
Alexis Nightwish
101
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Posted - 2015.02.28 22:40:56 -
[3] - Quote
Lug Muad'Dib wrote:Nolak Ataru wrote:
Where did CCP say they are battleship weapons?
CCP Rise wrote:
This "Ishtar has bonuses to battleship weapons" line that keeps coming up is interesting. We talked about it some earlier here. There's parts of it that we can agree about but it's also something that makes drones interesting across all drone using/bonused ships. You could use the same argument to say that Dominix's shouldn't get bonuses to light drones or that Vexors shouldn't be able to use lights or heavies or sentries.
We feel that in general it's an interesting and positive part of drone design that they aren't fixed to ship sizes nearly as strictly as other weapon types. We just need to find ways to have balanced ships as well.
This is a flawed argument. The problem isn't so much being able to use drones outside their size class, it's that they receive full bonuses without any sort of drawback.
Let's take two other ship types that have weapons above their size class: Bombers and Tier 3 BCs.
Both of these ships have definite drawbacks to their high damage potential, most noticeably their paper tank. These ships are very much glass cannons. Additionally they are locked into that weapon. So while it's not impossible to downsize their weapons, they receive no bonuses to them if they do so.
Drone boats, especially the cruiser class ones, bypass this completely. They can use any sized drone, with full bonuses applied to them. This allows them to to selectively choose their damage and application for maximum effect without any of the drawbacks that Bombers or Attack BCs have.
This leads me to see three possible solutions to this fundamental problem:
Solution 1) Keep CCPs current philosophy of drone boats having the unique ability to be upsized (or downsized) by applying their bonus to all drones, but their drone bandwidth must be adjusted like this: Frigates: 25mb Destroyers: 40mb Cruisers: 50mb Battlecruisers: 100mb Battleships: 125mb
Solution 2) Abandon CCPs current philosophy of drone boats, and make all drone boats more like the Guristas line. They would still have their large bandwidth: Frigates and Destroyers only gain bonuses to light drones. Cruisers and Battlecruisers only gain bonuses to medium drones. Battleships only gain bonuses to heavy and sentry drones.
Solution 3) A hybrid of the first two. This solution results in drone boats gaining no bonuses to upsized drones, but full bonuses to drones of their size or lower (again they would still have their large drone bandwidth): Frigates and Destroyers only gain bonuses to light drones. Cruisers and Battlecruisers only gain bonuses to light and medium drones. Battleships only gain bonuses to light, medium, heavy, and sentry drones.
CCP only approaches a problem in one of two ways: nudge or cludge
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