Sirana Telor
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Posted - 2006.10.26 15:39:00 -
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Drones have several disadvantages:
-Destructible
-Cost
-Delayed damage (need to fly to target first)
and a few advantages:
-Don't take up turrent space (tho in the Myr with only 5 turrets max comapred to 7-8 on all other tier 2 BCs that isn't really the case)
-Don't take up fitting (tho it is accounted for when ships are designed, so it's relative - Hurricane has same CPU and 300 more grid for instance)
-Can act independantly to a degree (this is also a curse sometimes)
-Don't use cap (but then neither do arties or missiles)
Now for the disadvantages to be balanced with the advantages... espeically with the destructible part! they need to do a sigificant amount of damage, personally I used to think it should raise the DPS above that of a pure turret ship. With the new different kinds of drones (ECM, Webbing), it adds more options so that may not be the case as much anymore. However since drone ships get NO bonuses to the new kinds of drones they are worse off when using them relative to other ships (since the bonus isn't a drones control bonus anymore).
The destructible part makes a pure drones boat (remember, less turrets and no damage bonus) like the Myr very, very vulnerable unlike any other BC. There needs to be a balanced tradeoff for this vulnerability. Currently there is none.
So to make the ship balanced there are a few options:
1. Give a doubling it's drone bonuses (including damage)
2. Keep the damage the same but increase the drone HP bonus to 3-5x the current amount (or 5-10x?) meaning the drones aren't nearly as vulnerable and it's more likely that opponents attack the ship instead of the drones
3. Double it's current drone bay to reduce the vulnerability, tho that still leaves it somewhat weak
4. Make it a mixed EW/Drone boat (change the second bonus) and increase the drone capacity less. I have little experience with SD tho, so I'm not sure how good that would really be.
Anyway, right now it's the weakest BC out there and almost useless once the drones have been destroyed. Without drones a Vex with it's +25% damage bonus can hit just as hard as the Myr, while it has a smaller sig radius, is faster and a LOT cheaper...
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