Hey everyone! For our Carnyx release at the beginning of June we're planning on making some moderate tweaks to sentry drones, part of our ongoing process of massaging drone combat into a healthier place in the meta.

These are a very specific and limited set of changes that we believe will benefit the game, but it's important to know that these are explicitly not intended to be a "once and for all" fix for every problem related to sentries. There's no such thing as a balance silver bullet.

The main goals of these changes are to further improve the intra-class balance between sentry drones (smoothing out the progression in tracking speed and compressing the damage spread a bit) and slightly reducing the power level of some sentry fits and doctrines, especially for Bouncers and Curators that are quite dominant in a few areas.

Current plan is:
Gardes: -25% Optimal, +66.7% Falloff, -3% Damage, -6.67% Tracking
Curators: -3.1% Damage, -13% Tracking
Bouncers: -3.3% Damage, -12.5% Tracking

We welcome feedback as always!

With everything else empty 8 tachs uses 26726.4/26250 grid on an apoc/baddon. Already 2% over.

1400 arty on a mael uses 25740/26250 leaving you 510 for everything else.

425 rails are kinder, but then gallente is the master race

Couple of fun facts about drones - current stats compared to other weapon systems - no skill bonuses applied.


Tracking:
bouncer - 0.019
1400's - 0.009

curator - 0.028
tachyon beam - 0.014

warden - 0.012
425 rail - 0.01

Yup 2x the tracking than large guns (except wardens) - maybe more tracking nerfs are required?

Damage: 0 lvl skills, faction medium range ammo(you need it to have similiar range as drones).

bouncer - 24dps - 36+54km range
1400's with titanium sabot - 13dps - 48+35km range

Tachyon with standard - 16dps - 53+20km range
Curator - 26dps - 42+12km range

425 rail with lead- 14dps - 58+24km range
Warden - 22dps - 60+42km range

Eve if you count hat domi has 7.5 effective drones vs 8-10 effective turrets of battleships the damage at range is way better for drones boats. Maybe DPS should be decreased a bit more.

Also projectiles suck, AC's need more range - barrage would be ok-ish if it had +100% fallof and selectable damage, and arty can't fit on anything.

Serious about my first question:

"I'm curious, what evidence do you have to support your argument that both drones and hulls are the problem, as opposed to just drones, or just hulls. I've seen no data analysis posted by devs in this thread as to why they think sentries themselves are still the problem."

We all know that the ishtar having access to sentries is stupid beyond belief (and by we I mean everyone but CCP) No one would think twice about the ranges of sentries if they were bs only and above weapons. Hell in that regard they are even underpowered compared to them considering some of the extreme ranges you can hit with rails and artys!

Yet, they keep nerfing sentries into the ground to try and fix this issue with the ishtar.

So my question is, what the hell are they looking at that they think sentries are still the problem?

As to your post, I'm not sure what point you were trying to prove as I already agree that the ishtar is stupid OP right now.

Ive always trusted you fozzie to not need a helping hand. But here i am. Making my first ever post, since you can't seem to see the forest for the trees. Sentry drones are FINE. Leave them as they are now and just do this...


The Ishtar we all want to see

Gallente cruiser bonus :

7.5% to light, medium, heavy drone max velocity and tracking speed
10% to drone damage and hitpoints

Heavy Assault Cruiser bonus :

5000m bonus to drone operation range
7.5% to sentry drone tracking

375 M3 drone bay
125 mb drone bandwidth


The Dominix we all want to see

Gellente Battleship bonus

7.5% to drone max velocity and optimal range
10% bonus to drone damage and hitpoints

375 m3 drone bay
125 mb drone bandwidth

The sentry drones out of any other ship are fine. Their ranges, tracking, damage, hitpoints, and immobility feel perfect as they are now. Nerfing them will only pound other ships that would use them into the dust. If you want to take 10-15% of the optimal from gardes and give them the same falloff then cool. But leave them be besides.

i think drones need a much stronger dps nerf .. consider reducing the RoF on sentries

"Minor decrease".

People don't seem to play the game, and when they do they play in Ishtars, Gilas, Rattlesnakes.

Drones in PvP have become what missiles were/are in PvE, but only for brain-dead & OP-broken PvP.

Regarding Garde II sentries:

1) Base tracking is 0.036 rad/sec.
2) A 425mm Railgun II has 0.01 rad/sec base tracking!

That's 3.6 times less, and with Javelin L T2 ammo, it's 0.01 * 1.25 = 0.0125 rad/sec.

Thanks for the laugh!

Its obvious you guys dont listen to your fan base at all and have become arrogant even with the replys.I have endured nerf after nerf after nerf from you guys and have changed weapon systems/ships more times then i care to admit, some of which really made the game a lot more fun for me.When this nerf goes into effect tomorrow it will further hinder my ability to get pve grinding isk to fund my pvp over quickly before i smash my face into a wall from boredom.I am seriously debating on whether or not i want to continue to contribute to your paychecks.More then likely, after 8 years of good times(for the most part), i will end my sub this month.

Optimal nerf on Gardes is a little harsh.
Maybe like 15%? No one uses them on towers or in kiting Ishtar combat anyway.

The Curator and Bouncer nerf is needed.

Will this finally discourage people from using the Ishtar?

Sentries: even do they more or less damage / tracking / range - THEY ARE DESTROYABLE...
Guns, guns, guns: even do they require pg and cpu to fit, more or less cap to use - THEY ARE NOT DESTROYABLE

The funny part is - it's easier to destroy guns with the ship itself, than the drones.
Ishtar has about 60k EHP. How much do you think its drones have? Well... TWICE as much.

Sentries are OK the way they are now.

Ishtar has about 60k EHP. How much do you think its drones have? Well... TWICE as much.

http://i.imgur.com/afJycoE.png?1

Healthy, balanced gaem

Very much worse damage resists, however, with no way to improve them.

You're comparing apples to orangutans.

How about you go back to my post where I compare apples to apples?

It's clear you have no interest in actual real numbers.

Yea i totally get what you're saying. With all the nerfing and sudden changes, I just don't know how long my enthusiasm for eve is gonna last. CCP bought out the T3D's which was a great introduction and after hearing all the positive feedback for the Confessor, I decided to trained for it. Then CCP drops a bomb on them as soon as I finished training for the ships and now coincidentally I just finish training for 3 sentry Domis on 3 other accounts that I was gonna use for C3/C4 wormholes...sigh then CCP does it again. These sudden and often nerfs are starting to knock the wind out of me and now I'm thinking of dropping 3 accounts because of as of this nerf, they're worthless.

you scoop the abandoned ones to replace your own

noun, plural sentries.
1. a soldier stationed at a place to stand guard and prevent the passage of unauthorized persons, watch for fires, etc., especially a sentinel stationed at a pass, gate, opening in a defense work, or the like.
2. a member of a guard or watch.

What if you could scoop any sentry drone? That would be fun.

Edit: I mean even if they are not abandoned.

Introducing a stupid mechanic is not the way to fix balance issue. If you have enough people to scoop the drones without gettign wrecked, you might as well put them in Ishtars and kill your enemy...

The whole issue with drone balance stems from the way drone size progresses up the ship hierarchy, since you are getting the biggest size of drones on medium ships, whereas with any other sort of weapon platform you'd have take one step up the ladder to get a ship that can match the same DPS output, rebalancing the drone bandwidth of cruisers and adjusting the bonusses on some of them to settle them in a more appropriate place would fix this issue more cleanly, but would require a not quite trivial amount of work to get just right.
A more blunt balance pass like this one will likely still be effective as a way to tone down the power of ishtar doctrines, but it hurts other parts of the game that were fine with the state of sentries before the patch(ie sentry battleships, sentry Rattlesnakes are hurt quite badly in particular since they get no tracking bonusses).

like 2k+ dps rattlesnakes care.. but otherwise a valid point