 8/4/7 will it mean remaking it a combat ship rather than attack ship?

an 8/4/7 tempest still doesnt tank as much as a mega, still doesnt do as much dps as a mega and doesnt even have the grid to fit 800's, meta neuts, cap booster, prop mod and 2x1600's.

even a tempest with a 7th gun and 8/4/7 layout it doesnt match up to a mega, but with a little grid love and combat role it may make a hefty artie platform. take away some drone bay and make it very gun boat like.

just a thought

Not if you do it outside of drone control range.

What is needed is a change in tactics, not a change in game rules.

To the point of the Abaddon need for change possibility this may not be the ship itself but actually the weapon systems and as some have pointed out the tough fitting requirements for this ship. For instance has anyone noticed the lack of use when it comes to the Tachyon Beam Laser II? There is a reason for this and out of the 6 ships in the game that have bonuses to this weapon system only two of them can actually fit them without going over powergrid with just the guns.

APOC and Abaddon 8 T2 Tachs fit 101.81% PG
Armageddon Navy 7 T2 Tachs fit 106.91% PG
Nestor 5 T2 Tachs fit 118.78% PG
Navy Apoc 8 T2 Tachs fit 97.19% PG
Nightmare 4 T2 Tachs fit 73.73% PG

I am not saying that the Tach is the best option for these ships well because Scorch owns but just another thought since Battleships are in discussion.

I fly a Navy Apoc fine without any problems with my capacitor...

You guys are still operating under the premise that you have a lot of time to address these rebalance issues. You don't - you're on borrowed time. Unless you start taking some risks and introduce some new content, EVE is going to creep past the point of no return with respect to subscriber losses.

have to agree. CCP is still adding new content as the mordus ships. Sure they could very well work on creating more PVE content that is challenging.. but that is all ...

I am not defendign him.. I am just translating him. Also missiosn do not need much developer time, just game designer time. So to expect some 4 missiosn per semester would be acceptable demand...

My "agenda" is to prevent the Ishtar from being nerfed to oblivion by large alliance unable to keep up with rapid changes.

You know exactly what I mean.

Sentry drones are not BS weapons. End of story.

It wasn't an argument. You built a strawman and I knocked it down.

Maybe if you drop the drone bay down from 375 to 200?

It would still retain the advantages of drones but reduce sustainability. And it creates a need to compromised between adaptability from light and medium drones and replacements from losses.

You created an argument I never made based on your own talking points.

I directly oppose a huge nerf that would make the Ishtar not worth flying. I also believe other HACs need buffed.

Applied DPS, not paper DPS. If paper DPS mattered, we'd all fly machs and vindis and rattlers everywhere in PvP. Agility of the ship is just a massive bonus on top of that, especially because they're virtually immune to bombing.

..or the Sacrilege. This ship isn't that bad. It has two main problems:
1. It feels sluggish. Even with MWD it feels like using an AB. An agility-push would be nice, CCP.
2. It's missing a low. That utility high is nice, but a low instead would be far more useful (e.g. for a BCU, IS or EANM) Just leave the meds alone.

The speed is ok imho, but the agility is lacking. Also I absolutely understand that people like the utility slot though another low would really be helpful.
Besides, why does everyone having problems with HAMs?

The 1st rule of a balance discussion in the Features and Ideas forum is "if it killed me, it's unbalanced". Now all of a sudden the one class of drones that don't move are OP. We've come a long way from AHACs, Abaddons and Arty Maelstroms being that most unbalanced things ever!

The arti maelstrom at least have zero versatility. That makes it a reasoanble ship. Horrible for everythginthat is not an alpha fleet.

The ishtar onother handis good at a trillion roles.

Instead of changing ships to "rebalance", why not look at a system-wide change to PvP in low sec?

No guys, it's even worse than that, I don't even fly one yet. I'm in a VNI but just bought an Ishtar, and fear that you PvP guys are going to get it trashed before I even find a golden goose :)

not as well as Archons with sentries altough :P :P :P

And also some love for sacrilege.

We are too slow and don't have weapon range.

you can nerf the ishtar, but then what? the next most powerful ship will be the "OMG IT'S SO OP PLS NERF" ship, and then the next, and the next, etc etc.

How about we start focusing on the problems at hand here-

Some ships are just too WEAK.

You guys realise no dev will ever look at this thread again. I don't need to tell you that.

But, people really need to realize perfect balance will never come. Never.

So, I suppose some of that post was fueled by exasperation at human nature.

And battlecruiser. But nothing above or below.

Do not Nerf Ships or weapons systems. If the balance is wrong then Boost the counters.

When you get rid of 'flavour of the month' enough times, you end up with, Vanilla Online

Game theory as taught by who, acti-blizzard? Get out, you know nothing.

Name a battleship (other than the scorpion or nestor) that is unused and I can probably name a type of gameplay where they are commonly used and resonably decent.

Just ignore Harvey. If you look up his posting history in these types of threads all he ever argues for are more nerfs to Minmatar ships. He wants them all to be slow bricks with no DPS. He's basically a troll.

Minmatar ships aren't what they once were. With the tieracide initiative lots of other ships have gotten faster, have better damage application, etc. Just look at the once mighty Rifter. It's now outclassed in every way by the other T1 frigs. This goes for many of the Matari T2 hulls as well; Muninn, Huginn, Vagabond, Wolf, Jaguar, etc. These ships all need some love to make them competitive with their contemporaries. Sorry but another few meters per second speed boost isn't going to suddenly make the Muninn a good HAC. Please take another look at its role, slot layout, etc.

Finally, please don't make the Tempest even worse by giving it a weird slot layout.

EM is the best damage type in the game. It's not even close. EM is the lowest resist on the vast majority of PvP ships. Even armor battleships usually go for a 3-hardener setup now leaving EM as the lowest resist.

EM used to be terrible during the winmatar days when everything had minnie T2 resists, but now Minmatar T2 ships are almost nonexistent and we have Gallente supremacy where all their T2 stuff has EM as the lowest (shield tank) or second-lowest (armor tank) resist. EM is only the strongest resist anymore on armor tanked T1 cruisers and battlecruisers, and even battlecruisers are seeing little use nowadays.