Jenea
Gallente
The Copernicus Institute
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Posted - 2007.10.25 23:18:00 -
[1]
Like a year ago I set my skill to drone interfacing 5 and unsubscribed. I come back to the drone changes; no big deal, they are fixing stuff up and I never really got to experience the hordes of drones. Over the last year I've been expecting to see T2/faction drone modules, faction/officer drones, drone implants, an upgraded drone battleship (we have 5 different versions of the Megathron you know), and maybe some drone damage rigs. No -- none of that. There are industrialist implants and non-working booster implants before there are any drone implants/content.
Simply, the last drone changes were a quick fix; here is max drone DPS and we will add no more content to create a gradual increase of power progression for primary drone users that is seen in other weapon systems. None of those goodies listed above are available for drones. You get in a damn Dominix, get your skills up, maybe put on some T1 modules, and that is it. That is very boring I might add. Not like I can buy a 2 billion ISK module that makes my drones more uber than the next drone user in a Dominix with the same skills with the same modules doing the exact same build as me. Lots of diversity there.
Guess what CCP did this time around? A simplistic quick fix to the issue. Where CCP went wrong is in how they assigned the bandwidth to drones. Does it make any sense that a T1 drone and a T2 drone take the same bandwidth? Many of the problems could have been solved (or at least compromised) by allowing using something like this:
T1 Scout: 5 bandwidth
T2 Scout: 10 bandwidth
Faction Scout: 15 bandwidth
T1 Medium: 15 bandwidth
T2 Medium: 20 bandwidth
Faction Medium: 25 bandwidth
T1 Heavy: 25 bandwidth
etc.
The Raven (75 bandwidth) could then run:
5 T1 Scout (25 bandwidth)
5 T2 Scout (50 bandwidth)
5 Faction Scout (75 bandwidth)
5 T1 Medium (75 bandwidth)
3 T2 Medium (60 bandwidth), 1 T2 Scout (10 bandwidth), 1 T1 Scout (5 bandwidth)
3 Faction Medium (75 bandwidth)
3 T1 Heavy (75 bandwidth)
etc.
Yes, the numbers could be tweaked around to allow most ships to use what they current can use. This was just an example that shows how there would be "diversity and un-nerfing specialized drone ships." Of course, this was just too complex. CCP wanted to do it the easiest way possible, then use the change as an excuse to further minimilize the options for the pure drone user. Don't give me any of that drones are a secondary weapon system and they have to be balanced in line with other weapon systems on the same ship crapola. Drone boats tend to have fewer guns, armor, shields, etc. and should be balanced in context with the whole ship compared to another whole ship.
To further illustrate the simplistic changes implemented, look at the drone skills, they are either rank 1 or rank 5 -- lots of imagination there. Look at the wide variety of drone modules -- lots of imagination there too.
Using varied bandwidth on the T1/T2/Faction drones would still allow ships like the Ishkur and Myrmidon to deploy a set of medium or heavy drones, although maybe not a full set or a full set of T2 drones.
Specifically on the Ishkur, you can still drone 2 medium T2 and 1 scout T2. Okay, yeah, those extra T2 scout drones were breaking the ship. I use the Iskhur for level 2 missions. Guess what? I can do them just as easily in Rifter!
Specifically on the "+X drone bay increase attribute", it is rather weak now. Under the old system, drone bay equaled deployability; now the drone bay is just for storage. Given how some ships are getting a bit of a magical boost to their dronebay, this attribute should now be a bandwidth increase on those ships while their drone bays also get magically bigger. And honestly, if you want to spend three weeks getting AF4 and AF5 to run your 3 mediums on an Ishkur, so what?
I guess that is all I had on my mind. I sure would like to get some feedback on this issue. Sorry for any typos. |