reported by
CCP Tuxford | 2005.10.27 12:17:02
What's wrong with the drones we do have?
Well there is nothing really wrong with them, they are just very limited. They don't really do anything other than kill stuff or mine stuff. They are not even that flexible at doing that, there is no way to for example increase the damage drones do, or their speed or anything really.
So what's being added then?
New drones, combat, logistic and EWAR. New modules that influence control range, drone damage, drone tracking and drone optimal range.
Let's start with the drones
EWAR drones
- ECM drones
- Sensor dampening drones
- Tracking disrupting drones
- Target painting drones
- Energy neutralizing drones
- Stasis webifying drones
Sentry drones
They anchor down when you launch them, have very high range, poor tracking, many hitpoints and are large. They come in four flavors.
- Amarr sentry drone - good tracking, decent optimal range, fair damage, small falloff
- Caldari sentry drone - decent tracking, high optimal range, lowest damage, decent falloff
- Gallente sentry drone - good tracking, low optimal range, highest damage, ok falloff
- Minmatar sentry drone - poor tracking, good optimal range, second lowest damage, great falloff
Logistic
Shield transporting drones and Armor repairing drones. Not much to say about these drones except they boost your shields and repair your armor respectively.
What about modules?
Well they are not many and not that complex. So far there are three of them. One increases the damage output of all combat drones, one increases your drone control range and another boosts the optimal range and tracking on drones.
How about skills
What the hell lets release a few of those.
- Drone Navigation - Increaseses the velocity of drones, is also required to control the stasis webifying drones
- Drone Durability - Increases the hitpoints of all drones
- Repair Drone Operation - Increases efficiency of shield transporting and armor repairing drones, is also needed to use those drones
- Electronic Warfare Drone Interfacing - Increases drone control range of all drones, is also needed to control EWAR drones.
- Sentry drones Interfacing - Increases damage of all sentry drones, also needed to control sentry drones
Well what are you nerfing then
Drones take up a lot of resources so we would much rather see less drones but have them better instead. This will mostly be done by changing the drone interfacing skill, drone control ship bonuses. This is of course not as easy as doubling the damage output and hitpoints of drones, so here's what's being done.
- Drone Interfacing skill changed 20% bonus to drone damage and 20% bonus to drone mining yield
- Drone hitpoint increase
- Moros' 5 drone per dreadnought level changed to 70% bonus to drone thermal damage per level. It also gets a drone hitpoint bonus, either static or per level
- Drone control bonus of Dominx gets changed to 10% drone thermal damage per level
- Drone control bonuses of Vexor, Vexor Navy Issue and Ishtar gets changed to 10% drone thermal damage per level
- Drone control bonus of Arbitrator gets changed to 10% EM drone damage per level
- Drone bays reduced to half of what they are today
- Drones hitpoints boosted
This doesn't really sound like nerf at all
Well in some cases it is and in some it isn't. Take for example Dominix. Now it can use 15 drones with max skills but with these changes it could only use 5. These 5 drones do have the damage output of 15 though. But what if that dominix pilot only had Gallente Battleship skill at level 4 and drone interfacing at level 4. Now that pilot could use 13 drones but after these changes he could use 5 but they would give the equivilant of 12.6 drones.
Another concern is that it is easier to kill 5 drones than it is to kill 15 by targetting them and kill them which is the reason for the drone hitpoint boost. On the other hand it takes just as long to kill 5 drones as 15 with a smartbomb so it would actually be better to have 5 drones with more hitpoints than 15 with the current hitpoints.
Those new drones look like they are totally overpowered
You are now limited to 5 drones per ship so all the ships can't really be using all kinds of EWAR. One drone won't be as effective as a single module and you would need several modules to actually get the same results as a single module does. Also the drones die and the EWAR effect with it but the only way to stop an EWAR module on you you have to kill the aggressing ship.
discussions and stats
Comments
Kara Nightly on 31 October 2005
wow looks good
Cyranus on 31 October 2005
While making them tougher and more varied will be nice, I see dominixes gettng their teeth ripped out by a single large Smart Bomb. (Not bitching, just observing).
Kara Nightly on 31 October 2005
Ewww. bad bad bad. Niche damage is horrible, its bad enough on all my missle ships but you are killing the domi :(
Faldafeykir on 31 October 2005
Why reduce the drone bay in half? Ain't that way too much? As we would like to have more variety of the drones with those new ones.
Edge1 on 31 October 2005
Cool, sounds good.
Sentry drones will be interesting, and nice way of reducing the amount of drones causing tonnes of lag.
As I was reading it, I was thinking, great everyone will use drones, thus more lag.
But I was happy once I read the last couple of paragraphs. Less drones in space, but more useful.
Sounds like a plan
David Corbett on 31 October 2005
Alright - my first concern is that Dominix is stuck with only Thermal drones. That's no good, it's now yet another turretship that can only do one real sort of damage - Thermal in this case - which really sucks against a) player tanks and b) NPC tanks, especially those of the Arch Angels. Why not just make it a blanket boost to drone damage? Tempest gets a boost to all projectile damage, not just with ammo that does kinetic/explosive damage, for example.
Adam C on 31 October 2005
sounds good ^^
Porro on 31 October 2005
Err why is the ishtar/dominix limited to thermal damamge. The dominix especially, no other battleship is limited to 1 damage type.
Raven on 31 October 2005
Interesting changes. It is a big nerf to the moros though, unless you make them quite tough. Are we to assume that it can only use 5 drones now instead of 35?
Onigumo on 31 October 2005
its ok....but...i was kinda hoping to actually fly 15 drones in my domi, current skill training has blocked this goal for a LONG time =P so when is this being implemented?
Pirahna Joe on 31 October 2005
lol dominix with 5 drones. The image is just funny ... even if i'm a bit upset to just have finish Drone interfacing 5 to control 10 drones ...
Tuxford on 31 October 2005
Moros gets 70% bonus to damage output which results in about the same damage output but only through fewer drones.
prsr on 31 October 2005
interesting... looking forward to see how this pans out.
Any chance of drones getting stuck on each other or travelling at orbit speed when they shouldn't being fixed too?
Graham2004 on 31 October 2005
goona be good :) use my drones most of the time so will help
Merkin on 31 October 2005
Lasers take up a lot of resources so we would much rather see less lasers but have them better instead.
Copy and pasted from above and had a word changed, sounds wrong doesn't it? I think you get my point
Lost Minnity on 31 October 2005
One question, would 1 smartbomb still be able to take out a drone in a hit?
And what would be the size of the new drones?
And would the sentry drones be able to be reused (unanchored)?
James Lyrus on 31 October 2005
Well, I think that's sweet. Sentry drones especially. I'm a little concerned about limitations of colours though.
Matthew Johnson on 31 October 2005
It´s a nerf anyway. So gallente have to stick to thermal drones, making tanking against them more easy. We gallente (and amarr also) want to have a chance to deal damage not only of two types :-(
dabster on 31 October 2005
gonna look boring with 5 drones in the air tbh :/
Kara Nightly on 31 October 2005
Tux: what about MINING DRONES??? will they get an appropriate increase to their mining cycles? (they better :))
Derron Bel on 31 October 2005
Awesome, but could you explain the Sentry Drones more?
TomB on 31 October 2005
We are looking at and working on a fix for "drones getting stuck at each other and going home very slowly to owner".
Greme on 31 October 2005
So basically, drones are becomming yet another ship module, only outside the ship :/
Derron Bel on 31 October 2005
i mean, do sentry drones work as counters to other drones? do they stay active when you warp out?
Salene Gralois on 31 October 2005
Most sounds good, but i REALLY dislike the change of +1 per BS level to +10% Thermal dmg per level on the Dominix.
I like being able to run with a gaggle of only Kinetic, only Explosive or only Thermal drones as the situation requires. I'd be all in favor of the +10% damage not being tied to a specific damage-type.
Alyssa Keliaster on 31 October 2005
Not really chuffed with this. Been training drone skills for ages. I know this means we use less drones for same effect, but really the thermal limit on Dom and Vex when gallente are supposed to be the drones specialists?? Caldari missiles got nerfed but they can still use other missile types and unlike missiles, drones get popped real easy by smartbombers.
Guess we'll wait and see.
Greme on 31 October 2005
Also I agree, Gallente should not be limited to using only one damage type. I myself fly drone ships (gallente) using minmatar drones. A single damage use of drones will make the tanking possibilities too easy vs dominixes.
sableye on 31 October 2005
you can;t restict the gallente to just thermal damage this will make all over drones useless.
Winterblink on 31 October 2005
Well, that's one way to reduce lag. :)
Mallik Hendrake on 31 October 2005
I like the concept, but Domi/Ishtar should get a flat 10% to drone damage. No reason to limit them to one damage type. One of the hits of using drones is that you can pick your damage type. Gives you a reason to put up with all the inconveniences.
Derick Zoolander on 31 October 2005
first half gave me goosebumps, second half made me cringe.
the drone damage bonuses are crap. as so many have mentioned, we're now gonna be stuck in a rut when it comes to damage types. couple that with tanking improvements and drones wont be a weapon platform any more they'll turn into another midslot module.
frankly, that 2nd half completely sucks
prsr on 31 October 2005
<3 Tomb \o/
babylonstew on 31 October 2005
woohoo, now my only defense agianst close range frigs for my raven has been cut in half???
IE, half the current drone bay, and wtf wioth caldari getting uber long range crap damage sentry drones??, we need the damn drones to hit close in fast stuff, that our misile do pathetic damage on, not really far out stuff that our mi8ssile do crap damage on.
Derron Bel on 31 October 2005
Err why is the ishtar/dominix limited to thermal damamge. The dominix especially, no other battleship is limited to 1 damage type.
They DO mount things other than drones yknow.
Mamoud on 31 October 2005
Changes sound scary to me, but i won't complain unill i try everything. But i feel sad now that my celestis (sp?) can't carry a heavy drone.
Elise Masutra on 31 October 2005
well i don't like it that much. bonus on damage type isn't a good thing in my eyes. but let's see how it works and start complaining afterwards.
Dark Shikari on 31 October 2005
So drones are now forced to be a secondary weapon? Why? Whats wrong with them being a primary weapon on at least some ships?!
Kylania on 31 October 2005
:( I really don't like this, you say it's better, but now we lose 5 to 10 drones per ship, we lose damage (10% of known tankable damage vs more drones of whatever kind of damage), we lose MANY options (you're cutting all our drone space in half AND making us use up precious module slots for that).
I really don't like these changes at first glance. You can't add many many many new "options" than cut our ability to use those options in half.
Kara Nightly on 31 October 2005
I blame the "Nerf the Thorax" thread. I like to fly caldari and gallente ships. Now both get flavored damage. Duramaller ftw?
Rod Blaine on 31 October 2005
I'd reconsider the limitation on one damage type for drone damage bonuses really. they are usefull exactly because they allow usage of off-race damage types. For example, I tend to always use explosive drones on gallente ships.
Now, second issue.
All the drone variants will be available in small/med/ large I presume ?
Nelius on 31 October 2005
I'm worried, for the first time since the launch of eve, im worried about the changes, mostly because im flying the Ishtar, and the changes you're making here, is radical.
I'm crossing my fingers for the best, but saving up to a Deimos to replace my Ishtar, just in case... :-)
Rod Blaine on 31 October 2005
oh, and
WHEN ?
Lee N on 31 October 2005
wtf.
Only termal drones on gallente ships? Not at all predictable? Termal tank equals insta win against gallente.
I have trained all the drone specialization skills and now you're telling me I will only be able to use the termal ones? Gallente are drone specialists, they should be equally good on all drones damage types.
Irongut on 31 October 2005
New drone types = great!
Using fewer drones at once = terrible!
Why oh why do you have to nerf my favourite weapon? I've got more sp in Drone skills than anything else (other than Learning) and now you want to devalue that investment. :(
Alex Harumichi on 31 October 2005
I really don't like limiting Gallente drone to thermal only, that removes the one damage source that gallente have that isn't th/kin. This sounds like a big nerf to all drone users, imho.
Oh, and I really hope you're doing something to light drones at the same time. Currently, even 10 of them cannot do much to an inty. One hopes that 5 of the new light drones will be able to destroy a frigate-sized ship (or at least hit reliably), otherwise they will be even more useless than before.
I'll have to think on this, but on first read this sounds bad. Please rethink the thermal-only thing on Dom, Ishtar etc, it's a bad idea.
Avant Royce on 31 October 2005
What about a drone repair module that repairs drones that are in your drone bay? Or just let drones be auto-repaired over time while in the bay?
Derron Bel on 31 October 2005
I swear. Is there some sort of magic filter that makes people not see the vast damage and hitpoint increases in the devblog?
Zzazzt on 31 October 2005
The idea in principle is good - but i disagree with taking away the extra drones on the specified droneships. They're already losing 5 drones with the change to drone interfacing. Limiting the drone ships to 5 drones like every other ship and tying each ship to a racial damage type with the far less useful "counter-nerf bonus" completely removes one of their main strengths. Remember - choice of drone type is the only way amarr & gallente ships can mix their damage types whilst taking advantage of their racial bonuses. Tying gallente droneships to 5 thermal drones will send them to the graveyard, as peeps will just fit an extra thermal hardener when fighting them. I'd say go the with the changes, but leave the droneship bonuses (and dronebay sizes) as they currently are.
Helison on 31 October 2005
Please don´t restrict the damage-bonus on gallente-ships to thermal drones! I want still use other drones than Ogres!
Mallik Hendrake on 31 October 2005
p.s. give t2 heavy drones damage resistances like assault style. :)
Garia666 on 31 October 2005
And yet another set of skills.. bah
ParMizaN on 31 October 2005
Hopefully that wll reduce a lot of the load no the server \o/
Derron Bel on 31 October 2005
You know what would be really cool? If the drone damage bonuses were applied on top of the existing type.
Like a Gallente ship with +100% thermal drone damage that launched Warriors would be doing half explosive half thermal.
NoLock LetsNegociate on 31 October 2005
Love changes.
EXECEPT : "Drone control bonus of Arbitrator gets changed to 10% EM drone damage per level"
Most NPC have a Thermal weakness, we all know that. That the reason why I always use thermal (and kinetic for drones) in my Arbitrator. An EM bonus is sound useless to me ;(
Why do you ever want Amarr to use EM, Gatlente Thermal and so on ? Drones where last chance for us to vary damage type : Lasers do EM and Thermal damage only, drones and missiles are our only change to make different damages type... You'll say we could ever use a different drone type but in this case we loose a ship's bonus. Arby is actually weak enough.
Moreover this will make fiting (and resists) predictable.
/me crying on the futur lose of his main pleasure : sending 13 hogoblins II on his poor victims.
Xrak on 31 October 2005
im not so sure about the new drone types, but i totally agree with the changes to bonus. And people complaining about the bonus to thermal dmg, its just as fair as caldari ships gettin bonus's to Kinetic missiles.
Clonebabe on 31 October 2005
at derron bell, go do the numbers, raven loses 50% of its drone defense, but gains back only 60% of the damage, now, sound like a nerf?, yep, thought so
Lhiannon on 31 October 2005
Now keep in mind, all who are commenting about the "limit" to thermal damage drones that the ships now impose, that the caldari are "limited" to kinetic missiles. As far as I know, there are no caldari ships with bonuses to anyother damagetype missiles than kinetic. If you want to surprise someone, you go after them with the damagetype that's not expected. Even if you're doing 10% less damage because you don't have the bonus, you're doing it in a damagetype they're not tanking for if they expected a standard gallente loadout... *kaboom*
Denrace on 31 October 2005
FInally the Ishtar will get put in line with other HACs. No longer will it do obscene damage, and also tank extremely well, and nos too, but will instead have really boosted versatility with the new drone options. Perhaps Ishtars will now be very crap at 1vs1, but EXCELLENT as fleet support. Which is what it should be, leaving the Deimos for the 1vs1 style pvp and solo hunting. Excellent.
/me claps
Lee N on 31 October 2005
Xrak: Not quite.. you can still use the same amount of missiles.
Previously gallente was able to use 15 drones regardless of the damage type, now we can only use 5. and the damage bonus on drone types will only boost the damage to reflect those 15 drones on one drone type.
Denrace on 31 October 2005
Oh, and now you Gallente will know what it is like to have a rediculous bonus to one type of [drone] damage.
Raem Civrie on 31 October 2005
Oh good lord.
This will seriously screw up the Gallente. And what's with the obsession re. race damage? Caldari and their kinetic bonuses, Gallente and their thermal...
Thank god I sold my Domi
Derron Bel on 31 October 2005
For the Raven, gee.. use 5 Target Painting Drones and WTFPWN.
NTRabbit on 31 October 2005
To everyone complaining about having just a thermal bonus on your gallente droneships - welcome to the world of the Cerberus, whiners
Zzazzt on 31 October 2005
Liannon - no they're not. Only certain ships get kinetic damage bonuses - most caldari racial bonuses are EW or RoF/velocity/range related.
Also, when are these changes happening? Before or after carriers are IG?
Noillia Durmot on 31 October 2005
Let me first say I see the point of reducing the number of drones in space. I`ve seen the lag they can cause. It can be horrific so I applaude that part but...
I domi understand why the Domi bonus should only be for thermal damage. It takes away the 1 good thing about the domi: its versatility. Now u`ll come up against a domi and know you`ll be taking thermal damage with a bit of kinetic from the guns. ATM the domi is under powered but at least it`s unpredictable.
Also where is the mining yield bonus for the domi`s drones. In effect I`ll be going from 15 mining drones down to 5 with double the yield. What happened to the other 5 I spent months training for?
All in all a very good change if the domi gets a bonus on all damage type and mining yield. Otherwise I shall spend months crying everytime I see my no-longer-useful domi sat in dock
PotajiTo on 31 October 2005
Dont whine about the thermal bonus, I use caldari ships and have the same limitation but with kinetic. It should be a x% damage bonus to all types of damages.
Sforza on 31 October 2005
Not happy about this at all. I'd rather drones were kept as they and no new ones introduced than to suffer these changes to the Gallente drone specialty ships and skills. 1.28m sp's in Drone interfacing now seems an awful waste for me to have trained. As others have said, if you're going to force this on us, change the drone interfacing bonus to all DMG types, not just thermal.
Helmut Rul on 31 October 2005
Derron target painting hardly affects missiles, You get a lot more benefit from target painting on turret ships
Still it is rather interesting to note that there is such a uprorar regarding racial damage on drones usually when people that use caldari ships complain about their less than stellar damagebonus they are usually told to stop whining
Bsport on 31 October 2005
feel alittle sick atm, thanks to the 5 mill skill points in drones.
again same as the others,
first half brillant, second half not feeling to good because of it,
and please tell me why i should use a drone ship after the changes. and i personly dont like the reducion in drones numbers . it realy limits them. atm i use 15 drones assigned into 3 groups of 5 this allows me to split the damage to a few targets if needs be, with the new system its not very flexable, so i'm sorry this is a real real bad call
Laughlyn Vaughns on 31 October 2005
i like a coupel other have just done drone interfacing to 5 to get max of 10 drones and enjoyed my vex floating with 14 tech II drones, i agree that it shud be an increase to more than just on edamage typ ecos thermal i sjust pants, addmittedly caldari get just kinetic bonuses but kinetic missiles rock when attacking either shield or armor, the Moros is a bit of a bitch, taking down 5 drones will be a lot easier than the 35 a fully trained moros operator wud have had. i am interested in mining drones tho, one the other reasons i trained Dron einterfacing up was 10 miner II drones, i hope that the yield is increased to compensate fo rthe 5 missing miner drones gone down the pan, only good thing is that the covetor is now more apt at protecting itself in 0.5 systems cos 4 drones with a few extra bonuses will help out.
also i think keeping the drone carriers skill bonuses so they can at least still be classed as drone carries, otherwise there is nothing to single them out, they just your regular ship with a few drones. what about carriers? i thought they was supposed to be as ultimate drone carriers (hence name) whats the difference to them if they can just use the same amount of drones as everyhting else but just bigger they just a few new models with nothing else on em
Discorporation on 31 October 2005
[cackles]
Oh Tux, I love you. Drone interfacing 5 will be useful :D
Joe Jardine on 31 October 2005
Some nice changes and some not so nice changes. I understand that large amounts of drones cause lots of lag but there is something special about a drone carrier like a Vexor, Ishtar and Dominx launching swarms of drones. Ok so you say the damage will be the same but the look and feel of controling all those drones will not. How can a drone specialist ship carry the same as any other? I think its a sad day when something as cool as swarms of drones disapears in the name of stopping lag. There must be another answer!
loot thiefkiller on 31 October 2005
right so you nerf caldari race so bad i stopped using caldari ships, so i switch to gallente ships and train turrets and drones.. i use the domi for hunting angels in 0.0 now your tellign me that i can only get a bonus on thermal drones when expo drones work the best on angels.. thats not fair.. domi is a pure drone ship and uses drones basically as primary weapons.. just makes me want to quit the game.. all the time spending training for CCP to nerf the sh*t out of everything!!! good going CCP..
Tessen on 31 October 2005
Please make bonuses to damages for Moros, Domi, Ishtar, Vexor and Arbi for all drones type and that would be a perfect change.
Lawrance Waterhouse on 31 October 2005
I think the changes made sense, but ( as many mentioned ) the damage bonus to be specialiced on Thermal doesn't :(
Please, take the bonus for ALL Drones, not only for thermal ones. Or do it for 1 choosable ( by module or whatever ) type.
So it is less predictable which types to tank against.
Greets
Xune on 31 October 2005
Those changes are unnessesary and completly anhilate a completly fine system.
1 Point you never were thinking about (im sure about that) you will ahve to make drones get targeted 5 times slower as they are now. A single ceptor can take 5 drones out in the blink of an eye even with booste hp´s.
WIth 15 Drones.. he has to target evrything 1 by 1 which leave you time to call them back in and protect them from the fire of the ceptor.
overall you might thinka bout "Never touch a running system" and what this could mean about drones.
Black Daracon on 31 October 2005
some people said about mining drones, well because of
"Needful things for mining coming in Red Moon Rising, 4 skills, 3 leadership modules, 2 mining upgrade modules - one for Ice and one for regular mining. 4 hardwiring implants and a leadership implant (mindlink). We also have Tech 2 Mining Barges and we added named ice-, strip- and Deep Core miners in addition to named mining upgrade modules."
this is probly why everyone is now limited to 5 of the same current mining drones ....
Chade Malloy on 31 October 2005
I like the new drones itself, but only 5 drones max? booring :( And what is this crap about smaller dronebays? Atm a taranis can carry 3 small drones for example which are fine for diversion etc, with the new changes it can carry 1,5 = 1 drone? thats a bad change...
Trenton Osris on 31 October 2005
OK all that looks good but only 5 drones? i can use 9 curentlly and this comes in handy for mining as i can destroy most any rat that comes into the belt
Brannor McThife on 31 October 2005
Dear gawd...Gallente getting it in the kisser. I'm Caldari, and I feel for you guys. :/ I used my Domi for mining...but those of you that use it for 0.0 combat... I offer you my shoulder to cry on. :(
Crissy on 31 October 2005
Wow this all sounds good. The reduction in the number of drones will make a great diffrence on the good old "Lag" effect in fleet battles. Well I think the Thorax/deimos could use a little drone loving.... *lol*
Mallik Hendrake on 31 October 2005
Frankly for the record I think that the kinetic only damage bonus for missiles is flubbing retarded too and should be repealed and made flat to all missiles.
slapp on 31 October 2005
NOOOOOOOO!!! NOOOOOOOO!!! WHY? GOD WHY??? Gallente will be forced to use thermal only. And 5 drones only??
Meris on 31 October 2005
Way to take all the versatility out of Gallente ship setups. Thumbs down from me.
DeathSpawn66 on 31 October 2005
STOP *snip* WITH THINGS THAT ARE NOT BROKEN. What is next? Let's make shuttles that can go into siege mode and wtfown a whole region if we get the right skill trained to level 4.
Jim Steele on 31 October 2005
An aprehensive thumbs up, one worry is that the drones wont be as effective as they once were particulary as a last defence against frigates due to having less drone space. I also like the swarm of drones effect, but i understand the reasons behind the changes.. too much lag. .
Ampoliros on 31 October 2005
Please make the drone bonuses across the board; limiting it to thermal functions as a nerf because pre-nerf I'd have 11-15 drones that can do all four damage types; the idea is to reduce that to 5 drones, but keep same damage. You would be in essence changing the dominix's ability to 'able to launch +1 thermal drone per level', which is a significant nerf.
As well, I don't like the idea of my 'drone swarms' reducing to 4-5 drones each; I wonder, is it perhaps possible to turn each single launch drone into a small squadron? Perhaps 3 drones in each, so you still get that 'omgwtf drone swarm' feeling, but less server lag?
Also, what module slots are the new drone modules going to be? Are they passive, or active?
DeathSpawn66 on 31 October 2005
I'm not even gallente and this pisses me off, I trained all ur stupid missile skills which still suck, now to use drones well i need to train all this crap? Ew drones? Wtf.
Spuki on 31 October 2005
Change the thermal/em damage bonus to all drone damage bonus ... otherwise you are going to destroy the second race after caldari with your changes!
BillyBong2 on 31 October 2005
Drone control bonus of Arbitrator gets changed to 10% EM drone damage per level
As Amarrian we are stuck with EM/TH damage from our lasers. Can we please get a different damage type???
Electric Mistress on 31 October 2005
Just as I thought the arbitrator would come in line with other drone cruisers....it gets EM damage bonus WTF. I like the idea of making drones more diverse, but not limiting races to particular damage types, seriously what's the point.
If this idea has primarily come about as a lag control method..won't the new hardware upgrades cure the majority of lag anyway?
Some nice ideas though, just please test this thoroughly before implementing it. :)
Diana Merris on 31 October 2005
Racial damage bonus: People seem to be exagerating this a bit. the difference is between 15 drones worth of thermal or 10 drones worth of the others. Its not like you can't use the other drones they just do less damage.
That said, I never liked the one damage type bonus to missiles and don't like it on drones either.
Ampoliros on 31 October 2005
To clarify on the drone swarm, just have it show up on screen as 3-5 drones in formation (or so) per launch, have the firing visual effect be of three drones shooting; but everything function as above with one drone. Same feeling of drone control (Domi looks like it has 15 drones still, but actually only has 5), but less server lag.
feroci0us on 31 October 2005
wow, this sucks, what a waste of frakking training time. i want drone swarms, damnit.
Lady Chiron on 31 October 2005
BAD. It is BAD. I would prefer to control more drones as opposed to controlling less drones with more power. And a Moros with only 5 drones is just WRONG.
Ampoliros on 31 October 2005
Ah, and are the sentry drones going to do the typical damage types? Matari explosive, Gallente thermal, Amarr EM, Caldari Kinetic?
If they're decent sized (enough so that I can fit 5 in my dominix's drone bay), I shall be happy. Equivalent of 15 sentry drones ftw. :D
slapp on 31 October 2005
Ampoliros: i have no idea who you are, but your arguments suck. And so do you. It still doesn't justify what CCP is doing with all the changes
rowbin hod on 31 October 2005
damn, and i trained up all my drone stuff so my domi would be good :( like so many others have said, please don't restrict gallente drone users to thermal drones. That would truly suck.
Mallik Hendrake on 31 October 2005
Maybe a better fix here would be to make each race have 4 types of drone. "gallente" drones are all slow and heavily armored and do a lot of damage. Minmatar drones are all fast and do less damage. et cetera. yarr.
Then Ishtars/Doms only get bonuses to Gallente drones.
Mitchman on 31 October 2005
Make the drone damage bonus for all damage types, and this change is fine. Otherwise, it's a major blow to Gallente in particular.
BlueSmok on 31 October 2005
I'm ok with the Reduction in controlable drones. But I don't like the reduced Drone bay... keep the same drone bay please so we can resupply our drones if some are lost in battle.. Since they are much more indiviualy important!!
Mitchman on 31 October 2005
Oh, and reduced drone bay makes it much harder to replace lost drones.
Shizah on 31 October 2005
Some of these ideas sound interesting, however, you really need to start considering a shift of skills when you do this. Take into consideration not what your nerfing but what the bottom line added benefit to the player is going to be. -- Then and only then add new skills accordingly. When you look at the skill pyramiding you have allready created in this game -- what use to be top skills are now mediocre skills at best. We have to train like mad just to keep up with where we used to be.
BlueSmok on 31 October 2005
Also, What about SALVAGE drones?
HankMurphy on 31 October 2005
This is great news. (Hank grabs some thermal resists for his armor and goes to hunt some Ishtars). Paybacks a b1tch :)
"Uh-oh, Happy learned to putt!"
Dimitri Forgroth on 31 October 2005
/me waves good bye to his flexible damage types on the dominix.
Gratz on removing flexibility, what is it with CCP and doing that recently?
votrian alpha on 31 October 2005
Ach - Gallente specialise in drones and Dominix is the drone BS of choice. What's going on? Let each race have something unique about them in-game please. Gallente=Drones. We want swarms of the little feckers.
Derron Bel on 31 October 2005
Salvage drones were thrown out in favor of tractor beams at unspecified ETA.
Zzazzt on 31 October 2005
"Sentry drones
They anchor down when you launch them, have very high range, poor tracking, many hitpoints and are large. They come in four flavors."
They shouldn't anchor - they should hold position around your ship as you move unless they are assigned to protect a target.
Harry Gant on 31 October 2005
I see another problem with the limitation of the size of the drone bays - I pack a lot of extra drones into my Domi, because after a client crash or a hasty retreat all drones are dead in space. They can neither be reactivated or scouped back into the drone bay but only into regular cargo bay. There they sit dead until I have time to get back into a station.
What I would like to see would be a couple of management functions that allow me to set some kind of automated emergency retreat for drones to get into reach of a repair system - or to blow up like a bomb when getting critically damaged. :) Also I would've wished that it wouls be getting more comfortable to manage different kind of drones, while the new system makes it uninteresting to mix mining and combat drones at all.
I hope the new drone system won't ruin it for me, as I'm mostly relying on them, but I'll try to give it a chance. I feel a little sad though, the number of drones buzzing around my ship always was giving me a warm fuzzy feeling. ;)
Best
Harry
Gunstar Zero on 31 October 2005
Looks interesting.
Could we get some (even small) drone bays on the Caldari ships the have none, for no apparent reason.
Shadow Vice on 31 October 2005
Please Please Please
DROP THE RACIAL DMG BONESES
MAKE THEM FOR ALL DMG TYPES
this is neccary for all weapon types not just drones
Luc Boye on 31 October 2005
"drones that anchor and suck at tracking" yeah, brilliant? What is their use again?
"Could you please stand still so that my drones can shoot you, thx?"
Derron Bel on 31 October 2005
Dimitri, and wave hello to a dozen new types of drones. :p
Tessen on 31 October 2005
For those how say Caldari missiles boats only have kinetic bonusses, I remind you that mkII project now give 5% bonus to all missiles types and 10% to kinetics.
Why not the same for drones : example gallente Domi and Ishtar get 10% to thermal drones and 5% to other ones ?
Alesa on 31 October 2005
this changes are so wrong...
Tessen on 31 October 2005
*who
Luc Boye on 31 October 2005
How about CCP stops doing "easy" work and dig in with the bugs? Like how about writing code so that drones actually RETURN to drone bay, when ordered to do so? You guys sit down and code THAT, Ill send you one round of pizza.
fairimear on 31 October 2005
better drones = good.
les drones = bad
mkay
Qin Yu on 31 October 2005
3.5 million skill points in Drone skills. WASTED........ Perhaps if this had enough outcry CCP will change their minds.. Oh wait, we're not 0.0sec flunkies. How about fixing the hardware and software for the SERVERS before pissing around with actual ingame features?
Better yet, why not scrap the skill system and have us level like normal sweaty retarded teenagers playing 8 hours a day killing the same spawns over and over again....
Fi T'Zeh on 31 October 2005
O_o
Derron Bel on 31 October 2005
Luc Boye: You don't need to anchor them all in the same place. If they're spread out enough they'll always be able to hit something.
DK Shadow on 31 October 2005
This looks appauling simply because the dominix is going to be totally underpowered (as if it isnt already). Personally i think instead of the 10% more drone damage per level - which is totally useless because drones can be stopped with the use of 1 large smartbomb. Ideas my corp came up with was 20% damage instead of the 10%, or even better ad 5%, 10% drone effectiveness bonus - where combat drones would get 10% more damage - painter drone 10% painter effectiveness etc. Drones arnt disposable ammunition CCP - sit back and look at the big picture here
Verizana on 31 October 2005
Well we arent forced to only use thermal, we just do alot of thermal damage :D
Well the Guardian-Vexor doesnt get nerfed by any damage thing.
Luc Boye on 31 October 2005
"Luc Boye: You don't need to anchor them all in the same place. If they're spread out enough they'll always be able to hit something."
Listen mate, warping off in ishtar is fine on sisi where I can insta to station and get new helping of drones for free. Warping off on Tranq. sucks. It's like you warping off and leaving your guns behind.
"return to drone bay" has been broken since forever, after 2.5 years CCP still hasn't fixed that. Now anchoring drones dont really help that in any way, right?
Seiver D'amross on 31 October 2005
i kinda feel like im getting jiped
Stephen Jones on 31 October 2005
Gah. Gah gah gah.
I really hope you guys at CCP have an actual strategy for making major design changes other then madly pushing stuff out to put out perceived brushfires.
AKA, it is a very dumb design principle to mess with underlying game engine to try and fix an operational issue, such as lag. Network lag will fix itself over time with upgrades to network equipment. Game won't suddenly unnerf itself.
On the flipside, I can now change my longterm learning strategy to not include big drone carriers (a misnomer really with these changes). I was planning to switch to Amarr ships anyway, I guess I can simply accelerate that switch.
Stephen Jones
Menelak Faf on 31 October 2005
I'm training amarr.
Kunming on 31 October 2005
Yes pls change the dmg specific bonus' to all drone dmg. At least on gallente ships they are supposed to be the drone mofos.
I was first thinking this really nerfed the domi, ishkur and moros, but I think changing that one bit will balance things out again.
Zaldiri on 31 October 2005
Dmaga bonusses to one type only are bad. Caldari shouldn't be stuck with kinetic missiles, gallente shouldn't be stuck with thermal drones.
Elarra on 31 October 2005
well done CCP again made decision to make another once good race, the worst Race of them all...
The Domi, Ishtar now probably the worse BS and HAC ingame
Destroyer Draxx on 31 October 2005
u need to reconsider Domi bonus, it is getting the shaft guys. Im mean come on. Change both bonuses and giv it bonus on using new drones n let it have 6 drones. Its the drone king after all.
Other than that it looks ok. Offcourse that could change depending on the stats of the new drones.
Shayla Sh'inlux on 31 October 2005
Wow you just killed the Ishtar...
Better start selling mine and watch the price drop to 30 mil...
Alex Harumichi on 31 October 2005
Tux, a suggestion:
- change the Dom and Ishtar +10% thermal bonus to +5% per level to all damage types.
- keep their (and the Ishkur's) drone bay sizes as is.
Yes, I'm actually asking for a *reduction* in max DPS I can do with Dom and Ishtar, in exchange for versatility. And you know what? I suspect most Dom and Ishtar pilots would agree with me. (if not, I expect them to flame me soonest :).
This would let Gallente drone users switch damage types (enough drone space to keep various drone types available), and would let Gallente get the best effect from drones. Exactly comparable to Caldari getting the best and most versatile missile output from Raven.
How about it?
Nero Scuro on 31 October 2005
Well, so long 'lil Domi, it's been fun.
Haha, but I'll miss laughing at your upside-down-shoe-qualities... *sigh*
Tristan Ray on 31 October 2005
As a user of 7 drones at a time from my Celestis, I have to say that, as written, I _hate_ a lot of what I just read. Now I understand how the missile-jockeys felt a few months ago. Even after reading the article, I am not sure I fully understand what problem this change stemmed from, nor do I really like the "new" drone types that are being added.
To be honest, when I could only fly 4 drones, I liked being able to carry 8 medium drones in my cargo hold, which gave me capability to swap out damaged drones for fresh spares. Nobody will be able to do that any longer. It was a good means to teach new players how to manage drones and drone groups.
Not that my opinion matters on this...
Kunming on 31 October 2005
Alex Harumichi has the best idea imo. Devs listen to this guy and dont become target of so many angry gallente pilots! ;)
Rafein on 31 October 2005
Please, also add a HP buff to the Drone ships that get a +1 drone removed.
Like the Domi, it will still be able to do the same damage, though only with Thermal Drones. But defenses are not increased. Compared to what is currently on Tranq, The Domi could still do 15 drones worth of damage, but the drones could only survive 10 drones worth of damage. It's a survivability nerf
NTRabbit on 31 October 2005
No dont listen to it, unless you intend on removing the kinetic only bonus on caldari ships and reducing the cargo size of missiles as well.
swoj on 31 October 2005
I like these changes, though would have to agree with some of the points raised already
1. Bonus to any type of drone damage, not just thermal
2. don't reduce Drone Bay size. Why not allow someone to carry a selection of Drones, some stasis drones to handle the first wave of frig NPCs then switch to combat drones for taking on the BSs.
However, quality (and variety) over quantity certainly seems like a good idea to me
swoj on 31 October 2005
Forgot to ask. How will this affect Carriers when they get into the game?
Will Carriers be limited to 5 drones at a time?
Hellcore on 31 October 2005
Well, tell me again why did I decide to train up for Berserker IIs? Pretty unhappy at the damage type nerf, the rest is not so bad.
Noriath on 31 October 2005
The thermal damage bonuses to Gallente are the worst change ever.
"Ooohh, let's put drones with new functions in the game and then change the bonus on droneships so they can't use them any better then other ships."
ThrawnTseng on 31 October 2005
i dont like that changes-... not a little
Sebas Atreides on 31 October 2005
NO NO NO!
Jacob ocho on 31 October 2005
Am I wrong or were the t2 drones meant to do what Tux has just said i.e. More armor and more damage? And its all very well saying that the bonus to thermal damage will give 5 drones the power of 15 but what if, whilst trying to do specific damage, you use drones that don't DO thermal damage? Your 5=15 suddnely becomes more like 5=7 or 8. I really don't think restricting races to bonus's to one damage type is a good idea, choices very quickly become limited, for a drone user to keep up their damage output they will have to use thermal drones but as soon as that person encounters a thermal tanker they're buggered, and with half the drone bay gone theres little or no room for replacing lost drones in combat. On a lighter note, the new drones and skills are what we've been waiting for, whether they can compensate for the nerfs is to be seen.
boldielocks on 31 October 2005
as long as the size of the drone bays don't get made smaller so you can still carry the same amount of drones it will be fine
Katamarino on 31 October 2005
We have established already that bonus to a specific damage type is completely idiotic. It is not nearly a good enough bonus.
Vishnej on 31 October 2005
Regardless of the lag situation, drones are inherently associated with the word "swarm." Even assuming you come to your senses and change the bonus to all damagetypes (what's with the racial damagetype obsession around here?) on the droneships, making this change loses something special about drones.
Please try and fix performance issues without destroying previously established game mechanics that are well liked.
Keep the old drone numbers - please.
Magden on 31 October 2005
I will miss the cloud of little gnats my Ishkur could control. These changes are eliminating a major roleplay concept for Gallente. Perhaps we could have the Minmatar take up slave trading as well?
At least let drone specialist ships keep extra drone bay capacity to allow for replacement of casualties or switching of drone types. Otherwise the loss of a single drone is a 20% reduction in drone damage, not to mention the elimination of "drone carrier" as a ship concept/class.
(I also like the "drone squad" idea mentioned above)
Silvergh0st on 31 October 2005
Noooooo. Changes as proposed would totally destroy the Dominix. Its value at the moment is its unperdictability but to have it effectively limited to only one damage type would render it obsolete. Drones are its main weapon and it needs to deal out differenet damage types to suit the situation. Are you going to limit Caldari to only one type of missile damage next?? Replace the 10% thermal to 10% damage to all drone types at least.
Kaspersky on 31 October 2005
Blimey, make a suggestion and they move the world! Making more of less is a good design philosophy but doing it to prove a point is somthing else and doing it so often is counter productive.
Miniver Cheevy on 31 October 2005
I like this. While I'll miss launching 30 drones between my two Domis, I will NOT miss the lag that creates. There's a certain fun factor to having that many drones, but let's face it, it makes EVE slow to a crawl sometimes.
That being said, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE reconsider the thermal only damage bonus. A blanket increase would be so much better!!
Waut on 31 October 2005
- Will a lowly Tristan be able to jam my Scorp with one ew drone?
- If drone bay will be cut in half, than how, pray tell, can I kill frigates and cruisers when I fly my Raven?
Hague Starcatcher on 31 October 2005
To those that compare the thermal boost to Caldari Kinetic. Stop being an ignorant flamer and go read the other Blogs! The missile bonus is getting changed! 5% bonus to all damage types, and 10% to kinetic.
Why can't we get the same thing for Drones?
As for reducing the number of drones. From a practical side I understand, but from a game flavour and style its a real loss. I would say the game is diminishing not growing here.
It makes dividing your drones into differnet groups rather flavorless.
It seems to be counter to the idea of tactical thinking discussed in the changes to combat.
Arpanet on 31 October 2005
I trained Ammar for the pulse laser. They nerf it.
I trained Caldari for the missiles & Raven. They nerf it.
I trained Gallente for the drones... They nerf it.
What do you think they'll do when i train my last option, Minmatar...
right...
Fix the bugs, don't create more please ! Oh and fixing lag is done thru optimizing your code and upgrading your hardware, not by constantly taking stuff away from us.
Hellcore on 31 October 2005
I have to agree with Vishnej, fix your performane issues rather than trying to cheat your way around it with silly nerfs. What next, autocannons that are just like artillery? :)
Shizah on 31 October 2005
I can remember when Ogres moved swiftly, kill their target and quickly moved on to the next. All the other changes you have made in game have taken their toll on drones. Don't you see what your doing? Two steps forward and three steps back. And ofcourse, more skills to -- hmmmm, step forward or back? Im really not sure! If we had a crystal ball, maybe we would know.
Corey Grim on 31 October 2005
u just killed the frigates uselfulens.. thnx a lot FFS
Thorgril on 31 October 2005
I hope the locking time of the little buggers are part of the calculation for killing 5 vs 15.
Giving Gal 10% racial damage is inline with other races so can't really complain on that.
To limit the drone race to max 5 drones sounds silly though. How many large drones can a Raven use after this change? I hope that the ratio is maintained or the drone ships are doomed to collect dust.
What I don't understand at all is the reduction in drone space. If it is to make sure that other races can't carry more than 3 drones then so be it, but it is a strange way of going about solving that issue.
I assume that more hitpoint will mean more mass will mean takes up more space as well?
I guess that you are trying to maintain some form of ratio with this change as well:
Today 15 in space and 5 spare in bay. After nerf 5 in space and 2 spare in bay.
Some clarifications to the original blog would be apreciated.
The new motherships will use uber XLDrones but only 5 of them. Sounds very silly since almost every bloody ship can have 5 drones! Ooh sorry, maybe they can use 6 or 7 - still bloody silly.
Another angle to the lag problem:
The suggested change will reduce lag since there will be less drones. On the other hand drones will be more powerful and the possibility that more people use them in fleet battles is higher. So after all these changes the lag is the same. And then motherships arrive for the purpose of using drones in fleetbattles...? I must have missunderstood something since CCP isn't that stupid.
Liu Kaskakka on 31 October 2005
Meh, drone interfacing lvl 5 ready tomorrow. Are you telling me that I can't look uber pimp anymore with 10 heavy II's outta my blasterthron? >_>
Tuomas Oravainen on 31 October 2005
you just made the game a step more boring, it was always fun to see those drone armies closing ing REGARDLESS of the lag they might have caused. and those specialized drone damages on ships just sucks, make it general damage so that you can vary between drone types and don't limit our choices like that.
Noillia Durmot on 31 October 2005
After reading some other views I`ve cahnged my mind about the first bit being good. EW should remain on board ships not on drones. Repair drones r perhaps a good idea but not ECM, webbing or tracking disruption.
The overall effect of this will be a blanding of the difference between ships. Domi becomes predicatable for damage but can pretend to be a tanked up Blackbird??? Domi is a drone carrier not an EW support ship.
I`ve still no problem with the reduction in drone numbers balanced against more damage and hit points but it needs to be all damage types and a bonus is needed for domi mining drone yields.
Temekin Sajek on 31 October 2005
Dont know if this has already been suggested, but can the Phoon have an explosive drone bonus? With the new skills its one of the few battleships with room for more than the max of 5 drones and its bonuses at the moment suck.
Hulemand on 31 October 2005
What slots will we fit Drone Modules in?
what about ships with a drone bay 25?
Shai Faetal on 31 October 2005
bs :\ wtf do we need these changes for.
Redwolf on 31 October 2005
Hope you remember to increase th build cost of current drones by 3, oh nad WHEN?
Derron Bel on 31 October 2005
Hague, that's not actually a change.
The missiles are just getting the RoF bonus and the damage bonus folded in together
5% kinetic bonus and 5% ROF bonus is =
10% to kinetic 5% to other
Hitssu Motto on 31 October 2005
CCP u need to start being more creative and stop nerfing things. Or u may find yourself one day with a lot of pissed of ppl that will stop paying, cuz they spent a lot of time learning something that’s useless now. IMHO instead of nerfing u need to fix bugs and move on to new tech and ships.
MOOstradamus on 31 October 2005
/me can't stop laughing !! 8)
Tyrrax Thorrk on 31 October 2005
Thanks for making the Arbitrator utterly worthless.
Hyll Harant on 31 October 2005
As always a lot of whining...
I love this drone update ! Thanks :)
Mitawyn on 31 October 2005
I am not one to post all that much, and generally don't bother with blogs either, but this one is near and dear to my heart, drones. I have read it, and have read the comments. I try to keep an open mind and a wait and see attitude towards things like this. All I can say is, I don't like it at all.
Ben King on 31 October 2005
The way I see it as when u buy a P4 with 24 month financing at 25$/month and when u get the it, it’s a P2. I think everyone would be very angry if that happen. And if u still want to nerfing stuff u need to start with nerfing down the PRICE of EVE.
Kerr AVON on 31 October 2005
I can understand the need to reduce drone numbers in space, but specific damage types ?
Is this being done because CCP feel drone ships are overpowered at the moment ?
Jessica Cartmen on 31 October 2005
God damnit, specilized damage = very bad
Nim Nom on 31 October 2005
Ok, personally feeling a little sick. Never flown an Ishtar, but the Domi certainly wont be what it used to be.
I presume a SB wont we able to wipe out awave in one activation. If it does thats the next thing that will need "balancing"
AlStar FreeFall on 31 October 2005
The problem, as I see it, is that these new EW drones are going to help ships that are not drone carriers far more than it will help the drone ships. Each EW drone a Domi would put out reduces the damage it can put out by 20%. A ship that doesn't rely on drones, on the other hand, can stick an EW drone or two in the hold, vastly increasing its versitility without losing much damage.
Let the drone ships keep their +1 drone per level, so they can operate mixed combat/EW drones without completely killing their damage output.
concordIS noob on 31 October 2005
\0/ i aint call that nerf, made drones even better and making domi best ship in game (1v1?)
guns/sensor boosters/ecm drones, ftw
byebye teh scorp \0/
VeNT on 31 October 2005
so, I've just trained Drone Interfacing 5 (30 odd days) and now your going to nerf it,
great.
Theola on 31 October 2005
Sorry so the armageddon will launch 5 drones doing the damage of 15 and then hit out with a pack of uber guns whilst the domi does the same damage with the same 5 drones if you use anything but thermal damage? WTF. Seriously what is the need for a second wave if those ships that used to have 10 drones now actually do the same damage as 15?
I am really not happy about this. The ishtar/vexor/dominix should have at least twice as many drones out as any other ship
David Corbett on 31 October 2005
I've been now nerfed out of three races in a row :( I'd finally found one that wasn't redculously overpowered and out of line, either - Dominix's drones were powerful, sure, but that's the point. You had to juggle a lame six highslot setup with crap for powergrid (and admittedly a very nice five medslots to go with seven lowslots). Drones just don't do as much damage as the big old gank tempest sitting around, now the almighty king of all battleships. And now they'll do a) even less and b) my ship, which was actually able to hunt Arch Angels due to their incredibly annoying resist pattern (EXP weak, KIN sort of weak, THR strong, EMP strongest), will now be stuck doing thermal damage against a tank that's pretty darn strong against thermal. Sure, I could just use different sort of drones, if I felt like slinging around five drones with the same skill as an armaggedon, a ship that certainly was NOT used as a drone boat. Guess I'm stuck with the also somewhat PG short Megathron now for hunting, and good luck with that... looks like CCP is going back to the Raven-wins-all versus NPCs days, even now that they've been nerfed, because their damage bonuses (like, ironically, most other damage bonuses) do not rely on using a certain type of ammunition or drone. And why force Caldari to only be good with Kinetic missiles anyway?
Prothos on 31 October 2005
Stop the Nerfs. Do not take or drone bonus away. i for one am a dom pilot and love the extra drons as it can fit crap for other weapons. limiting the bonus to a certain type of damage is always a bad thing seeing differant races have better resistance against say thermal than other. Make the the skill a staright up 20% increase in damage. Or better yet don't nerf drone bonus at all.
Jennai on 31 October 2005
racial damage is crap. everyone tanks thermic, EM is generally useless, and all the droneships are completely predictable because who's going to use a different drone type at the cost of 40-50% dps?
Aakron on 31 October 2005
I suggest the domi gets to use 10 drones. A 5% blanket damage increase to all types as well as a bonus of +1 drone per level. It should have a drone bay of 500m3 so it can carry two waves.
Vince2332 on 31 October 2005
/me goes and weighs his domi in for scrap, currently it is an great ship, not for its damage output, but because its unprdictable, this change just nerfs its ONLY adavantage.
Genki SG on 31 October 2005
i like it! thought please reconsider the thermal boost for gallente, they are "forced" to thermal and kinetic dmg anyways... making them use only thermal dmg drones makes them an easy target...
and i wonder how those changes will affect the upcoming carriers, will they have only 5 drones too?
Sennju Zensu on 31 October 2005
end of drones-ship :(
the bonuses like 10% damage boost on ONE resist is a big NERF
10% still low.. and ONE resist only... will be easy tanked lol
that's crap
Doornroosje on 31 October 2005
As i have invested 2.5M sp in drones and don't like the changes at all, and CCP did not contact the community before doing these changes, i demand a shift in my skillpoints.
infused on 31 October 2005
So the apoc is going to have like 2 drones? :(
Blade Kinnerson on 31 October 2005
goodbye to the days of mining in less than 1.0. Here are the days of major lag in 1.0 as the miners return in droves, oh yeah and the roid belts that are never there :(
New production/mining corps beware, you aren't going to get anywhere fast without large numbers of members, to cover your miners, who can no longer count on their drones
Jastra on 31 October 2005
Can I have the month I invested in Drone skills so far back please?
Lord Darcy on 31 October 2005
concensus says make all drone bonuses across the board. let people keep large drone bays or convert cargo to drone bay so variety stays in.
Gerome Doutrande on 31 October 2005
In the forum thread someone correctly noted that mining drones are mentioned nowhere, yet they need to be adjusted to.
Tekran on 31 October 2005
crushed drone bays and limited output will kill droneships. wait, I know, those new drone types will help me even the score! wait, no.. it would take a full output of drones to get nearly as much effect as that module type, as well as some New skills Use those drones. More skills? Drone interfacing is reduced to a half-effective mining bonus?
bringing in half-usable new drones at the cost of Breaking the entire drone system and tossing a specialist shiptype into the dustbin? not good.
theRaptor on 31 October 2005
Thank you for nerfing my secondary weapon specialty. If you could see to nerfing small rails I can delete this character and get over this game.
Yours in love.
MortiSeraphim on 31 October 2005
WTS> Dominix 50isk
WTS> Ishtar 500isk
>_>
first minmatar. then amarr. then caldari. now gallente finally gets hit with the bat...and apparently the bat gains more exp as it goes cus this is going to ass rape gallente all the way down to thier ancestors (yes, the french...which isnt a bad thought now that i think about it). If gallente were designed to be the drone users they should get bonuses across the board in damage types and not just limited to thermal. cus currently they are the easiest to tank next to amarr.
Xinxs on 31 October 2005
So the Dominix retains its current level of dps only for thermal damage and loses 50% of its damage for all other types, making it far less capable overall. Ogres are too slow, I nearly always use berserkers these days because they are quick. Also drones still get stuck together, which now would affect a much higher proportion of your firepower. Flexibility to adapt for different rat types is severely compromised ie having to give up lots of dps.
Jania Royale on 31 October 2005
Cant really Compare it to the Caldari "missle nerf". Missle users having been training those new skills, buffing them up and getting back to doing damage (under new system) while Drones are just getting a boot to the teeth.
nerfing race/type individuality in the name of server load=4tl
theRaptor on 31 October 2005
Yes lovely to be a Gallente specialist. You know no one tanks thermal. I think I am switching to Jove, as the minnies are bound to get a nerf soon. How about removing explosive damage from their ammo CCP? To balance it off you can up all their other damages by 5%
The Wizz117 on 31 October 2005
i saw this module on the forums and it was a shield disruptere
it lowers the shield recistanse by 100% and it is being fitted on amed slot and it uses like no powergrid at all.
and now i read this aboud gallante being boosted and stuff.
i hate ccp and i hate the way they treath the caldari.
WTT caldari 7 Mil SP character for a amarr or galante character.
theRaptor on 31 October 2005
Oh not to mention how shooting drones is now a 100% guranteed win scenario. Each dead drone is 1/5th of your firepower gone. I wish I could shoot turrets and launchers off.
Gallan Dracos on 31 October 2005
i think im gonna start my own Race , find a nice wierd alien female and some empty system where CCP won't be able to touch me, when i buy a ship i dont expect someone to visit me and change it AFTER i have bought it.
When do the players get any voice on changes or is it just a case of the GM's getting owned by a specialised player and then out of the blue changes happen to the ship that pwned the gm's.
theRaptor on 31 October 2005
Read it again Wizz. Gallente specs lose drones to get extra thermal damage, which is the most hardened damage type already. Now drone ships will do 100% predicatable damage or bad damage.
Go on CCP make all the turret users only have one turret per ship, and just up the damage. That will lessen server load as well.
Zethwi on 31 October 2005
btw: there has not bin a singel patch where the caldari did not got nerfed in since i played this game.
and since i played this game the caldari where in my opnion the weakest of them all ( i compare my raven with my brothers apoc and dominix/megatrhon
and they are aboud 2x as good, there is no way i can type my expressions aboud how pissed i am when they post those fricking numbers on the forums wich are all wrong/not realistic
me and my bro started at the same date he runs 10/10 complexes im stuck at this lvl3 mission with a t2 fitted raven, i will not read any replies on this since they will only be like "sstop whining"
severed on 31 October 2005
good idea. this will nerf the "sit 80 ships at a gate with full drones out and watch them lag/crash to death" tactic. for those whining about dmg versatility, amarr has been limited to EM or EM/thermal forever so boohoo
PsYcO on 31 October 2005
Can you let me know which part of the game you're going to screw next so I don't waste time training my skills for it please :)
Selvin on 31 October 2005
ok im drones user ... and only 1 thing looks bad for me ...."Drone Interfacing skill changed 20% bonus to drone damage and 20% bonus to drone mining yield"
WTF? im not f$#%#% miner...
Megadon on 31 October 2005
Hmmm, sorry, don't look at this as a good thing overall and it's just another game nerf in a long list of nerfs.
I would rather have more drones then less because i can divide them into groups to do more things. With fewer drones, i actually have fewer options, regardless if those fewer drones do more things.
Just upgrade the hardware, mmmkay?
Manufacturing was nerfed to manage server load, now drones, whats next? This is not a good sign of things to come.
Necolycan on 31 October 2005
Worst idea ever. This is pathetic. 5 drones? 5 drones from a DOMINIX? Isn't a dominix a drone boat? A HUGE FREAKING DRONE BOAT? Stop screwing this up. This is a terrible idea.
Tobias Raddick on 31 October 2005
On the one hand, we're being given a lot in that we'll now have a vast array of drones and drone abilities.
On the other hand, we're getting pimp-slapped by having our drone bays cut in half. If you're going to slash the number of drones we can control, at least let us keep the same number in our holds so we can explore the options these new drones give to us!
Mac Knife on 31 October 2005
Well i like the idea of new drones, but a dominix with 5 drones?!?!? wtf is going on!?!
The Gallentes are meant to be drone users and now every race can only use 5 drones, i mean come on, the dominix's main weapons is its drones and you are taking them away? same with the vexor and ishtar.
Tbh this is a terrible idea, for those that have trained up drone int 5 and gall bs 5 just to use 15 drones and now they get told this is abit unfair.
Pepperami on 31 October 2005
OMG, this is awful.. I don't know if I can explain how awful I think this is.
AWWWWFFFUULLL.
Ok, that's the best I can do.
Don't fix lag by nerfing gameplay. And ECM drones? LOL.. just LOL.
If your servers can't handle more players, don't accept more players till they can.. Stop breaking gameplay :(
Angaro on 31 October 2005
Well, what the guy above whas whining I guess.
/me falls to his knees begging > PLEASE don't kill my domi
I have also noticed the disturbing pattern of "optimizations" ruining gameplay. Is it that you are not willing to spend cash on hardware/bandwidth or did you just do a piss poor job at creating a scalable framework?
A domi is SUPPOSED to have a cloud of drones around it (to hide its ugly face, among others). 5 drones is just... wrong. Not to mention you'll be forced to use thermal dmg drones and people without uber perc/will (and thus only bs 4) get nerfed even worse.
Necolycan on 31 October 2005
Oh yeah and another thing, thanks for taking any tactical thing away from a dominix. Having multiple types of drones is awesome, sending 3 groups, one to do different jobs.
WORST IDEA EVER.
New Drones = YAY!
Less Drones = CRAP!
Warpath2005 on 31 October 2005
hmm half drone bays...so a raven could use 3 drones to protect itself against frigs?
painfull for all ships relying on drones to protect them against frigs
Little Buddha on 31 October 2005
These changes suck.
Once again CCP proves that they have no idea what the players really like about their game.
Hint: It's not more skills to train in order to compensate for a nerf, and it's certainly not less fun in the vain hope of maybe improving the lag!
Go Team on 31 October 2005
Gate camps will be a nightmare with sentry drones scattererd everywhere
Nork on 31 October 2005
bad in my opinion, makes the ishtar worthless, especially vs other hacs which have already very high resitances in thermal damage
Andrymeda on 31 October 2005
I think nerfing down to 5 is too much (Domi). Lets go halves and make it 10. With the new hardware, the lag should not be that much. To be honest, you've killed the drone lag on the last major update. Used to lag horribly when drones attacked large collidable objects.
The Domi is also a great mining ship, so having 10 drones chewing on a roid is nice.
The net effect is, that with Gallente drone ships, you get less drones (but more than everyone else), but more damage and mining yield than everyone else to compensate. Hit points are like-wise adjusted.
But with 5 drones max, even with Gallente drone carriers, the hit points better be on a par with a tanked cruiser.
Also, don't mess with the Domi's capacity as a good pilot will create categories for the types of drones they wish to deploy. Currently, the Domi can carry 30 heavy drones. Would be nice to keep that so various "task" groups may be launched.
HeadHunta II on 31 October 2005
wts ishtar, convo me :(
OldMan River on 31 October 2005
Missles rock - i'll train em ... NERF!
Domi rocks - i'll train it ... NERF!
Really getting tired of this pattern.
Spending time training to be specialized just dosnt pay off. 10% to thermal only on a domi ruins it plain and simple. Wow I can't believe the missle nerf whine will be outdone but I think you have struck an even deeper chord with the destruction of the domi :/
Zoon on 31 October 2005
Absolutely HATE the idea of losing drone bay space.
Give us the same dronebay space please.
The reason behind this ... we should be able to carry multiple damage types to adjust to different enemy ships.
We can carry multiple types of ammo to adjust to enemy so it just seems you're being nasty to not let us carry multiple drones and mix and match :P
ThePain on 31 October 2005
hmmmm
Dao 2 on 31 October 2005
plz add structure repair drones ;p
Specture on 31 October 2005
WHY, WHY, WHY , WHY , WHY, my pooooooooor ishtar, not only do i have to not buy it, but i also have to change my sig. WTF
Mr Floppyknickers on 31 October 2005
Hmm, I don't like the limit of 5 drones and half the bay. Moreover, this raises a very interesting question. Carriers. If the system can't handle drone use as is, is this nerf being done to get people used to the idea of a 10-15 drone carrier? Maybe i'm a looney, but I thought carriers would be fielding 25-50 drones. Now it seems we should expext 15 at best, since having 5 now is a big deal. Not exactly a grand vision of a capital ship.
This move will cripple all drone ships. Additionally, I find it quite appalling the amount of people delighting in a gallante nerf, like we were overdue. I will never understand how you can delight in someone elses misery. If you think you ship sucks, fight to make it better, not cry for everyone elses to be made worse.
this does not bode well, and is a mistake. At the most a deidcated drone ship should be limited to 10 drones, not 5.
Solar Sailor on 31 October 2005
Ok this stinks.
1st - Miners - they lose their extra drones and don't appear to be getting skills/ modules/ boosts to replace it.
2nd - Sacrificing 1/5th of your drone power for just 1 EW drone, rather than 1/10th or 1/15th
3rd - Stop with the only racial bonuses. At least do what your doing with missiles +x% racial, +y% everthing else.
vanBuskirk on 31 October 2005
what happened to the salvage drones we were promised 2 years ago?
w0rmy on 31 October 2005
Well I guess I should try sell my ishtar now, before you *snip* it over completely.
Wont be buying that domi anytime soon either!
Esrevatem Dlareme on 31 October 2005
Salvage drones aren't going in yet, they're planning on adding a tractor beam module to pull cans to you instead.
As for the changes...my feelings are mixed. If it's really true that 5 drones after will perform as well as 15 before (considering dominix bonus) then...I suppose I like it. Really happy about new drone skills and abilities being added but limiting to only 5 controllable at a a time...I'm not sure about.
On the plus side, I'll have a ton of spare Wasp II's after this. o.0
Is this coming with RMR patch?
Vestas on 31 October 2005
Dominix on the market now. All training on Gallente ships stopped. I assume this was the desired effect?
Saidar on 31 October 2005
Drone Interfacing skill changed 20% bonus to drone damage and 20% bonus to drone mining yield per lvl of skill or ?
monkiboi on 31 October 2005
On a slightly different tack doesn't this put the thorax back to where it was/is?
The drone bay is supposidly being reduced so that (using heavies) it can only carry 4. With the new skill changes this will effectively be 8 drones *and* have an increase in pg to fit medium blasters.
Nothing is mentioned about the heavy drone skill so I presume it'll still apply 5% damage per lvl so now I have my rax back to normal *and* extra pg. Have I misunderstood something?
Solar Sailor on 31 October 2005
monkiboi, I'm guessing the reduced rax bay will be halved (so 50m3) rather than it just being taken to 100m3 and left.
Havant on 31 October 2005
Ahh I get it.
The entire DEV Team decided one morning to nerf their own heads; so instead of having 'Programming' to Lvl 4 they now have 'Politics'.
This explains why they dont fix Bugs anymore; just "Re-balance".
As far as I know this is the only Nerf that is simply because the CCP Servers can't cope...
Have you just given up on a Universe that makes any sense?
Pharuan on 31 October 2005
Vexor with Drone interfacing 5 and Gallente Cruiser 5 does 135 damage with its Hammerheads. 9 dam x15 drones =135 damage
After with hammerheads (9 dam + 150%) x 5 drones = 112.5 damage.
After without hammerheads is 90 damage.
Even with this module that increases drone damage (which takes away from the ships effectiveness) It MIGHT push thermal damage up to 135, but only if it has a bonus of 10% per level. Making it 135 thermal damage.
Can you use more than one? Are there going to be stacking penalties?
Either way, we still lose the usefulness of these unique ships.
I suppose also that the drones are going to start to miss their targets now.
This is a very sad day.
Clipped Wings on 31 October 2005
Hm. Much as I'd like to say the changes look promising, I'm afraid I'll have to throw in my lot with the highly worried and sceptical.
I have no doubt you've given this a lot of thought, but it seems drastic beyond measure.
If I understand correctly, the Raven and Apocalypse will now be able to carry 2...or 3? heavy drones?
Since, all things considered, if they were able to carry 5 heavies, then they'd do the same damage (asusming identical skills) if a Dominix used non-thermal drones?
I will definately try it out, now that I have come down from my initial "WTF?! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" stage, but I still have a very sickening feeling inside. Please, at least, consider that this means the Dominix will be even more hampered, meaning it will now have a suffering damage output, and insufficient grid in case you actually want to fit battleship-sized modules in the highslots.
The Ishtar? Well...Again, only thermal damage output? Considering it only has 3 turret hardpoints, I guess we can agree that it won't be winning DPS competitions from neither the highslots, nor, now, from drones, assuming you'd want to use another damage type than the one most commonly tanked against.
As for the Moros. I can't help but to think what this will mean for it. Maybe use sentry drones for POS attacks...but then, if using drones against a POS is still considered an exploit, then basically, you'll be able to pack a handful of sentry drones that it can't use for POS attacks...meaning that it'll basically just be...shafted?
If you get the time for it, and the inclination, explaining the reasons behind the (seemingly very harsh) changes, besides lag, it'd be greatly appreciated.
And I'd only just discovered the Dominix... :(
Lucita Thoron on 31 October 2005
I like the Idea of New Drones, But i do feel these drone changes will make the Gallente HAC and Dominix utter crap. Also what does CCP plan to do with our Drone Interfacing skill ? I only have it to level 4, but i feel sorrow for those poor people who learned it to 5 and spend a month doing so... What are you going to do with this skill and are you going to give us our skill points back ?
EW drone - YAY
Nerf the Gallente - Bad form CCP
Kadafu on 31 October 2005
If this goes live in it's current form, you'll loose two accounts. My better half and I both fly Gallente ships (Megathron and Dominix) and rely heavily on our drones.
I can see limiting us to 5 drones in space, providing the damage is increased to compensate. I cannot see reducing our drone hold. If we can only have 5 in space, what harm is there to even INCREASING drone hold so we can have backup/different type drones ready to launch. I also think that limiting us to thermal damage is absurd. Make it a blanket increase no matter which race's drones we choose and I can live with it.
Alex Harumichi on 31 October 2005
Yah, I have Drone Interfacing trained to 5, a *month* of training time or a rank 5 skill. Now it's going to be next useless, a bit more damage. Sucks to be me, I guess.
The Dom & Ishtar changes are a *very* bad idea. Change it to a general +5% per leve bonus and keep the drone bay sizes of Ishtar and Dom (or at least reduce them a bit less) and we can talk.
Oh, and if Dom is changed to +10 thermal damage per level I assume the Raven will get changed to +10 kinetic damage only, yes? Seems fair.
Valeria Wolf on 31 October 2005
well thank god Im still low on the Gallente ship skills... after 6 MMORPGs I thought I had found a home...
MrJordanIOI on 31 October 2005
Ok- that means CCP wants to save money by taking load of servers.
Those things you change for the drones are meant to sweeten the blow-- a bit like when you increased the time we spend flying between systems by killing the highways..
Some good and some bad will come off it.
PLEASE- lose the niche damage for the DOMI at least tho.
IOI
Heratio on 31 October 2005
Ohhh, I forgot one... didnt see it asked but is the halving of drone bays going to being on top of that proposed to the Thorax already?
Heratio on 31 October 2005
And my previous post seems to have gone missing so here it is again...
Generally I love drones and these changes wont effect that I will adjust... Less drones but tougher cool... Thumbs up...
I would like to join the comments on the damage type though... T1 should remain varied with the bonus applying to the relevant damage type for the drone.
TarianH on 31 October 2005
I can't believe this. Firstly, it cripples Gallente, far more than anything they deserve, as has been said plenty of times above. And whilst a reduction in lag is a good thing, it cookie-cuts across the board for ships. It's a thumbs down to ship diversity, with greater numbers of drones being abstracted to damage percentages. Rather than make drones a primary weapon for Gallente (as has been requested for so long), dedicated drone pilots are being kicked in the teeth.
Did anyone in the community really want it to go like this?
CamelKnight III on 31 October 2005
this idea is totally crap. there's no reason at all to go for a dronecarrier anymore. great that drones do more damage and are tougher to kill, but you can carry loads less which will mean they're less effective. the idea of swarming your enemy makes him less effective as he's confused AND the drones swarming him means he's unable to warp out (have had that myself on some occasions). less drones means you take away that advantage.
it's just another nerf and not a well though out one either.`
ALTNAME on 31 October 2005
Oh my God, I REPEAT IT AGAIN, for all that HATE ME, the Interceptors are dying more often than is tolerable to ccp, so nerf ALL BATTLESHIPS' defenses yet again!
Next stop NOSFERATU!
EvilDoomer on 31 October 2005
this will destroy the use of drones and to me bad.
Thumbs DOWN!
to another lost good thing, My friends the drones.
zarixan on 31 October 2005
This is proberly the first time i have seen a plan with such little intelligence in it..
Drones will boost the races with small drone bays like amarr, minmatar and caldari and utterly make Gallente ships only way of doing other than thermal damage useless.. Other ships with dronebays dont use them now to do damage, they can now use EW drones and BENEFIT greatly, those who need drones to do damage CANT use EW drones and will be UTTERLY nerfed to hell....
FOr not to think about those of us who used MONTH training drones skills for our Gallente ships, skills we would never train if we had know this would be how they worked.
How can you justify to royaly ***** those who trained drones for so long..
a VERY dissapointed GALLENTE pilot...
Kelhund on 31 October 2005
I dont like the effect this is going to have on mining barges and the deadspace runners who depend on drones to defeat rats, rouge drones, etc. I dont see how 25m3 of drone bay will benefit a med barge :|
EDacIouSX on 31 October 2005
I love the idea of the new EW drones but I do not like the idea of limiting pilots to 5 drones. It makes sense what you are saying (about resources) but I do not agree with changing something that doesn't need to be changed.I say implement the EWAR drones, toss the 5 drone limit idea. Personally, I don't see why not with making gallente ogre specific, i mean caldari is kinetic specific...
Malachi Nefzen on 31 October 2005
webby drones? nuet drones? paint drones? can we say insta kill vs inty/af. 1/2 drone bays? so your basically taking drones away from everyone cept drone boats.
send me some of what your smok'n
ALTNAME on 31 October 2005
the new Drone nerf is the next nail in the coffin of Battleships as solo player viability platforms. Next stop is NOS, when everyone is out of battleships and into Interceptors, maybe CCP will rethink things a bit. By that time I will have moved onto Battlefront 2. Wait, that is tomorrow! Doh!
Haldane IV on 31 October 2005
This could give me some problems with e.g. Angel rats if I wanted to go solo mining in my domi in 0.0. If the Angels can do all sorts of damage, I should be able to as well.
killmc on 31 October 2005
i say let the drone be ther noting wrong with them add new one if you what but why take are drones from us they work fine for hwat they ment for that is cheep trow away to help save your ship or for part of it fire power and mining in med sec space i say let them be
Alex Harumichi on 31 October 2005
I'll repeat: change the Dom etc bonus to +5% per level to all damage types (instead of +10% per level thermal), and keep the current drone bay sizes (or reduce them a *bit*, not to a half). This will keep drone specialists happy, while reducing server lag and keeping general number of drones in control.
Plase don't destroy Gallente drone versatility. We need a proper-sized drone bay, and bonuses to all drones, not just thermal. Otherwise there's no use in calling Gallente the "drone race", since everyone else can use drones almost as well. It's the only thing making the Dominix a viable battleship.
ChronoLynx on 31 October 2005
If this goes through I might as well stop playing this game, first they destroy my ability to kill Frigs with missiles and now they are doing it to my Drones, which is the only reason I trained Gallente.
itty bitty on 31 October 2005
i say let the dam done be no changes need for them also stop drinking you lunch at pubs and stop scorewing your older customers in faver of the new player us the older ones have been here and should get to vote in any changes to eve you came out with some dump stuff in past 6 months or so dont make it even worst
Mollari Cotto on 31 October 2005
Hmm... so lets see. instead of fixing the game so lots of drones can be used without server lang... ccp doesn't want to fix the game but rather nerf yet another part of it.
So lets recap.... every race is just like every other... um the special abilities that made each race unique are being taken away one by one.
GREAT JOB DEVS!!!
Ogait on 31 October 2005
!#!##$@$@#$@!$!$ WELL I HOPE UR HAPPY THIS CHARATER IS NOW USELESS. since its drone specialized. i mean a ceptor orbiting 15k plus cant be hit by light nore hvy. I do it with my main all the time in his crow cuz he has good nav skills. so i fail to see how having less drones and even webbing drones if they cant catch good ceptor pilots, and even if my light drones can catch interceptors.. whats the piont i can only carry max of 5????!!!! how am i saposed to do diferent types of damages.. THIS ID EVEN WORSE THEN THE MISSLES NURF.. "acount subscription canceling pending"
res0nance on 31 October 2005
THIS IS REALLY GOOD NEWS FOR ALL RACES OTHER THAN GALLENTE!
BUT NOT REALLY LOL
Theoraden on 31 October 2005
So after my last 2 months of training drone skills, totally maxxing them out so I have the coolest dominix ever, you go and screw it!. How unfair is it that you restrict its damage bonus only to Thermal, after many, many Domi ilots have put Specialized training into drones such as Minmatar drone spec. It should be a damage bonus to all damage types. NOT HAPPY!
Righteous Fury on 31 October 2005
I'm forced to agree with all the doomsayers atm, but I'm going to voice a couple of alternatives instead of just saying don't do it (since apparently CCP hasn't found wisdom in the saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it")
Since it would seem that the goal of this nerf/change/what have you is to reduce the amount of drones used, I propse a somewhat smaller change. Its highly illogical to have ships of all classes limited to 5 drones, and I don't think you could really make it fit RP-wise either. Here's my idea.
Limit the amount of drones used by class of ship, HOWEVER give specialized drone ships a boost in drone control.
Frigate - 3 drones MAX - +5 bonus for Ishkur, etc
Cruiser - 5 drones MAX - +5 bonus for Vexor, Arbitraitor, Ishtar
Battleship - 10 drones MAX - +5 bonus for Dominix
Dreadnought - leave it how it is, tbh.
If the changes go through as planned, specialized drone ships such as the Arbitrator, Ishtar, Vexor and Dominix become cookie-cutter copies of other cruisers and battleships. The cool thing about drones was just the fact that you could have 15 little friends attacking your enemies.
While it may not be as easy as it sounds, instead of nefing ships because their mechanics lag the game, how about changing the game so that the mechanics work. I know I speak for at least a couple of people who are getting tired of the excuse 'its too hard' when people suggest alternatives.
There's a much larger benefit to doing things the right way instead of the easy way.
Mac Abre on 31 October 2005
Bleh, another set of skills I have to somehow find the time to train, or watch my drones suddenly suck. Was bad enough the missiles suddenly went from useful to horrid until a month or two of training went by, now I have to wedge in another 2 months of training on top of that? I'd like to not have to constantly find myself sliding farther back with each patch. After a while, that drains the fun from the game, at which point, I log out and stop paying. And ya, I do vote with my feet, EQ, WoW, CoH/V, they don't get my money for that reason. Being a newer player, I'm already behind the curve, this just makes it worse. Must discourage new players.
Voltron on 31 October 2005
wts ishtar/dominix fleet =/
Temugen on 31 October 2005
??? what is going on here...has EA taken over ccp?? visions of ENB dance in my head as the closing of eve comes soon™. nerfs = game death. when "devs" start screwing with game mechs and ppl start complaining it is time to stop and take a long look...cause the devs wont stop...they think they know everything although they keep screwing up..when this happens it is death for a game!!
Arpanet on 31 October 2005
'Drone control bonus of Dominx gets changed to 10% drone thermal damage per level'
That idea is as bad as your spelling. It's a DO-MI-NIX.
It's also a DRONE CARRIER.
Big f*cking carrier, 5 drones. lol.
This is your worst idea ever CCP. Keep it up, i'll keep dropping accounts. kthxbye
Peri Stark on 31 October 2005
I finally get enough drones to handle multiple targets with my Dominix to start moving more and more into low sec and 0.0 space and now this? I guess its back to empire for me.
Summersnow on 31 October 2005
so, yet another nurf because CCP's harware sucks balls...
Blade Kinnerson on 31 October 2005
i agree with Righteous Fury and comend him on a good suggestion
Righteous Fury on 31 October 2005
Since I forgot to mention the damage bonus, I'll post again.
When I started playing almost two years ago, the great thing about Caldari and Gallente was the fact that you weren't limited to just kinetic and thermal damage - you could be a menacing enemy by switching damage types on the fly. It made fights that much more fun, not knowing exactly what your opponent was going to throw at you, and praying that he wasn't smart enough to find your weakness before you could kill him.
That was kinda killed when the 5% damage bonus to kinetic was introduced to Caldari missiles. It wasn't completely crippling, because the bonus was so low that switching to a less-tanked damage type made up for the difference.
If the drone-specialization ships get a EM or Thermal damage bonus (at 100%), the result would just be utterly crippling. You wouldn't have to think for a couple seconds when engaging a Gallente ship, because you know that you're already tanked for thermal damage from their blasters/rails. Infact, the Raven will return to being versatile damage king, something almost unheard of.
The great thing about eve is that it's not anything like WOW, there are a thousand different ways to kill and be killed. If you introduce this nerf in its current stage, the only thing it will accomplish is making Eve more like lesser-quality pvp games.
Rock beats Scissors, Scissors beat Paper, Paper beats rock.
Eve isn't like that, don't screw it up.
Denrace on 31 October 2005
I wonder if the EVE Developers get upset with so much hate and negative feedback on a MUCH BLOODY NEEDED change.
Thermal damage only?
Welcome to the world of the Cerberus.
G'ulSera on 31 October 2005
So basically, the caldari & gallente have been nerfed to oblivion.. :/
when are the amarr & minmatar due?
Adjusting the drones is one thing, but completely overhauling them is another. Missiles are nerfed too much, will this also be the case with drones?
Tricore on 31 October 2005
Sorry to say it, but this idea kinda sux :(
Denrace on 31 October 2005
Oh, and if anyone is so annoyed that they are going to leave EVE due to this change...
Can I have your stuff?
DARKVALE on 31 October 2005
Will they still be the same size M3???
Tricore on 31 October 2005
Oh yeah, what about carriers? Are we gonna see them with only 5 drones too?
bunnygerbil on 31 October 2005
love the idea... all except the 10% thermal damage bonus on dominix!!! i mean whats that about? I thought the idea was to make setups more interesting and varied but surely this is just going to make the dominix boring and predictable.
sonofollo on 31 October 2005
the dominix if being restricted to 5 drones needs a massive boost perhaps to NOS (10% per level of NOS sucking skill) make it so while weakneed on the drones front they can get up close and boost the amount of energy via NOS modules
Remedial on 31 October 2005
Just to reiterate, limiting the damage bonus on a Dominix/Ishkur/Ishtar to thermal is an AWFUL idea. It destroys the versatility that makes the dominix feared.
Prothos on 31 October 2005
can i have my drone skill points back to use in something worth while. Dev's on crack again
Brian Cohen on 31 October 2005
How this should have read.....
What's wrong with the drones we do have?
Well there is nothing really wrong with them, they are just very limited. They don't really do anything other than kill stuff or mine stuff. They are not even that flexible at doing that, there is no way to for example increase the damage drones do, or their speed or anything really.
What about modules?
Well they are not many and not that complex. So far there are three of them. One increases the damage output of all combat drones, one increases your drone control range and another boosts the optimal range and tracking on drones.
How about skills
What the hell lets release a couple of those.
Drone Navigation - Increaseses the velocity of drones.
Drone Durability - Increases the hitpoints of all drones
There you go. Improved drones without all the crap.
Reverend John on 31 October 2005
Looks like the domi needs to be sent back to the drawing board now. It can't fit Sh** for weapons. Now drone usage nerfed and limited to thermal. Most tanks and npc's boost themal resistance.
EaglesFire on 31 October 2005
I also agree with Righteous Fury. Maybe change the Drone Interfacing skill for damage bonus, but leave the +drones for the ships alone.
This would only give the Gal ships extra drones, and makes sense, sense they are the drone race.
Brutic on 31 October 2005
I don't know what the DEVs at CCP are smoking but I am quite sure it ain't helping them come up with any better ideas.
reikooun on 31 October 2005
shhh reduce lagg my ___
"there is no way to for example increase the damage drones do" <-- whats this? heavy drones skill doesnt work?
Al Vitae on 31 October 2005
Glad I am a newbie, Now I know not to waste my SP on drones.
Denine on 31 October 2005
This is a pretty bad bitchslap on the face for Moros... not good, not good at all.
Murakami on 31 October 2005
Change the bonuses of the drone combat ships towards something more usefull do not restrict us drone dudes to a single type of drone and a single type of damage. Also only 5 drones max is absurd rather impliment a max based on the class of ships with some bonuses towards the drone ships and plz dont cut the dronebay in half since it minimises our versality...
ALTNAME on 31 October 2005
will bet heavy drones will hit intys 10% of the time, and intys have just 3 drones to take out, since Ravens will be able to fit 3 heavies after the changes, lol.
no more on 31 October 2005
So would you say ive wasted my time training all my drones skills to 5
Kiddow on 31 October 2005
cool, my name !!!!
<<------
Eberneza Gutbucket on 31 October 2005
I like the idea of the new drone types but changing the existing skills such as Drone Interfacing and the ship bonuses such as the dominix are a real slap in the face to those of us who have invested a huge amount of time training up those skills.
This is one of the worst changes I have ever seen. And to use the excuse of lag as one of the reasons is quite frankly insulting. If your hardware is not up to the job buy some that is - that's what we pay you for each month.
Please don't do it.
ChronoLynx on 31 October 2005
Might I add to my Previous post, I rather liked the missile change on the test server but when they moved it to TQ they killed many of its options, like hitting Megathrons with a torp for 1200dmg.
I can see the same thing happening with the drones. The game was fun when I first started. This cannot be allowed to happen. Don't screw the Domi, Vex, Ish, Arb, or any other ship that specifically uses Drones.
The fact is plain and simple, since I began playing 21,000,000 skillpoints ago I have seen the game change from BSs being all mighty and powerful to a simple interceptor being able to kill one with a cargoload of ammo and a little bit of speed. The drones right now are the only defence and mass quanities are the way to go, not high damage. This game is no longer EVE, this is waste your money on a nerf happy game that should have problems like lag or display bugs fixed.
Down to the point, fix the old stuff and forget this drone idea. It is bad and I may not be willing to fork out $131-$180 a year on a game that isn't fun anymore. Could I get my time and money for the last 21,000,000 skillpoints back now? :|
Royaldo on 01 November 2005
didnt ccp just buy new hardware?
im tired of soon*
Royaldo on 01 November 2005
and instead of doing this and adding glitter(boring big ships)what about tieing up some lose ends?
Talos Darkhart on 01 November 2005
CCP just bite the bullet and fix/improve/replace the server instead of just nerfing/changing things for no other reason than to take the load off the shoddy/overworked server.
Gaven Lok'ri on 01 November 2005
bah.
The Arbitrator is currently the only amarran cruiser on par with other cruisers... post nerf this will no longer be true. EM drones are just about useless if you are a group like PIE, something to do with ALL amarran damage being EM and Thermal, and our enemies knowing that all they have to do is tank those damage types.
The arbitrators sole advantage was that we had a single ship that wasnt affected by that. If you werent an amarran specialist, it wasnt even that great a ship. Now I really dont see it being useful.
That and ECM is overpowered enough already. ECM drones really arent needed to make the game even more absurd in that department than it already is.
I suggest FIXING ECCM before introduceing more ways to make your enemy unable to fight.
Sean Drake on 01 November 2005
Ok as a mainly caldari player I would just like to say HAHA welcome to our miserable over nerfed exsistance with shoody bonuses, to the gallante. But on a more serious note what will the current skills in drones be used for some are mentioned what about the rest?
NoLock LetsNegociate on 01 November 2005
You have too much lag ?
I think the main cause about lag is number of players on same server. Not game mechanic.
Remove the 14 days free trial and limid nomber of players online.
I guess when we'll reach the 20k player online lag will become hellish...
I understand CCP dont want some players get frustrated but do you think getting curent player being pissed off and insult you better ?
I think not.
Open a 3rd server as a TQ clone (2nd being Chinese one).
Blitz Hacker on 01 November 2005
My major concern is the EW drones; now pretty much every ship will beable to fit EW with no mod or cap use; myself being a shield tanker this is a nice change; however.. when you start getting dreads with a massive ew capability on an already hardened weapons platform; I fear this may make the 'paper rock scissors' deal even worse; Bonuses to drone damage types are fine; I just wish some of the damage types themselves would be 'fixed'; Where as the look of the new system is encouraged to make more variety in ship layouts; the lock into a single damage type bonus seems a little much; locking the ship to only being able to effectivley useing non ew damage drones of the given damage type. Aswell I think the EW effects are a little much; considering they use no cap; no cpu; no grid; just a 'freebie' damage based on yer drone bay size. I would like to see the EW drones use 'something' of the ships resources, as again; you'll end up seeing ships with either swarms of thermal drones (easiest to blow up) or swarms of EW drones. Less effective than mods or not; it's still and effect; and it's been proven in pvp over and over again; that EW effects are much more 'hurtful' than a 30-50 damage per 2 second drone. Only bonus I see out of this is a way for a shield tanker to have a ghetto EW setup they couldn't dream of any other way; I still think it should atleast take some cap to sustain these EW effects; seeing as the 2 major benefactors are Caldari; and minmatar (only 2 viable shield tanks imo) both of which who don't use cap for turrets/launchers.
Just my 2 isk
-Blitz-
acestar on 01 November 2005
Akk WTF about Mining drones? I got a 50% drone bay nerf and a 20% bonus = on osprey 10% less ore! bring back the harvesters!!! and instead of crunching the bays, UP the SIZE of the combat drones.. Of course this does not help much in 0.0 where drones provide most of the mining protection.. Also, make the NPC targeting NOT go for drones 1st off.. give them some surviability down there..
Bottom line for mining is it's a serious NERF and needs to be re-adjusted, either through yield or bay size.. And just so you are aware of it.. not EVERYONE is sitting around w/ 30 million skpts who can use or cares about all those high end goodies your handing out.. you'll send all my corp noobs leaving if they have to struggle even more to get into anything half way decent.. Think of it as a 20% increase in time cost for all noobs under 5mil skpts!!
Hoap on 01 November 2005
I gatta say, this is crap, by far one of the worst "improvements" ive seen ccp do
Stepping Razor on 01 November 2005
Great. So I just trained Minmatar drone spec to 4 for my Dominix WHY?
The other stuff sounds good, but FFS make the drone damage bonus for Gallente ships ACCROSS THE BOARD, not just limited to thermal drones...
StarMartyr on 01 November 2005
Well then...
I'm glad you decided to do this before I wasted any more time on drone skills & any money on a Domi or Ishtar. Care to give us a hint on what you're gonna screw up next or should we just avoid ANY topic known to be in testing OR in Development OR on the drawing bored?
New drones = Kewl
Racial Modifiers = very un-kewl
Halving Drone bays (on drone ships in particular) = so far beyond un-kewl it needs its own name.
One last thing....Noone's come right out and said it but should I accept for fact the ugly truth that my Rax will have a 50m3 drone bay at best?
ChefAce on 01 November 2005
And to think that I just updated my account for another 6 months.
Had I known about this nerf I would have just dropped my subscription and given my character away.
Thanks for the hose CCP. Much appreciated.
Tansha Biren on 01 November 2005
I think the changes are interesting and I think ultimately going to make a more interesting drones game. I would like to reiterate 2 things.
1. Mining Drone yields - will hopefully be scaled back up for the ships that are now losing their additional drones per level. Perhaps lower that Miner Drone IIs usage level to Mining Drone level 4 instead of level 5.
2. Thermal Damage bonuses might be better received as an increase to all damage types by 5%-10%.
Pepperami on 01 November 2005
So, all these people hate the idea, what you gonna do.. Steamroller it anyway?
ffs, drones aren't broke. Plate setups aren't broke. *A lot* of T1 ships aren't broke.
Stop breaking stuff Tuxford.
Andreaz Kotz on 01 November 2005
LOL K
Zelakil on 01 November 2005
The drone bay nerf is a BAD idea. I currently carry 20 drones in my Apoc: mining and combat. With this nerf I'll be going back to the station every time rats spawn. Half the fun of having drones is watching 9 or 10 of those babies launch and zoom around my ship. The new drones types is a good idea, but why are you making those of use who have already trained up our skills train more? Let us keep the ones we have as they are and add new skills for ENTIRELY NEW content.
Shiraz Merlot on 01 November 2005
Ew, don't like the idea of EW drones - what's the point of an EW platform like the Blackbird/Scorp if everyone can do it now?
What about mining drones? I don't see them mentioned.
If you want to rebalance drone size vs damage, to reduce the number of drones to reduce lag, just make each drone twice the size and twice the DPS!
I like the idea of sentry drones. Will these work in an unattended mode?
Current drone system: it ain't broke. Please spend the time fixing UI bugs instead :)
Sun Sliver on 01 November 2005
well I like the direction of less drones, but more powerful. and limiting the number of drones will mean having to manage their sues, which i like. what i dont like (and im not Gal so this is an independant viewpoint) is the thermal only bonus...i mean thats like giving minmatar only Exp bonuses on their guns. Also why not make some time delay between drone launchs instead of limiting drone bay. Ex. a 20 sec delay between 'group' launches. This would allow the gal's to carrying a wide array of drones, but not be able to swap them out too quickly. also i like the idea of sentrty drones, but i think it maybe worth while to treat these seperate and have a max of like 2 or 3. just myy thoughts. again overall, nice concepts in the devblog ;)
velox on 01 November 2005
This is so badly thought out. What about those of us who are putting a great deal of effort into our drone setups.
I am currently training Interfacing 5 a 28 day train, I have 3 days left, I have invested a large amount of time to take advantage in the way drones currently work and now you are messing with them.
Setups like the Vampire PVP drone killing domi are going to be hard pushed to tank and kill if slots now have to be given up to add drone modules just to get the damage mod back.
Also with less only 5 airborne drones. Mixing launched drone types up is no where as flexible as it is now. or are you saying that one medium drone launched to tackle fast intys or spider drones is going to be as effective and last as long as the 3 or 4 currently launched.
I am curious as to how the npc AI will handle the differences in the number of drones launch. even with increased hit points will their approach to attack be better focused with fewer targets swarming around them ...
I dont know i'm just ranting because I think I am gonna be mad here having wasted drone training time when i could have focused on blaster or rail specialisations instead.
CCP you should be more respectful of how you treat peoples training time. Dont tell us training this to 5 will get us AB & C and then once we are they show us AB and a small piece of D instead.
I would prefer building around the current interfacing skills with additional skills and mods to increase hit points damage etc........
Sobeseki Pawi on 01 November 2005
I like the changes, I've always been a fan of the 'drones, should be escorts' (as opposed to being remote control blobs) idea.
Donovan Blackthorne on 01 November 2005
What a joke. Exactly what are you people using our monthly fees for? Thinking up this garbage? Pathetic. Try upgrading the servers, there's a novel concept. Oh wait... you did... Try again. You finally released a ship worthy of the Gallente (the Moros) and before the dust settles, in swoops the nerf bat. What a ridiculous excuse for an "update". The proposed changes are ill-advised, poorly thought out, and are an insult to drone ships everywhere.
Certainly removes the fear of the Moros and the Dominix. Five drones, and thermal drones at that. Laughable. Who doesn't tank thermal? Make it across the board damage modifier and keep the drone bay ffs. What's the use of a drone ship with no variety? It's bad enough your pathetic servers can't keep up with the things YOU designed, but to further destroy the usefulness of the only truly fun part of the game is stupid.
You should all be shot.
Condemner on 01 November 2005
well i had a nice post but had to log in again and poof it's gone i'll shorten it up
drone specific ships should still control 10 drones with max skills
damage blanket 5% all 10% race specific
dronebays the same to allow versatility and backup drones
new drones can take more space if worried about using too many of each type
5 drones less per person with the changes i have stated will reduce server lag HUGE and still keep drone pilots happy and on par with other ships
caldari ppl that are crying mk2 is fixing u we're just trying to keep from getting broken
Sabahl on 01 November 2005
Whatever happened to the idea of remote cargo retrieval drones?
Squrl on 01 November 2005
whats the point of doing anything to drones if thier gonna be limited to a max of 5!Just leave em alone!!!
Flibble42 on 01 November 2005
Much more off this sort of "nuts" and i'm gonna stop playing. If they are gonna make changes like this (big ones) why not invent a story line... I.E. Something happens that gradually renders T1 drones useless (tie it into rogue drones) so we have to learn to use T2 drones which are imune...
Wouldn't u feel better if it woz phased in rather than dumped upon u?
Purvy on 01 November 2005
my biggest concern is the halfing of drone bays. Granted it now feels like the 3mil plus in drone skills have been wasted, the reduction of some already pathetic drone bay sizes seems like for many ships drones have just become useless.
Jamar Tetheys on 01 November 2005
Well Missiles suck, drones suck, is it just me or is there a pattern developing here. Please quit fiddling with the the parts of the game that work and fix the bugs.
Fade Routha on 01 November 2005
Jeeze people CCP is trying to add diversity to the game and reduce sever load.
"I don't like change, it's different and it's not the same."
Andouus La on 01 November 2005
Make me remeber of the missiles changes discussions.
I am asking for an answer on racial dammages to caldari ship (kinetic dammage only) and so far had no answer. CCP has and agenda and will roll over all these comments (and peeps behind it) regardless of consequences.
The game is hitting max 17k peak online word record high.
The wind is blowing in their sails and like the trailer said "eve never fades".
All these negative comments and whining will be washed away by swarms of new players that are perfect strangers to how it "before".
That's how thing are.
Racial dammages bonuses sucks but that's are things will be and are now (for caldari ships that is).
Negative whining comments are totally disregarded si thing of another way of bending the trend or make a comment.
Andouus La on 01 November 2005
*cant edit a post here...
- last phrase
"... disregarded, think of another way of bending the trend or make a comment."
Ivellios on 01 November 2005
Are you out of your collective minds at CCP? What good would the dominix and ishtar be with only five drones... just like everyone else. Each race has its niche, amarr = uber tankers, caldari = missle specialists, minmatar = long range snipe and high speed.... Gallente = NOTHING. Thanks for nothing.
Fade Routha on 01 November 2005
oh yeah, fo rthose of you complaining about being limited to one damage type try playing amarr. Very hard to be affective when in pvp when every one knows what you can do, so i dont want to hear any more whining about how much thermal damage sucks... i mean geeze the did not say that you had to use thermal damage based drones. [choughpowergamerscough] Anyway i think the drone bays should stay the same, and the drone specialty ships should have 10 drones in space with max skills and maybe 5 sec delay between launch recovery launch cycle
my peace anyway
maximyus on 01 November 2005
Shoite just a plain nerf i agree with the fancy new stuff but i like having lots of drones but hey u gonna do it anyway but pls don't take away all my fancy drones
Sparkili on 01 November 2005
I'm not thrilled...but I have faith that this might be at least a bit interesting...
Jayde Electra on 01 November 2005
well at least raven pilots who know they gonna be up against a domn can just tank thermal now and bye bye dom :P
Raynaar on 01 November 2005
Fine. As long as all my expensive harvester drones, 200 mil isk worth, all will now pull in 60 units per cycle.
Thomdril Merrilin on 01 November 2005
lol.
This blog made me laugh.... then I wept.
/emote cries
Death Merchant on 01 November 2005
I believe that the nerfing to 5 drones to be a mistake. That leaves no room for error on an already flawed drone systems. The loss of one drones i basically the equivilent of losing 3 or more in existing setups.
Also If gallente are drone kings, The thermal only damage bonus is ...lets say not very well thought out. I believe a 5% bonus all drones along with 10% thermal would be sufficient. Even 4% all drone and 7% thermal should be effective.
So in conclusion:
1st half of post = good
2nd half of post = needs more discusion and lets say compromise.
a3hayman on 01 November 2005
i like the idea of less lag on server thats great i personally dont fly any gall ships but i do see where ever dom pilot is coming from maybe you should make a specific drone for the doms and hac that use them so they can choose what extra dmg they want to do just a thought :/
Cynon Demarr on 01 November 2005
Racial drone damage bonus limitation is crap. Tuxford, there is no need to cut down the drone firepower for Gallente to 2/3 of what it is now! Every Gallente ship that has a big droebay will lose a big part of its firepower and weakens the Gallente Drone Ship significantly! I have >3,8 million skillpoints in drones and know what I am talking about!
Temugen on 01 November 2005
you notice they release this info *post* fanfest...they didnt want the fans to take them out behind the building with a metal pipe and beat some since into them!!!
Gwenvahar on 01 November 2005
sigh.. you who berate tux and the DEV's in general for the blog here should be happy we've got a drone blog rollin at all, twas long over due. Thanks tux for this much..
The changes in drones will be interesting.. It will suck while we learn to adapt, but then it always will be that way. I have a few questions;
will drone logic for command reception and compliance be adressed so that I will no longer have to persistantly click to have all drones obey a command?
will drone flight protocol be adressed so drones use their speed boosting more effectively, and will that also adress drones getting stuch on each other?
Will combat drone logic be adressed so that their agro selection will be more realistic? Can I count on them not attaking harmless wall sections without a direct command?
Ryu Soma on 01 November 2005
Im Gallente and i think this sucks if the drones get only thermal damage i am swapping to another race as the gallente will be shot to pieces in every battle, HOWEVER i do like the idea behind it - to reduce server lag, but wot would be the max drone numbers for teh carriers when they are put in??? 5??? damn not even worth it i say :(
Sparkili on 01 November 2005
Another comment, I will laugh SOOOOO hard if the vespa graphic is still glitched after this :P
Temugen on 01 November 2005
rofl...i spelled sense wrong :P
Derran on 01 November 2005
I'm still wondering where, if there is a drone thermal damage bonus and a drone EM damage bonus, where the kinetic and explosive drone damage bonuses are.
Dezzereth on 01 November 2005
I agree fully with Righteous Fury's points. This change (espc. when coupled with the proposed ship changes) is doing EVE no favour.
/emote checks the status of the X3 and UFO Aftermath orders.
fatmanpaul on 01 November 2005
I REALLY hate the change to DOM bonus. Sticking it to one damage type bonus makes it no bonus at all. Yes I am disappointed about the lossing the drone number bonus; but the new bonus idea for DOM really sucks eggs. IF it was bonus all races my tempature would drop.
velocoraptor on 01 November 2005
I'm too noob and have no "fighting" skills so there's no reason for me to whine, but really, what about people that have trained the drone interface skill to lvl5?
U sure this is the way to go, just nerfing all the time? why not boost things and find other ways to reduce lag. Nerfing should not be a solo lagpwnmobile. ;-)
Halek on 01 November 2005
Being in a Bantam - I don't like the idea of loosing the ability to have a mining drone and a scout/combat drone in my drone bay. Not I can have one or the other? ouch!
Jonathan Wark on 01 November 2005
Well you ask me the “Reduce server lag” is a poor reason for doing this. Reduce it for how long? Until how many more simultaneous records are broken? It sounds like a Band-Aid on a cut artery to me.
I fly Caldari ships so I went through the Missile Nerf and had to learn a complete new set of skills while people told me to STFU and suck it up, so there is not a lot of sympathy coming from me. I like some of the ideas but over all I think this is a bad change for the wrong reasons.
Elena Skashaya on 01 November 2005
My only concern, which was stated by others, is that I specifically trained to Drones5 with DroneInterfacing 1 to use six heavy drones on my Raven. With 1/2 the drone bay, I will only fit 3 heavy drones meaning my investment in time & skill pts to reach Drones5 is lost (if the drone volume stays the same). If EWar drones are smaller in size, for example equivalent to small drones, I guess I can mix a few webbing drones with heavies and still kill those troublesome frigs/intys.
I guess I'd be heretical to suggest a solution like hosting each EVE region on it's own server rather than the current mantra of "unlimited concurrent users" on one server. What would happen if, as a very positive possibility, EVE gained five, ten, or twenty thousand new players? How much more current functionality would need to be modified to keep all players on one server?
I can admire the technical challenge of hosting so many players on one server without instancing or sharding, and congratulate you on the records you've set. But, I think players simply want a stable, lag-free playing environment, and not one that has to constantly change and reset itself to fit into the limits of hardware and software.
Claude Leon on 01 November 2005
CCP, you have really went off the deep end on this one. Dropping the drones down to 5? You can't be serious. All in the name of lag... Let me tell you something about lag. I use to have some frame issues when my corp would run lvl4 missions. Instead of running to the boards and whining about the "lag" I went out and bought a Fx-55. Guess what? The so called lag is now gone. You guys are totally ruining the game now. Drones made this the game unique. Look at the key word made.
You release tech 2 drones then you nerf them. Priceless.
Ginger Magician on 01 November 2005
Sounds rather complicated - if drones r such a resoruce sucker why not just remove them from the game if u fit one large smartbomb then ur invunerable to drones anyway and it dont look like this is going to change that very much
rangerrabbit on 01 November 2005
try keeping the server up, so i can play, then go mess around with drones
Dragons Rage on 01 November 2005
very nice way to screw over about 3/4th of the players, including my main charactor
which i made a Dominix Whore.
Guess I will start looking for another online game as i will be canceling this one.
making changes is good, totally disrupting most of the players is totally uncalled for and really not good for business.
Queen Dragon on 01 November 2005
Nerf this, nerf that, is that all CCP has to do? Maybe you should read the forum and use some of the really good ideas that people would like in the game rather than just blindly nerfing things that actually work. THIS IS A VERY BAD IDEA. PLEASE RECONSIDER THIS CHANGE.
twit brent on 01 November 2005
As a pure gallente pilot i dont find the changes all that bad. Most of the enemy i encounter these days has no tank but has heaps of WCS and nanofibres. Sitting beside my bubble with sentries out might help me killthem before they manag to get to a safespot smack a bit then log off
Soulita on 01 November 2005
Drone changes mean improvements for drone capabilities for all ships currently not mainly designed as drone carriers since they get advantage of being able to use the new drone types as well as drone carriers.
This means drone carriers loose out compared to the other ships as they gain no advantage by being drone carriers.
Also by using 5 instead of 15 drones (in case of dominix) each drone that gets killed means you loose 1/5th instead of 1/15th of damage output. Whereas other non drone carrier ships loose 1/5th instead of 1/10th of the damage (of their drones)
This means drone carriers loose out even more compared to other ships.
One of the good things of drones (similar to missiles) is that they are available in all 4 dmg types. By giving significant bonuses to 1 damge type only this limits drone carriers to 1 type of damage. (Compared to other ships which usually have all 4 damage types since they can mount missile racks which drone carriers cant mount)
Drone carriers loose out again.
KillmAll187 on 01 November 2005
What about the ishkur?
Dionysus Davinci on 01 November 2005
Hello, I am the average Eve player. I hate change and will bad mouth it without trying it.
ROAR!!!!!!!!!1111111111
Tbone on 01 November 2005
You just killed the gallente pilots that have trained long for that. This race is cap screwed and now your screwing one of the only offensive weapons it has. If you are doing this, gal ships need a boost in cap. If not you are screwing alot of peeps. Atleast make it be able to use 15 of each type instead of 5. A domi will not last with 5 heavy drones vs any other BS and ishtar too.
Camber Tremodian on 01 November 2005
This is a rediculous idea, and offensive to boot. Changing half the race specific skills for one race is offensive. Why not just change the interface so we're all on the ground, make science skills the only ones that deal damage, and call it a day?
They are right though, this will help with the lag. If this is implemented I won't be playing.
Sabastius VonEmitis on 01 November 2005
Hmm, maybe the problem with the servers is that the devs have their heads stuck in them....try the gas oven boys, but blow out the pilot light first.
But seriously, having been in the computer industry for over 20 years, I am constantly amazed by what your servers and software apparently don't do. Course you could just be lying....nah
Guks on 01 November 2005
change the gallente thermal bonus to across the board bonus please.
Louhbo on 01 November 2005
I think the problem here is that we all have found the ships we love to use and ccp is threatening them with drastic changes. I hate the idea of changing the drones/skills because of the effort and time wasted in training them up so that our ships become useful. If ccp is making the change due to server lag, then I say no to the whole thing. We pay for a service and if the servers get lagged down, then upgrade them...that is why we pay a monthy premium. This is a damn good game and I would hate to see it go down in flames.
Tbone on 01 November 2005
Being a pvper, ive adapted to alot of changes. This change is not good and i will not be suprised with ALOT of peeps leaving due to this. Missile change was one thing. They needed balanced. But u change drones, u take away 1/2 of gal offense. Like i stated before, gals cap is so freakin low, u got to have drones to survive, cause u cant tank without sacrificing guns, unlike apoc. cant run semi-tank , cause u run out of cap. cant run all guns cause u run out of cap. Cap booosters are shit, and are pointless to say to use. i dont care if they are getting overhauled, the way a gal pvp is suppose to play is drones and low cap. if thats not the way it is anymore. than ill cya guys in POTBS. and ive never said ill leave this game, but too many changes and not enough bug fixes have been done. time for something different.
Kale Ryoko on 01 November 2005
Amarr ftw \o/
Red Angelus on 01 November 2005
So why should anyone choose Gallente and pilot drone ships again? For the extra 10% drone thermal damage?
Couldnt you AT LEAST change it from 10% drone thermal damage to 10% across-the-board damage? Give the Gallente drone ships something extra to make them worthwhile!
Noillia Durmot on 01 November 2005
I will have no complaints if you change the gallente drone ship bonus to an across the board damage bonus and a percentage mining bonus that makes up for the lost drones.
I`m not sure the EW drones are needed or even desirable but I`ll leave that arguement to others.
Lanu on 01 November 2005
Lose the faction damage.. with the amarr - em , gallente - thermal , caldari - kinetic , minmatter - explosive. If that bonus to thermal damage was a bonus to overall damage of the drones it would be ok with me.
ChronoLynx on 01 November 2005
Better Yet...
Release the new drones and don't change the old ones, give the new ones similar stats to the old ones with the special abilities...
Squid Lord on 01 November 2005
Well Several have stated they will not be playing if the drastic changes are made.
Add me to that list.
If they lose enough accounts and money per month. They will listen.
Mar vel on 01 November 2005
You guys are nuts. This is all about slagging your server problems, and has very little to do with "balance" or development.
The only (and I do mean ONLY) thing that keep the Domi in the same league as the other BS's is its VAST drone bay. You just killed this BS.
As far as output/damage: why don't you guys leave well enough alone, and fix the things that DO need help: it's not about finding (yet another) time-sink; especially for players who have max drone skills - you just made them have to invest another 3 months of training time. How about addressing drone AI, even drone types (eg NOS drones, repair drones, etc.) would be preferable. How about the fact that Drones are so dumb as to attack fixed structures when there are perfectly valid targets that are attacking you? Come on people: this kind of development needs to have some more thought put into it.
I am happy about the trend that CCP seems to be taking e.g. soliciting game enhancements/development ideas from the user community: smart move. We appreciate it.
And before you do anything with drones FIX THE RESEARCH FIELD. And while you're at it, open Jove, and populate some Agents in 0.0. 'Nuff said.
Mindlles on 01 November 2005
As someone that uses his drones alot in pvp, this feels very nerovusing... wonder if it get better/ the same "exept more skill training" Or even better.. It feels abit like the missile patch did ? Bad for does that didnt want to train it all, Very good for does that did?
Chewan Mesa on 01 November 2005
Mar, what you forget there is a Domi with 13-15 EW Drones would be overpowered.
As well this is a nerf hitting Drone users just like it hit missle users, making it more versatile and giving more options to use drones, but with more skills. In my opinion more specialization is a good thing...
You are right about the AI etc...still the only real disadvantage I see is the thermal only dmg, but consider this didnt even hit SiSi if I am correct?
Squid Lord on 01 November 2005
They can limit how many EW drones you have out at one time. Point is , Dominixs and other Drone Boats are pretty worthless now. The Missle Nerf could be fixed by training skills. 5 drone limit cannot be fixed period.
Necolycan on 01 November 2005
So make it so using 15 EW drones reduces the chance of jamming etc.
Squid Lord on 01 November 2005
and as far as lag, turn off turret effects and all effects. Lag problem solved.
Codin Plaks on 01 November 2005
Well, this has become a long thread :) It seems that drones have become an important item in this game. I like the idea that there will be more specialized drones. Allways wanted repair drones (where are the salvage drones?) :)
Nerving the drone capacity for existing ships seems bad idea to me. So my suggestion would be to keep the drone capacity for all ships as it is now, but add a bigger volume to the new drones.
This will:
1. Keep players happy that already have current drone skills maxed
2. Still will reduce lag because lot of players will going to use new specialized drones
Stuu on 01 November 2005
Right my 10p worth, I like the new drones, Its a shame about the numbers but if the damage is the same then ok.
But I dont like the damage increase for the domi of 10% thermal damage per skill level, what if your drones dont do thermal!! Why not just make it 10% damage out put, as we have sepcific drones for specific damage.
also is the drone bay reduction size equivalent to to number of drones you could carry before the drone size reduction?? (I cannot remeber)..
Vydek Daamth on 01 November 2005
My god at the responses...
I have to say I disagree.
Drones and drone-ships work fine as they are.
I feel really strongly about this.
And I say again drones and drone-ships are fine as they are.
I would rather have the drones we have now and just have them forever, than to tweek things in a bad way just to release the new ones.
I'll reiterate.
Drones and drone-ships work fine as they are.
PS
Please dont do this...
Galffin on 01 November 2005
Just one idea, instead of giving Moros drone damage bonus, wouldn't it be ok to have this ship instead have +2 drones per level? It's not like we are going to see huge Moros fleets or anything and would make them much closer to their origional drone fleet style.
Jaketh Ivanes on 01 November 2005
I like the change. Its gonna be interresting to say the least, but the drone bay should be able to hold more drones. Its kinda like ammo. And to all those that says the Therm bonus is bad because it prevents you from useing other drones, well look at the raven. It got Kinetic damage bonus, but lots of them use other missiles to, so can you.
But best thing is a reduction in lag.. Thats allways good :)
Cheechako on 01 November 2005
There's no reason why drone carriers should be able to get +dmg to all drones when caldari have the same situation and every missile boat save the raven gets a bonus to kin missiles.
If you want to be fair, leave it(therm bonus) for every drone carrier save the domi then I guess.
Either way I really do hope these changes happen...
Nelson Vandermark on 01 November 2005
Oh my, I don't see why you are breaking a system that works...
SengH on 01 November 2005
Tuxford
2005.10.31
14:20:01
Moros gets 70% bonus to damage output which results in about the same damage output but only through fewer drones.
uhh please go redo your math.. 5*450%(@ drone interfacing lvl 5) = ~ 22.5 normal drones. A far cry from 35 its supposed to have. Wait wasnt this supposed to be a dreadnought that had insane damage? Oh wait i forgot its DreadNOT.
Ralitge boyter on 01 November 2005
My only question is what will happen to a centry drone left behind?
Would this mean that we see Moros in every belt anchoring these things by the bucket load and then just sitting in back and racking in the cash as these drones kill all spawn even when the owner is offline?
Kristine Hall on 01 November 2005
Whats with the psyops...
*dangles watch in front of you*
This is not a nerf...
This is not a nerf...
New drones are better...
Please give your customers a little more credit than that, they can tell a nerf when they see one.
jaketheuntaki on 01 November 2005
What are the point of logistic ships, EW and interceptors if drones can replace players.
Personally I dont think this is the way to go. Reduce drone numbers sure if lag is a problem but do not increase specialisation, this will just replace a human with a machine.
ludditesFTW
kveldulfson on 01 November 2005
Well Whilst I can uderstand the lag issues caused by fleets of drones. I have to say this proposed change frankly sucks, and would rather they spent the money we pay them every month fixing those technical issues. This I feel is a technical fudge and has nothing to do with gameplay and balance!
Now you will have a mining barge that once could have 10 drones to defend it with just 5. Looks like miners will start loseing barges again, yet I thought these changes would help miners..... NOT!
It also goes against the storyline to have the gallente lose their drones they are drone specialists. And I feel it makes the specialist drone ships obsolete so whoever has those BPO's might as well burn them now.
And lastly if you have to increase damage by skill level make it across the board not one type only.
So in summing up Leave the Vodka alone before comming up with these suggestions as this one stinks big time.
Devvon Maelstrom on 01 November 2005
I consider myself pretty good with gallente ships and the use of drones and even though I'm willing to wait and see on most changes, I've got to admit after reading this I'm more then a little scared of these changes. I can only see it killing the dominix as an effective ship for pvp ship.
Takigama on 01 November 2005
"we're nerfing drones because our servers suck"?
are you kidding me?
again, its going to be the newbies that suffer... when you can only pull out 5 drones, at least its 6 targets for the opposition to worry about.. when that becomes 2 (or 3, which i suspect it wont be), thats really gunna suck for the newbies.
being a dominix pilot myself, having 16 targets out is such a big advantage, swamping the opposition with blips is a huge advantage (one the dominix needs, mind you).. again, ccp nerfs the wrong way, and for the wrong reasons.
pathetic.
Takigama on 01 November 2005
actually, let me expand that point... personally, i think drones should probably do less damage.. but taking away the ability to use a tonne of them, specially for gallente drones ships is kinda rough...
even if you end up doing approx the same amount of damage for half the number of drones, its a really kick in the teeth
MOOstradamus on 01 November 2005
/me loves this BLOG even more one day on .. 8)
EVE-Online Soloplay 4tw \o/
Bibi on 01 November 2005
I dont know what to say really.But sure if its becuse of server-lag that you nerf drones I guess its ok.
But I think thats not why you do it.
Also less targets = easyer to kill even with more hitpoints.Its just to find a good drone killing setup and they are gone poof...
I must ask why does almost every nerf (change) in this game get so over done time after time ?
Gwerny on 01 November 2005
the changes look good for lag, but.....
it will effectively remove up to five drones from each ship. isn't that enough? why change anything about the few ships that are suposed to be drone carriers?
If that happened they will still lose up to five drones, but will still have more drones than other ships and will keep the feel of what they are ment to be 'Drone Carriers', also without the replacement percentage to thermal damage bonus, 1/2 the above complaints would not be there.
Allan Robertson on 01 November 2005
Damm... I just bought an Ishtar. Ok CCP guys I like the new type of drones, but as for the drone changes... No good. Look.
Caldari = Missiles
Minmatar = Speed
Amarr = Cap
Gallente = DRONES!!!
I would ratther loads of drones with the armour/damage we have today, rather than less drones and more armour/damage, I don't care how much you tell me drones will become harder, drones will still fall quick, and now I know how those Ammar guys feel, we are welcome to the "easy to tank club". So do you guys want to tell me what your going to nerf next so I know what not to train for??
Takigama on 01 November 2005
on the plus side, the new drone skills and the new drone types are very encoraging..
but for the love of god, release the skills (with no effect) before the nerf... your already going to severely damage drone pilots with the nerf, at least let them train up the skills they're going to require to be even slightly effective against any oposition before they're needed..
Dr Vicius on 01 November 2005
It should be OK the max 5 drones per vessel, but... Keep the bonuses for the specialized carriers (Domi, Isthar, Ishkur, Arbitrator)...
ClawHammer III on 01 November 2005
Well I'm gonna reserve judgment on the new drone stats until we get to play with them on the test server. My only suggestion so far is that you should probably balance out the damage bonuses on the Drone Interfacing and Heavy Drone Operation skills so that they are both 10% per level. They are both rank 5 skills so it doesn't seem fair to make Drone Interfacing so much more important then Heavy Drone Operation.
Roxanna Kell on 01 November 2005
come on, how the hell are we gonna go from 15 to 5 drones.,
at least make it 10 drones, dominiz and ishtar should have those exra drones man, come on.
please dont screw gallente up againm, we dont need this.
i though the ishtar was just gonna be better .
dominiz and ishtar should still keep their drone controled pet lvl .
have a vote about this , its just not fair. once again CCP's rights to change the game screws us up/
ClawHammer III on 01 November 2005
Oh... forgot to mention that I'm glad you guys finally got around to giving drones some loving :)
Krashtest on 01 November 2005
What everyone seems to miss is the skills give a thermal damage bonus , which means explosive drones will do explosive AND thermal damage and so forth.
Emina on 01 November 2005
there is a little thing that you devs forgot.
to kill of 15 drones the enemy has to target 15 targets. that is a lot more than after the nerf.
now he only has to target 5 targets which is way faster.
now you basically have to reduce the signature radius of drones to 30% to balance that nerf. untill now everyone went after the drone carrier to get rid of the drones, now they will kill off the drones first since they just became way easier targets.
the changes look nice except the massive cut in ammount of drones, and you need to look into the specialized carrier special bonuses, + in only thermal damage will not cut it. make that a general bonus of drone damage since some ppl like to have different types of drones to be more flexible.
Gouglash on 01 November 2005
The limiting to damage types for ishtar and dominix is very, very lame.
The only thing that makes the dominix usable now is to be able to do different damage types.
This will also seriously hurt the ishtar.
Please, don't do the specific damage bonuses! make it 10% bonus to all drone damage.
Arcturus Mensk on 01 November 2005
Well winterblink made one about Eve-Online anno 1979, maybe that would be the solution to server lag issues. :( and feeling depressed
Fellater on 01 November 2005
Why not let us fit out the drones with ship modules ?
Light drones have 1 high slot, Med a high and low, Heavy one of each. All drones have a small cargo hold for ammo. There could be additional skills to vary drone cap / grid / cpu or you could just price them at different levels. i.e. cheap light drone can fit a 125 autocannon, expensive light drones a 250 howie.
That would increase the variation within the game enormously. Skills an bonuses could be introduced to level the effect across all races.
ChefAce on 01 November 2005
Get rid of all the space junk first!
i.e. Abandoned cans, drones, corpses etc etc
That would probably solve most if not all of the lag issues.
Caia on 01 November 2005
Eeep. Kinda scary. I did like the first half very much. The second half is a pretty big nerf. Does the first half make up for the second half? That's what I'm worried about.
Also, making the Gallente have Thermal only makes them way way too easy to tank against. Drones were the one thing that we could reasonably use to do other types of damage. I'd just make it a flat increase to damage.
GREATONE on 01 November 2005
Thx for screwing my game up ccp your wonderfull the best etc etc
El'hith on 01 November 2005
Hye just my take on the situation... its a good idea but it kills the character of the gallentine/ammar drone ships
IMO, it may work if...
interfacing is dropped and switched to the damage bonus, but on 'drone' ships they keep the +1 per level (and not get the new proposed damage bonus)
eg a domi/ishtar can command 10hvys not 15
meaning u keep the exceeding cool effect of the drone spam, kill off some lag and get the damage bonus.. it should still look the same and makes the ships more versitile while not nerfing nor making drone ships any more l33t :)
El'hith starts petetion to save the gallentine drone bonus :)
'loose interfacing but not our +1 per level!!!'
Kintac on 01 November 2005
Not good,
I love controlling 14 drones with my Vexor and my Dominix.
Look for another way to decrease LAG.
Dominix, Vexor, ... Gallentean ships are drone carriers, don´t weaken them in such a way
Dukath on 01 November 2005
To those people comparing this to the kinetic damage bonus on missiles... CCP didn't at the same time lower your missile slots to the same amount as other races have did they? imagine a raven with 2 missile slots and then a bonus to kinetic damage.
Or how about removing armor repairers and give the amarr a bonus to hull repairing, or nerf armor hardeners and give amarr a bonus to EM armor hardeners so we all know what damage to use against them.
If you really have to lower the number of drones then at least leave the +1 drone bonus on the dedicated drone carriers and change the drone interfacing skill. And swap gallente to explosive in stead of thermal. As it is kinetic and thermal are already the most tanked damage types (i guess its also becuase the NPCs like those damage types so much)
and the moros? 35 drones now reduced to 5? I don't care if those drones get a 5000% thermal damage bonus. The drones will be primary target and after that the moros will be useless. Killing 35 drones is a lot harder and time consuming and people will most likely go for an easier target, but killing one drone that represents the damage of 7 heavy drones... thats worthwhile, especially for tacklers.
kessah on 01 November 2005
PLEASE DONT IMPLEMENT THIS! Leave drones the way they are just give light drones a boost. this is guna ruin things
Zhuge Liang on 01 November 2005
************** ALL POSTERS, READ THIS NOW ****************
Going through this blog I have noticed some people think it is ok to make threats. If I find anyone making any sort of a violent threat to any member of CCP you will be banned from the forums straight away.
Do not swear, do not stamp your feet, do not make threats.
Remember this is a game and keep your comments respectful.
Zhuge Liang
Moderator
**********************************************************
vixit on 01 November 2005
this totaly sucksor
SiNbAdLy on 01 November 2005
i just plain dont like
Gardavil on 01 November 2005
I see what you attempting to achieve. I understand.
The number one thing I would change if possible...take away the limitations on what type of damage is favored / hindered on each Race's ships......let us use everyone's drones with full damage. Being limited to Thermal as the only good damage for Gallente ships is way to limiting in a tactical sense....especially since the other race's drone ships do not measure up to Galllente as far as how the can use Drones as a Weapons System. It would be one thing if all the races had equally competant Drone vessals, but they don't.
In many ways, if these changes are implemented, Drones can never again be considered a Primary Weapons System; this flys right in the face of the overall design and function of Gallente Ships, and also Nerfs the Capabilities of the other race's Drone ships even worse.
Please find another way to reduce server lag.
Antipodean Minx on 01 November 2005
halving the size of the domi drone bay? reducing by two thirds the domi´s primary weapon system? giving it a bonus to thermal damage?.
Thanks for that. This is the point at which i´d be shouting and screaming abuse at you, but hey, whats the point?
Here´s an idea to reduce lag. STOP ALLOWING MORE PEOPLE TO CONNECT THAN YOU CAN HANDLE. Want more money and more people to connect? Improve the hardware.
Dunpeal Hunter on 01 November 2005
i like this but i miss one big thing in this article, WHERE ARE THE LOOT DRONES??
QSound on 01 November 2005
Somehow this sux, when using a mining barge its great to have some mining drones and combat drones with you... Will it change that mining barges can survive 0.6 cuz they now lack the drones to defend themselves against npcs? It takes way more time to get your skills sufficient to 4 drones as we had them when you can just use 50% due to lack of space in cargobay...
Lucre on 01 November 2005
Why no drone mining bonus for the ships which used to have drone bonuses? 5 mining drones instead of 13-15 is otherwise a big nerf!
Lermitte on 01 November 2005
So I guess your new servers suck then? How's about you leave the game alone and fix hardware issues as hardware issues...
Jasmine Constantine on 01 November 2005
Limiting the Dominix to thermal damage only is a great weakness for a tech1 Battleship. I think the 20% per BS level should be for "all drone" damage.
NoNamium on 01 November 2005
Stasis Drones are going to mess up this game back to the days when only Battleships could PvP... CCP 4TL
Ajax Osiris on 01 November 2005
I understand Why, but Really think this is a bad idea. Drons are a wildcard and if you have them they are GREAT! however they are counterable cos all they do is dmg. a smart bomb Is a great way of doing this if you can get one with the right range :-p. So they are a means to an end NOT just an end. Really see this and a needless upgrade. Poor Gallent DN
Black Rider on 01 November 2005
I don't mind changes being made to the game, as long as they are reversed if it proves detrimental to the game play.
I for one would like to see more variation in drones, and if that means nerfing some of their current advantages so be it. Things can always be un-nerfed in a future update.
captian jackharkness on 01 November 2005
When you read the replies to these devs blogs you see how many whinging babies play eve.
Get over it!!! and please stop posting your 2 cents when its already been posted many times already.
Alex Harumichi on 01 November 2005
Here's a constructive suggestion to solve the problem areas, also posted on forums:
Tux (and others), I have a suggestion: instead of the damage bonus for the Dom, Ishtar etc, how about a (reduced) drone control bonus?
For example, allow them to control max 7 drones at once, as a static ship speciality. Change the actual ship bonus to something drone related but not too overpowering (maybe drone bay size increase, so with high ship skills you'd also be able to choose the drones from some variety).
This solves a few things, while keeping things balanced (imho):
- Drone ships could use both damage and other drones, without gimping their primary weapon (damage drones). Or they can use all 7 combat drones, resulting in almost the same DPS as now projected (there would be no +10% damage bonus here, so the additional 2 drones actually give less max DPS than current scheme, but allow for versatility).
- The number drones in space still stays small and server load stays low.
- The drone ships retain their unique, versatile drone role, a reason why a lot of people have trained a long time for them.
Comments?
fairimear on 01 November 2005
AND frankly WHAT ****ING LAG?
i get so little lag on my computer except for in jita on a sunday night when theres 260-300 people in there.
for once im going to say it's not the servers it's the cheap ass players not upgrading their comp's.
now leave drones alone.
Rede on 01 November 2005
I like the upcoming changes - or nerf like these crybabies call it.
I'm Gallentean and invested quite a bit in to the droneskills but have always felt that they're very limited. Kill or mine, and I've only used them to kill.
I like very much Alex Harumich idea to give slight drone overpower to ships that has them right now.
But less drones means that you can't solo out some parts of the game but think about what a small fleet with drones can do - bad things.
Maybe something like +1 drone for ship skill lvl 2, +2 for lvl 4 and maybe it would be nice to give small bonus to train all the way to lvl 5 and give one more little guy in space for control...
Or maybe adding advanced drone interfacing (or control) skill that would enable controlling few more drones. like +5% damage/mining yield and +1 for every second level.
Navina on 01 November 2005
Cutting the size of the drone bays on mining barges will hurt the defense cababilities of a ship that is not an offensive threat. The large barge can only hold about six drones now, with a mixture of smal to large. Any less, and you will have effectively limited which systems barges can work without dedicated protection ships.
Bibi on 01 November 2005
PLEASE dont run us over this time as you always do ccp find a other way to do this.
You must to stop this madness nerfings you can never nerf the game perfect.
Dimitri Forgroth on 01 November 2005
Damage bonus is now for all types of drones.
<3
Buzzmong on 01 November 2005
So, basically, all the drone carriers are now a waste of time.
Why use a vexor for instance when you'll now get better results from a rax?
Dom's are now the most useless tier one bs.
I do like the fact drones can do more functions...but...Gal ships had the advantage of using drones on all of the cruisers and above which makes up for the shortfall in cap and grid, and the fact they've got essentially no missiles, now...they have no advantage whatsoever as the other races have all of got a mix of gals skills.
Silpha on 01 November 2005
Regarding the content change, even with the damage bonus increase for all types of drones, this will make it harder for a ship to be ready to deal with all sizes/speeds of opponents. So there is still some loss of combat flexibility.
The other point is that going from 15 to 5 drones will reduce system load by at most a factor of three, and I'd expect it to be much smaller when considering the non heavy drone carriers etc.
So I worry that you might be making major content changes to have what amounts to a stopgap solution.
Can systems migrate between servers dynamically? At one point I think you were asking about which systems were most likely to hold large fleet battles. At the end of the day, I'd hope that fleets try to surprise each other over such things.
Karsten on 01 November 2005
Restricting the ship bonus to one kind of damage is a real nerf. A big plus of drone carriers was that they could varry the kind of damage they create. Once a Domi is limited to thermal damage by bonus she looses a huge feature. Esspecially since many NPC and of course player are well prepared to receive
thermal and emp damage. This patch will reduce the value of drone carriers on a large scale. Change at least the ship bonus for a damage specific to a general bonus. Instead of 10% thermal/emp/... 10 of the droens damage.
General i find it unfair that you do such wide scale changes after nearly 3 years. A lot of players invested a lot of time to train drone skills. Like before to missle and turret user this nerfs make a huge investement in learning time well not useless but at least much less usefull.
I think after such a long time feature changes should be only minor and not on a huge scale. Finetuning is ok but major changes are not really fair to a lot of players.
A alternative would be to leave current dornes as they were and introduce a new class of drones with better features so people that have trained will not loose as much and everyone has the chance to deceide to use the new dornes.
Kurren on 01 November 2005
Wow, Devs, who said this doesn't look like a nerf?
We could beef up the servers, or make it so the sentries don't attack drones, or just simplify the drone bodies so they don't swallow so much memory when launched... Nope, lets take away from the players. Let remove the bonuses that make Drone ships worth getting.
All you're going to do it render a lot of ships useless....
And why decrease the drone capacity of each ship?! If you're only going to be able to fly 5, what the hell does it matter how many I carry?
STUPID STUPID STUPID!!
But I'm just a consumer, what do I know...
Laudicia on 01 November 2005
The thing is. CCP is tring to make the game eaqual for every race. thats so sad to see
If you are born amar you can do everything the other race can do and vica versa.
Its not a bad thing that a particular race can do something better then the other race.
Aslong every race got something that he or she is better in.
Sergeant Spot on 01 November 2005
My only suggestion is that the Dedicated Drone ships, such as the Ishtar, Domi, etc, get a bonus to damage for ALL drones. (And, no, I don't fly any of those ships).
Mad Scot on 01 November 2005
If this is a measure to try and reduce the effectiveness of BS's as solo platforms, as a raven/poc NEEDS drones to hit frigs, will CCp soon engineer a change where you cant do ANYthing unless you are in a gang/corp, then there is the while argument about loot rights etc.
Andouus La on 01 November 2005
Lag isssues. There is in my eyes a couple of things that can done (even if I aint a computer programmer lol).
Can the bookmark have time life on them. I am shure by the time of the beta version you have billions of bookmarks everywhere that are unused. Maybe put a 3 week lifespan on a bm after that it gets deleted at downtime.
Drone flying unatended in space. If a drone looses it's commanding ship it should after a while just disapear in space dust.
Ammo production is being taken care of with new production mods.
These are ideas. Donno.
ps. are the calderi stuck with kinetic or will get to use other missiles too lol.
ShadowWidow on 01 November 2005
LOL these changes are a JOKE and A BAD JOKE, you should have to do other things (and yes reducing lag is a major prob, but there a many other options). Also you should try to unbug the drones BEFOR adding new stuff like new drones etc... You do it like everytime in the last year have a problem at the moment.. okay lets nerv a complete area .. (just say ew,raven, etc etc)
FIX known BUGs don´t create new ...
Hawk Firestorm on 01 November 2005
There's one thing you guys are overlooking though, and that it's far easier to kill off 5 drones than it is 15.
That is the hitpoint ratio will have to be over 3:1 in that instance.
Other thing that greatly concerns me is that with the really poor ship fitting system and balance in general adding such abilities to drones at this point will royally mess things up completely, GREAT care will have to be taken.
I'm not opposed to the changes, however I think they are somewhat premature and far more groundwork needs to be done in other areas before you guys can even look at this.
And the other thing thats a turn off is yet alot more skills, plus factor in that until research is sorted out if you release t2 versions they going to be gouged price wise, and people aren't going to want to be loosin 20mil a drone that's as tough as a wet paper bag.
Though like many I'd be far far happier to see you guys spending developement time on areas that are far more pressing, the fitting system especially to get some proper balance into the game finally.
xuqutain on 01 November 2005
this is the worst day ever for me as a pilot loving drones.
i hate it allready.
what is wrong with the drones we have today.this is a bad bad silly silly way to say that u cant work around the trouble of lagg that lots of drones create. or so i have both heared and experienced
. this is just so bad bad bad.
JSkywalker on 01 November 2005
and what about a 'loot-collecting' drone?
Rowan Lyon on 01 November 2005
Wow. So much for doing lvl 3 agent missions in a Thorax. :/
Damir36 on 01 November 2005
Don`t just restrict existing things, be creative... Create new Drones and make them desireable for Players. For Example: Call them Advanced Drones, make them bigger, let 5 of them do the Damage of 11 "old" Drones and give them some Extras. Reason for only 5 of them: More of the "Advanced" Version can`t be handeled by Shipelectonics and Player Skills. This woud make them diserable an it woulld not be the nerf you are planning. I would happili skilling for that. And yes, i am a Domipilot and i wander if I have wastet my time skilling Drones for the past few month.
Cymorril on 01 November 2005
I like the idea, but if you tie ships types to damage types all you get is a nerf for those specific ships. If someone knows a Domi always has thermal drones all they have to do is have a tanking set up and they always win.
Also, will ships get an increase in cargo hold? The Thorax has a huge drone bay, but once you slash that it's a ship with less chance to protect itself and no room to carry anything.
Method 0 on 01 November 2005
Gallente racial bonus to drones becomes unattractive... that is rather aweful.
Joesph McKirby on 01 November 2005
it might be a better developer investment to move all those agents/agent runners crowding up major highway systems like oursulaert, jita/niyabinnen, and rens. They mentioned they were going to move agents back when Cold War was implemented and they still havent. Id really like to be able to go into oursulaert to buy stuff, but i cant cus of the 5 min lag and 300+ people in the system.
Or even have cans that are in mission deadspace disappear after the mission has been finished instead of leaving them there to time out (no, they dont disappear after you complete the mission). 1 person in a simple cruiser can run enough deadspace missions in 1 hour to cover a system in hundreds of cans that have to wait to expire. multiply that by 50-100 people running missions in the same system and you have "Lagsulaert".
Take other measures for 'reducing lag' before destroying an entire ship class. There's my 'respectful comment'.
Cochise on 01 November 2005
Just another glossy nerf and a waste of weeks of skill training to help eleminate lag that shouldnt be there in the first place.
I know, I know, Its cheaper to change pixels and programing than hardware. Once again I feel more like a victim rather than a customer. Thanks Guys !!!
Storm Mage on 01 November 2005
Nice way to screw over pvp guys. Drones are fine as is.
Cottontail on 01 November 2005
Oh great, lets just make the whole fucking game even more complicated shall we
Cottontail on 01 November 2005
oops, apologies for the sweraing
Malinaria on 01 November 2005
SO no more hives.
Then no more rogue Drones cpx as well ?
pretty p*ssed at this kind of changes
Yumina Tsumiko on 01 November 2005
if this change goes in as proposed right now, i'm leaving the game.
i fly a dominix and vexor, while i do use hammerheads, i dont use ogres, which makes my use of the dominix highly dimished simply cause its the only drone thats going to get a bonus for me.
On top of that, a dominix with only 5 drones popping out is not a bewildering sight, you have 15 drones come at you (and no i cant use quite that many) and the dominix pilot gains the advantage of confusion (if nothing else)... targetting and taking out 15 drones aint easy.. 5 drones is. On top of that, if i follow my current training path, i'd be wasting about 3 months training on drones.
BUT... my reason for leaving is simple, im not paying a subscription to a game who's server code and architecture is so poorly designed that in order for it to work you'd have to implement a change like this. Bugs on the otherhand, i can live with.
fix the servers, fix the code.... THEN think about how you should be nerfing drones... the idea that i pay for that kind of rubbish sickens me. Some idiot somewhere went "we are overloaded, wow look at all these drones, yeah, lets get rid of them" when they could have been trying to fix the root cause of the problem in the first place. What a waste, i wonder how long it took to think up these proposed changes when the time could have been better spent?
i'll wait and see it on the test server, but the changes above are unworkable as they stand, and reasoning behind them is even worse, and as a paying (and now very annoyed after reading this) customer, i'll take my money back to SWG where when they nerf, it only takes me 2 weeks to train another class up and recover from it.
i'll probably regret this post later, but not that much.
CT BadIronTree on 01 November 2005
omg look how many post are in here lol
Rhianna Christian on 01 November 2005
i was dead set against this, but i decided to read more. I ended up even MORE upset about this.
But now i realised that there are a few cookies in here for droners...domi's (not flown ishtars) can still be unpredictable because they can make up for their slots with drones...7 lows allows some gankage, with ew mids PLUS ew drones, they could possibly give a scorp a bit of a run for its money with a lot more damage. i won't explore too much here cos i want to use it for myself.
Bottom line: I don't like it
Afte a little thought: Us droners might still have an edge.
Vorok on 01 November 2005
This is going to be fine. Stop whining. My favorite ship is the dominix and the only real downside to this is the lack of cool factor in having 13-15 drones swarming around you.
And finally drones get some skills, rather than being treated like a secondary weapon.
Rhianna Christian on 01 November 2005
ah yes, being a bit of a storywhore and all, how are you going to explain this nerf? reducing damage from a weapon (missile change) or how they work (ECM change) are kinda stealthy. But how do CCP explain how a 15 droneship becomes a 5 droneship overnight?
SpaceKing on 01 November 2005
have been trainning drones for a long time and this crap was not what i trained for ... and adding alot of new skills ... again .. wipiie
Dakoth Kathoy on 01 November 2005
The 10% thermal damage bonus for the Gallente ships is not a fair trade-off for the reduced number of drones. Come on, ccp: Come up with something else in addition! The usefulness of the drone skills are also greatly undermined in a way I feel is unfair when you consider the long training times (especially for drone interfacing lvl5).
shakaZ XIV on 01 November 2005
Sounds all good, except the specific damage types. Cerb/crow are uber predictable because of it, dont do the same to domi/ishtar/arbi. :[
Dufas on 01 November 2005
once again ccp goes 1 step forward ... 2 steps back...the new drone skills sound great and the new drones r sorely needed...but then we get screwed by only using 5 max...and cutting drone bay in half so we cant bring many with us...STUPID!!!!!...we should have more of a drone bay to bring more with us cause they have so many different uses...if this is their soulution to help server lagg...dear god i hate to see what these brain kids do when bm's come up on the radar
Kai Jyokoroi on 01 November 2005
Two points -
a) Instead of nerfing things because of server-side lag, fix/upgrade the servers
b) Don't restrict damage bonuses to just thermic, otherwise everyone will tank against it. Give it a flat 10% increase and let people choose which drones to use.
(Gallente pilot with Minmatar drones here)
Jokull on 01 November 2005
Taking my favorite ( cool droneship ) and killing it :( guess I´ll put my dominix up for sale a.s.a.p so I might get some isk for it, to me it will completelly useless
symbi0te on 01 November 2005
Good and Very Bad, it will reduce the lag in the game since you won't be controling 15 drones, but then again what the bad problem is that for a domi. pilot as me the drone will be able 2 do 1 type of damage which will come to the point, of just hitting my self destruct button LOL
Ryn0 on 01 November 2005
I don't like the drone bays being halfed. Maybe take a bit off them but not half of them.
Foog on 01 November 2005
How about beefing up the ccp servers and fix the problem where it really resides!! It will have to be done sooner or later, why not sooner. Taking away drones is a temp. fix for server lag. ccp should rap their heads around this one and fix the lag problem with out changeing the game. Charge all players $5/month. that should give ccp enough money to beef up there servers. Fix the Problem, don't nerf!! a Domi with 5 drones. LOL think about it CCP.
Foog on 01 November 2005
I wrote "Charge all players $5/month. that should give ccp enough money to beef up there servers."
I ment "Charge all players $5/month more."
TI0 101 on 01 November 2005
um, the comment **** you springs to mind ^^ jesus, just ban all the isk farmers accounts or spend some mo money on the server inferstructure, or..... just dont do **** in general ^^
Aeleva on 01 November 2005
Change damage type bonus, for the dedicated drone ships make it blanket all types, and pleeeassee dont cut drone bays in half. well i can see why cos then my apoc could fly out 5 drones doing equivilant damage of say 10, when currently it flys 6, so only flying 3 would work. But still. Mabey a max drones being flown at once limit on the ships?
Amos Sommers on 01 November 2005
Yay lets screw up the Gallente =D
5 drones .. are you kidding me ..
Ishmair on 01 November 2005
CCP if there is a big picture to this please tell. most ppl can't not think to see if there is going to be a big picture for this they're only thinking whats it going to do to them now. yes it seems to be going to render most ship useless for there abilities now. But I mean "BUT" what are the plans for these changes. there are teir 3 BS much more T2 ships and there is carriers coming. I was thinking these new drone changes maybe more un balance then anything was in this game.
1.) gate camp all ships carrying sentry drones and depolied = nasty.
2.) there is many more thing can be used wrongly for these new drones I leave it for ppl the fined it out for them selves on the test server.
Amos Sommers on 01 November 2005
Sorry for previous post but this is just dumb imo.
Why this is bad. Many pilots (including me) relay on ability to mix diferent drone types to inflict damage quickly. You are now doing what you did to Cerberus - tieing pilots to using specific drones only to get decent damage... I cant say I dont really like the changes but I realy enjoy seeing Interceptor pilots panick when 10 drone swarm attacks them :). I suggest instead of large damage specific bonus, give ships smaller general damage bonus...
Thuk on 01 November 2005
Why would anyone choose a Domi over a Mega now. The Domi has a bigger sig radius, goes slower, only has 6 high slots, can't fit missiles, struggles to fit only 6 low end large guns due to Powergrid, (however it's other bonus is for large guns???) fields the same number of drones as the Mega and will only do more drone damage than the mega if it uses thermal drones. Talk about a nerfed ship. and don't even get me started on the vexor
Fusedbrain on 01 November 2005
Come on CCP is there really a need to cut the drone bay capacity in half?? It won't cost you any server overhead since we can only use half as many drones. In my opinion it would make most ships more effective. KEEP THE DRONE BAY CAPACITY AS IT IS.
Cynon Demarr on 01 November 2005
Maybe you CCP guys should contact www.palestar.com as they are much more experienced with swarms of fighters (act like drones) on their servers. You should learn from them how to reduce lag on the server. I am sure the Chief programmer of the game "DarkSpace" (Space PvP at its best!!!) there will teach you how to fix your lag scapegoat called "drones"... Please contact Palestar.com as the knowledge transfer would be helpfull for this game!!!
Da'Lorien on 01 November 2005
First feeling was "oh nice" and while reading further it changed to "oh crap"...
Drones are primary weapon and the more drones the better (yeah major fleet battles lag badly, so tune the UI instead nerfing poor drones).
And the thermal-dmg-only thing changes the gallente from drone-specialized race to drone-handicapped race. Just remember to rewrite the background stories together with this.
I beg heavens the "with these changes it could only use 5" - clause doesnt mean they're changing drone bay limits too.
Because it would suck badly to have 5 drones killed instantly by ceptor and you cant replace the destroyed ones by lauching more because your drone bay was nerfed..
Chromagnon Beetar on 01 November 2005
This is just a big nerf against gallente pilots
Andouus La on 01 November 2005
Another thing that I am pretty shure of creating lag is all those cans anchored everwhere.
There usefull, but some are anchored them forever. Some accounts most not be active anymore.
Time frame on the anchoring would be something to help the roid site and lag. (could even make a bug report on Isanamo belts witch looks like dump site atm lol).
Cheers
Thuk on 01 November 2005
Oh if u are gonna reduce the number of drones can u reduce the sig radius of drones by say 70% to emulate the time required to lock 15 drones for the 5 there now are?
TotensBurntCorpse on 01 November 2005
1) Dont see any "improvements" for mining ppl out there wrt mining drones so I assume there are none and this is a BIG NERF that is being slipped in under the radar wrt to the expected griping about the combat nerf wrt #s of drones.
2) why fix what aint broke? give us the mods and skills but lose the other junk. it does nothing but detract from team play and in some cases makes certain skills aready out there superfulous and certain ships needless.
TotensBurntCorpse on 01 November 2005
ohh btw I thought the point of more of the original skills was to make u able to use MORE drones at LONGER ranges and LARGER sizes, so your opening statement is blatantly WRONG !
Callisto Augustus on 01 November 2005
Quite a response from this -- a signal I think that this is a BAD IDEA.
Yet I'm willing to try the new changes at least (since I dont have Domi skills yet) but cutting the drone bay space in half for ALL SHIPS is absolutely RIDICULOUS, especially when theres going to be an increase in the variety of drones out there to use.
/signed
Mullandra on 01 November 2005
How about reducing lag by making large ships need 2 pilots lol
Wraeththu on 01 November 2005
One, the horde of drones was interesting and visually appealing. I have friends who became interested in the game for the sole reason I explained you could fly a ship with a cloud of tiny minions that spew out and defend you
Two, the continued homoginization of race to damage type, and the proliferation of ultra-hardeneing, is really ruining the fun. It's turning this game into a rock/paper/scissors RPG, where you run into someone who's Kin/Therm hardened, and immune to 70% of the ships out there. Thumbs down to homoginization.
Three, Why are you making totally negative (there's no bonus here except for repair drones, which is small consolation) for the sole purpose of trying to reduce lag, when, in fact, all you're doing is reducing anyone's desire to use this ship. You might as well leave drones the way they are, and just nerf the gallente drone carriers. It requires less coding and has the same effective result (nobody using clouds of drones).
Four, why no loot drones? That was the first thing I wanted from a drone was to go get my swag instead of having to fly 20 minutes to a can. "Heeed.. Loot.. now"
Blade Kinnerson on 01 November 2005
When missiles were 'balanced' the raven and other missile specailist ships did not loose laucher hardpoints. The damage that they did was reduced.
But this is not just about balancing the drones, it's about reducing the lag as well. So yes reduce the number of drone a ship can handle, but not by limiting it to 5 as a flat rate, that makes a joke for much of the point of using the drones; overwhelming your enemy with more targets than they can track. Keep the plus dones for the carriers, increase the the hitpoints and damage to counter the loss of a third, but not by forcing it into one damage type. Make the damage bonus all type, keep the options open for drones users.
As for the new EW types, make the effects appropriate, 1/5 of a module effect. so you would need five to be as effective as the module your throwing away. This would still allow a drone carrier to retain some firepower from drones.
Andouus La on 01 November 2005
One other comment, all this bitching remember too much of the missile nerf...
Prior to the big changes on missiles I closed my account and reprocessed my character decided to ever come back in the game...
- You currently have 89 skills and 1,946,396 skill points -
ROFL
The changes to the missiles wherent so bad after all. Let de devs make their point, test the changes on the test server and wait for all this to appen. Just be patient.
Andouus La on 01 November 2005
Still think the limited ROF to thermal dammages or like kinetic dammages of the calderi stinks badly but that is off the point
Were is the edit button on the dev section :(
Darkwolf on 01 November 2005
CCP, it's really about time you put in a mechanism so people can get their skillpoints back when you go and rework a game mechanic that's been in place for several years.
Ben Derindar on 01 November 2005
Guess my Domi will be left permakitted for mining... and I haven't mined in weeks. :/
Abvrasious on 01 November 2005
I saw a post about cutting Drone Bays in half from a poser, but I don't see it listed here. So, is that true? If so, that is bad because we need more space for the variety of Drones rather than just two types now.
As for mining drones, are their yields going to be increasing, or remaining the same?
Jaque Sarte on 01 November 2005
I read a lot of changes to cruiser and battleship bonuses, but nothing about mining barges. Drones are a mining barges only defense, are you expecting the new drone damage to be equal to flying 10 medium combat drones now? The mining barges weren't mentioned for drone damage bonuses.
Kathleen on 01 November 2005
Well I like it, if u can do the same dmg with less drones more power to it. Less lag, same fun.
Ofcourse drone ships need to have some kind of added bonus, make more dmg per drone for them, just something that still makes them good drone ships.
Little Brat on 01 November 2005
I trained specifically to fly the Dom with 15 drones and chose those skills to compliment my alt. I am angry about the time I lost training to lvl 5 in all the drone skills. Bad move in this regard.
Verlan on 01 November 2005
I think this stinks big time. I have never complained in more than 2 years but I am now totally outraged.
For old timers, this is the second drones nerfing and I am really upset. Frigates that could control 2 drones can now control 2/3 of a drone!?!?! Otherwise it ain't fair to the Dom that gets slashed by one third? That makes sense?
I am sick and tired of CCP nerfing things instead of improving what lacks. There is nothing more frustrating than spending months of training and then having it being invalidated.
And a little respect for those of us who have been around long enough to be frustrated many times. All ships are not equal? Well, so much the better, people can fly anything they wish and if something does not look fair, improve what is weak, don't just nerf what is strong. One of the beauty of this game is diversity, and playing on the pros and cons of each module, different weapons, making the right choices and compromises to win.
I really don't feel like a paying customer ATM!!!
Kilostream on 01 November 2005
This is starting to get ridiculous, CCP - ENOUGH WITH THE NERF BAT!
I'd just like to echo someone's point from earlier on - To fix the lag, upgrade the hardware, and improve the code - don't take stuff away from us that we want to have (the drones).
You're always bleating on about how successful eve is, and how we break record player numbers, well how about ploughing a bit of the subscription money back into the game instead of taking stuff away from us, the players that pay your wages in order to reduce lag?
This will start costing you customers soon - I am getting very disillusioned with spending ages training for stuff (EW, Missiles, and now drones) only to have them ruined shortly after by some ill-conceived patch.
Not a happy punter,
Kilo
Sally Shears on 01 November 2005
Why not just increase the size of the good drones? Like 50m3 or summin for a web drone? Would be a *much* better idea than nerfing the drone carriers, which will make flying them no fun at all.
Samuel G on 01 November 2005
Ok to reduce Lag :
You will REMOVE a part of the game.
Will not compensate the time taken for some to learn the skills needed to play the part of the game you will REMOVE :)
As Kilostream mentioned above WE(your clients) dont want parts of the game removed.
I haven't trained drones but this is not about the drones this is about the general idea of FIXing things in EVE.With this so called nerf I think that you are only showing us that you cant handle the incresed number of players.
(You can always buy a new graphic engine:)
P.S.
Look how long the comment list is:I think that they are not saying "Good Work" :)
Zenior on 01 November 2005
So the nerf bat hits my skill sheet again :P
Okay, I get the idea behind this, it's just that I'm getting sick of the feeling that I'm kicked back to start every 3rd month.
Bob DeBuilder on 01 November 2005
Not good at all, how is gallente race supposed to deal different dmg now? it sux that we dont have different ammo types to do it but now u take away our drones that do EM and Explosive dmg, what nex? only let gallente use pods and shuttles in game???
Hope u reconsider this :(
Bob
Dragons Rage on 01 November 2005
They state they will do it, not if, not what does the paying person think. They say it. It happens And i will be laughing my Balls off when they start losing alot of people, because they will have no F*cking clue why.
Good Bye record numbers, They finally managed to Kill Eve. It will be fun watching the Devs look for a Job.
TFC Arathorn on 01 November 2005
I freakin hate being Gallente. Thank you CCP.
/me logs on to cancel his heavy drone 5 skill.
I wonder how much it would cost to have myself genetically altered to be caldari? Oh wait, I know, another 2 years of training time, that's what it would freakin cost.
Col Mammoth on 01 November 2005
I have only been playing for a little more than a month. Very new to EVE and am hooked to the game like a crack whore.
I was very excited about training up to be able to operate alot of mining drones... and be able to protect myself while mining aswell. Not sure what to do to train now.
Not enough information to go off of in my opinion.
I read through most of the posts.
*Rubs Eyes*
And I have to agree with several comments:
Its a pay to play.
Just pay to fix.
Keep the players.
Andouus La on 01 November 2005
Hmmmm still remember the posts prior to the missiles nerfs and that was about what peeps where saying. We where from exodus peak at 12k simultanious users online and whent down to raughly 8k average then Cold war whent out and now peak user is at 17k world record scores.
Please dont use those arguments and menaces of deliting characters or cancelling your subscription this leads nowhere. :(
Evaluate what is in the dev blob might be good afer all.
The missiles nerf was good bottom end. Will prolly be the case for this change too.
Mr Filth on 01 November 2005
A guy in the forum wrote something about ccp changing the game all the time to remove lag instead of fixing the server or maybe get an extra. Im starting to think he is right. Although the worst part is, no mstter how much we complain,they will force it through. No matter how fare this comment list gets, theyll still change the drones. I hate when a person buys something and when bought, someeone changes. Just trained gallente cause i like the drone aspect, and now its shit. Should be a law against this :)
shame on you ccp..shame on you. You are starting to look like "sony enterntainment"
Wipes on 01 November 2005
doubt very much that this long thread makes any impression on the DEV`s ...
the decision i think is made, once again without us players having a saying ...
HighlanderUK on 01 November 2005
Most of the Gallente ships won't be carrying any drones if you half what they have - or be limited to light drones only. Such as frigs, destroyers and even non-Gallente ship like the mining barges - halfing all ships drone bays, is pure arson......arson about!!!!
Only fair u adjust the Gallente ships to allow missiles launcher points then, since drones will be out the window.
idiefast on 01 November 2005
Well swarms are a very entertaining sight, though I prefectly understand their reasons for drone limitation. I can't wait until the next patch is up though.
Qalock Oulk on 01 November 2005
Like lots of others, I have rarely felt the need to comment on CCP's decisions over the years, but I feel like I need to now.
First of all, I think it's unanimous that the thermal only bonus has to be scrapped.
I love my dom and my ishtar because they FEEL a lot different than other ships I fly. Allowing them to only launch as many drones as other ships will ruin that feel.
How about a compromise where most ships will have the 5 drones max but the drone boats get +1 per lvl and 10% dmg per lvl? This will give the equivalent of the old 15 drones, retaining the drone boat's special feel (10 drones) but also reduce lag because the majority of ships will only be using 5 drones.
Another issue is the total drone bay capacity. Drone boats still need a bigger bay than the number of drones they can use at once for 2 reasons:
1. Flexibility - Drone boats dont have lots of PG or high slots so they need to be able to use different drones in different situations, much like a gun ship will change its ammo depending on range, resistances etc.
2. Being attacked by 5 uber drones is a LOT less stressful and mentally demanding than being hammered by 15 normal drones (OMGWTF where do I start, run away!!!!). You can eaasily lock ALL the drones at once and concentrate on your opponent rather than relocking a new drone every few seconds as they pop. I know that inty pilots will be very happy with the proposed changes...
Cheeva on 01 November 2005
why on earth reduce the drone size? if cap is five then it is five(which i dont like). now i cant defend my barge with 10 drones but at least i could then try to defend n pull em in and mine now they are useless if i can only carry five. keep drone bays same size at least so i have some flexibilty. whats the point in claiming the largest server if you have to reduce stuff in game to keep it running smoothly. make different zones or something to reduce server load. next thing is we will have battleships with one turret lol. it ruins the element of space battles. this is in my opinion a cheap way out and progress into a lame game. do it the right way (i have been impressed up till now).
Fuhki on 01 November 2005
i agree this idea is stupid. with all the tech out in space we can only manage five drones? lol 5 drones how pathetic. once they start on the path of reducing stuff it wont end. after all they are only running one server, add more hardware and zone the server, you are warping anyway so whats the big deal. every game that had promise that took the cheap way out began its fall at that point. very sad indeed.
Rejeev on 01 November 2005
yep. ive played plenty of online games and this sounds like a bad way to go in order to save a few bucks. what on earth do solo miners do with 5 drones? bad move dev team. lets see how long my accounts are active if this keeps up.
Veeja on 01 November 2005
I would rather see them get rid of drones entirely then, and credit back the time trained in those skills. Focus on improving ships and get rid of token drones.
James Draekn on 02 November 2005
For the money we spend on this game....
UPGRADE YOUR HARDWARE AND STOP MESSING WITH THE FEATURES THAT PEOPLE LOVE!!!!
I really am interested to see what CCP is planning on doing when you get into the Chinese market. Chopping the amount of Drones will not help your lag problems when 50k-100k players are logged in at the same time, but upgrading your hardware will.
Issle on 02 November 2005
I'll echo an earlier comment - this smacks strongly of the same (*exact same*) mentality that was used with Earth & Beyond. Every time you turned around, a nerf was implemented. Often substantial, with no regard whatsoever to the masses who were paying to play. I cancelled my account there because of how pathetic it was.
CCP, I'm just one guy. You don't have to give a damn about me, you've become a corporate machine that just decides what it wants and tells us to get bent. That's your choice. To agree with an earlier poster - I'll help you reduce lag as well - by cancelling my account. Without my presence, I'm sure some of the lag will be lessened.
Centurin on 02 November 2005
I've been playing this game for about 3 weeks now. I have to say that I am disappointed with the drone nerf. I started with the Gallante because of their drones. But now it seems they have no advantage at all. I just don't see the purpose of such a change. Why? Are drones really that big of a problem to this game?
PhoenixHeart on 02 November 2005
I hope CCP reads these... seriously. Exactly what reason do they change game aspects? to help the players. Well, in case you hadn't noticed, CCP, the players DON'T WANT THIS. So why are you doing it? just because you can? If this is present in the next patch it will show that you guys are no better than Sony, Mythic, or any of the other MMOG companies out there... Here I had truly believe that you were different... that you actually CARED about your player base...
Here's an idea! make a poll, let the PLAYERS decide what THEY want. After all, what is the purpose of making games other than to provide entertainment? This isn't entertainment anymore... this is sickening... If this change is present in the next patch, despite all posts against it, I will, as several others have said, help y'all reduce your lag- by cancelling my account. Seriously, you guys, wake up...
Koetsu on 02 November 2005
U make a lot of ppl unhappy tbh
Toqua on 02 November 2005
Well, sorry to say, but this 'proposal' is bull****.
So, a Carrier - who is supposed to be a 'support ship' - will have ... 5 fighters (XL-Drones) to defend... YEEEEHAA... crap.
Dear CCP-Developers (and ESPECIALLY Tuxford, who seems to be new), START FREAKING THINKING!!!!
I don't want to repeat anything what's already said from players about the probles that will arise (and I agree with it), but when you limit the amount of drones a ship can control, I might be able to live with it (when they do the same damage as the equivalent of the current setting), but I would STRONGLY request that the ships can have at least MULTIPLE groups of drones, which requires _MORE DRONEBAY CAPACITY_, so you can switch drones ....
Ggrimreaper on 02 November 2005
whats the old phrase, if it's not broken Don't Fix it....
I think the new drones idea is good but why cut the bay size.. with less drones in space we'll need spares as no doubt even with a hp boost they'll still be weak.. you are nerfing the gallente like you did with caldari..
now someones come up with an idea in here which is make a poll see what the response is by the looks of it it'll tell you whats being put in here.. WE DO NOT WANT THIS
Phi Crysae on 02 November 2005
I like most of the changes. stasis drones ect...will be great, but I have one HUGE problem,
"Moros' 5 drone per dreadnought level changed to 70% bonus to drone thermal damage per level. It also gets a drone hitpoint bonus, either static or per level"
IMO this is the dumbest thing I have seen. The big thing you are forgetting is that not everyone uses faction drones, or in the case of the moros, thermal damage drones. So if a moros pilot wants to use explosive berserker (explosive) drones he/she will do the same damage as any regular BS using 5 heavy explosive drones.
Drop the faction damage bonus' and just give a bonus to overall damage.
oh, and a quick question: Is there going to be any way to increase the orbit range of drones? ei, change the orbit from 250m - 3000m ect...
Omnious Prime on 02 November 2005
AWWW....this absolutely sux! Instead of getting rid of all the stuff tht makes eve good and blaming it on lag and system resources why dnt you just make another server, eve has become very popular another server would do a whole lot of good in the long run.
Ur making it really hard for the little guys in the game.........:(
MdKharaa on 02 November 2005
Ooh, I don't think I like the sound of this, why such a dramatic change on something which is essentially, a small feature of the game? So that means *more* skills to learn, to bring your drones back upto effectiveness, which in fact only contributes a small percentage of your overall firepower...Please use your resources on other areas of the game, and don't muddy up the drones, I like them the way they are, in fact, just release salvage drones already. >_<
Gah, I thought this was some kind of aprils fool when I first read it, perhaps this feature needs to grow on me.
Gonada on 02 November 2005
i think you guys are just doubletalking.
in reality you are nerfing the dones, and screwing everyone who used them, and really screwing those that wasted the time to get all their drone skills to 5.
thermal damage, wth is that? why dont you give gallent ships EM as well? thermal is crap, and youve effectivly toasted off the race that actually can use them to any effect.
Thus begins the decline of ccp, bowing to the bleating of the masses.
wogg on 02 November 2005
Im not to sure about this change , i mine in a convector and the 10 drones i throw out are my
lifeblood.
zero2espect on 02 November 2005
thanks for the wasted training & specialising time CCP. First you knock the guts outa the arbi, now you knock what's left of it by stuffing up the drones side of it.
you can credit my account for the month or so of training time in drones and refund my ingame account with the isk for my 4 arbitrators and the arbi, ogre and beserker bpos i have.
pls send me an evemail when my credit card and in game wallet have been credited as instructed.
i'm pretty sure amex would consider this paying for faulty services or goods...
if you do not want to do this do not reduce the cargo bay size of the dom & arbi. limit the max in space at any time if you like but make the "drone carrier" class ships capable of carrying a selection of drones. and the damage bonus to all types is a must.
Rambler on 02 November 2005
Agreed, wtf? Can the devs please, I don't know, NOT DO THIS? For the love of god! Have many players actually ever complained against drones? Apart from the fact that Gallente are meant to be Drone specialists, why in the name of sweet Jesus would you turn what was a nice, simple and working item into a complex hell-hole? And then destroy the drone capacity of A) the Thorax and B) the Dom? Bleh, I hope this goes the way of "Jove Space" and is never implemented. C'mon pooky lets burn this motherf**ker to the ground!
ALTNAME on 02 November 2005
Proof that this change is a nerf in order to insure viability of small tacklers, YET AGAIN, by nerfing all other ships, is the reduction in drone bay size. The number of drone you have in your bay does nothing to create lag, any more than 10 torpedoes or 10000 torpedoes in your industrail causes more lag.
Judge Almighty on 02 November 2005
sounds good, but how about pricing?
Is a dominax pilot just going to have super drones for the same cost as a raven pilot?
EwokPoacher on 02 November 2005
For lack of a better phrase....
This sucks.
Leave drones alone. Hand out more HAC BPO's so the prices will come down. Add more complexes in low sec and 0.0 to attract more people. But if anything, leave drones alone.
Engar Anduve on 02 November 2005
I never post on these things, but I have a question. It says drone hitpoint increase. I'm assuming this is going to be a helluva hp increase. If it is, then I'll be fine with this. Except of course with the removal of the control bonus for the gallente ships. I agree with making it less, but not removing it completely. But if you take the 10% thermal dam. increase, and the other damage increases that are there now, you'd think that these drones are starting to hit harder than frigs. Which would make it worth while. But we won't know how this truly affects things until it's been tested.
O'Sirius on 02 November 2005
I'm not liking the Webdrones, this will severly hurt tacklers and Short Range ships. Oh well, guess I'll stay out of 0.0
31i73 on 02 November 2005
Do they do this just to cover up the fact that "return to drone bay" isn't working?
Maruk Ihnati on 02 November 2005
Why don't you ad some "Scavanger drones" too? They would loot the cans for you.
TuRtLe HeAd on 02 November 2005
No NO no No !
Cap the specialized Drones Not The Old ones, I want more than 5 Drones.
I have met around 25 people now that Have stopped Training Drone Skills, because of these propsed changes.
I like the idea of new Drones, but surely theres other ways of implementing them than Screwing over Current Drone users.
Spul eM on 02 November 2005
maybe the drone space should't be halved, but the drones in space in just max of 5, wich is still too few.
I am a great fan of the Vex0r with eplosive drones, but with this new idea, I should be stuck with thermal, or I will simply have no bonus.
Wolverine PL on 02 November 2005
Hmm, time to find new game. Maybe I will play Everquest 2
Bambi on 02 November 2005
OK lets sacrifice long term players skill training to compensate for inadequate hardware.
It does seem a little silly that ships specifically designed for drone combat now have the same drone capabolities as many other ships.
Think again on this one CCP..... or reimburse me for my Ishtars
Seby on 02 November 2005
U'll go down CCP in this way, what's the matter, success is too big and u transform it into a mockery? Instead of adding content a add more SPECIAL and UNIQUE things to every ship in game u nerf them like u wanna do with Domi, Domi was unique and special for that ability and now u take it away, are u mad?
Anyway, Dark and Light it's almost out ...
Bastogne on 02 November 2005
Why did we even bother training the skills to add more drones in space? It's useless now. When in a belt with my covetor, that is my only defense. Doesn't matter if i'm in 1.0 or .4 that my defense and now it's half gone. THANKS!!!!
Blanca on 02 November 2005
Stick to race descriptions should be low in eve, and don't take away the feeling of a true gallente to be surrounded by a bunch of drones, just don't! Do u ever heard of this "TAKE CARE OF THE CUSTOMER AND THE BUSINESS WILL TAKE CARE OF ITSELF", looks like u do the oposite, u are making fun of us and our money. Do u really think that this will go on forever? Already 90% of people are tired with all ur changes, if u want to add fine just don't change old things.
Blanca on 02 November 2005
And why the hell do u cut the drone bay in half??? Jesuse if u want less drons in space just adjust how many u can control not the drone bay which can allow me to carry more and use many types one by one, sometimes i wonder it's in ur head?
Grismar on 02 November 2005
So we get:
* Drone hitpoint increase
And:
* Drones hitpoints boosted
That's nice, two boosts in hitpoints :p
I guess the drones will have to prove themselves again. They will definitely become more useful in large (fleet) operations. But I have my doubts about them all getting a bonus to thermal... One thing I liked about drones is that they gave you an option to switch damage, especially sitting in a Gallente ship. With hybrids, you're already limited to kin/therm and now it turns out most of the damage of the drones will be thermal too.
Sinonia Torviir on 02 November 2005
amazing how u dare to not call it nerf to change gallente drone bonus to thermal dmg only
what does that mean? ccp thinks their customers have the iq of an average carrot?
Mekova on 02 November 2005
Missile nerf, drone nerf, this nerf that nerf, what's next? Nerf us all back 2 our nubbin ships, and use all skills to add bonus to mining yield/dmg/speed/cargo/etc. If you go on like this you'll Nerf a lot of players out of EVE, no need for me to explain what a shame that would be... 8(
Qinoly on 02 November 2005
Its all fine, but have npc's target the ships first, instead of the drones.
To ppl saying, "what about the mining drones, its not mentioned", look again.
ccp : mining yield on mining drones better be same or better and NOT WORSE.
For new drones and mining equipment, its about time there's something new in game for miners.
Yes sure, we got a new shiptype.. ONE ship.
Lets see .. how many ships for combat came out with the last extensions ? hmm about 100 ?
Knat on 02 November 2005
DONT DO IT !
31i73 on 02 November 2005
You c, ccp have been complaining about "too much success" for a while now (lag and high player amounts). They need to reduce the player amount, and/or make us need less band and cpu time. So they can really afford to lose a percentage of the most active players, in fact, that is what they are aiming for.
The Novis on 02 November 2005
So if we are having less drones can we have the damage they do logged please
Lee Thrace on 02 November 2005
Nooooo, i'm almost finished training drones to lvl5 so i can get 6+ drones
*Lee Thrace gets down on his knees*
Alex Harumichi on 02 November 2005
Since the drone carriers are gaining less from this than the other ships and are pretty much forced to only use damage drones, some extra tweaking is needed.
Suggestion: give the drone carrier ships some bonuses to the upcoming drone modules. That would let them have some sort of edge in the drone department, and let them function as proper drone ships.
(by "drone carrier" here I mean the current drone ships, Domi etc)
Alex Harumichi on 02 November 2005
Lee Thrace, you think *you're* pissed off? I have Drone Interfacing V (a month of training), and now it becomes just a bit more damage? Be glad you haven't (yet) tried to specialize in drones, this helps everyone *except* the drone specialists. Sucks to be us, I guess.
Gronsak on 02 November 2005
forget the whiners, i want some ew toys to play with during christmass break.
OzaLoni on 02 November 2005
wishes he could have as many drones on his gallente ships as there are in negative comments to this blog % wise....! That would rock.... oh s**t... thats how it is now.....
^^ ducks the nerf bat...... silly boy... must nerf must nerf.... If this fix was meant to solve lag then let the devs load it up on the test server and we get everyone to use that 1 night.... lets see how they have managed to fix all the lag problems that exist! without drones out in space the lag is bad when u have 30-40 ships around a gate... so riddle me this ccp???? how will it fix lag?
Hans Fortean on 02 November 2005
Umm, how does reducing the drone bay size in half help anything? Isn't that kinda arbitrary? It seems like you are giving us more options but no room to experiment. I feel like I made a mistake training up drones now :( If I wanted a small fleet of death-dealing ships, I would just team up with my friends...
Celege Je'thries on 02 November 2005
okay, so this is waaay off what you're currently proposing, but the thought just struck me...
How about a module that allows me to attempt to hack the control command channel of another pilot's drones? Said pilot could, of course, have his own module to make that more difficult.
Given the propensity for adding new flavours of "arms race" options (you paint, I nos, you jam, I boost, you scramble, I fit stabs, etc), it would add another dimension to pvp... thoughts anyone?
Quilyan on 02 November 2005
:'(
Ocaud on 02 November 2005
Megathron can currently use 10 drones. Cut this in half and the mega can use 5, the same that the dominix will be able to use. The dominix pilot would be silly to limit his damage to only kin and thermal, so Gallente pilots might as well fly the Megathron as the "drone ship". The Dominix was preferable to the Megathron for certain situations ... if you make these changes there will be zero need for a Dominix.
DaddyMassive Jr on 02 November 2005
Agree with Ocaud about Dominix's
Ogres suck.
Don't make Domi's exclusive heat damage.
As soon as you pick 1 of any other kind you effectively lose 1 from the the Domi's original max compliment of 15.
(something I'm only BS L5 away from)
& your losing equivalent of 5 Drones unless EVERY one is Heat Damage.
Maybe you can alter Domi ship bonuses to make them benefit drones in a couple of different ways & not have Large hybrid bonuses
One good thing is seeing 5 drones, you won't be able to gauge how powerful the drones are till they are over you.
& T2 Drones become more effective for the price they fetch I guess.
Kiros Diablos on 02 November 2005
@ DaddyMassive Jr
i think tech 2 producers will know what to do with there drone prices now..tech 2 ogre will cost a arm and a leg...
Custode on 02 November 2005
To the three to four people saying "omgwhingerssosadimsogood", realise that you're severely outnumbered and that this is an extremely HATED change. I just hope the Devs know a angry room when they see it...
Custode on 02 November 2005
Celege,
Given the number of different drone types they want to introduce, it'll just make combat that much more complex. At least in hack/slash games its just bashbashbash. That bad, but so is 'ecm, plus webber, maybe a painter...hmmm, what maybe an anti-drone drone, but what if they have an anti-anti-drone-module? I suppose I could nos drone, but oops, I've hit five'. your idea would be interesting, if it were a little less crowded :/
ChewyMadWookie on 02 November 2005
WTS charactor with drones5, drone interfacing5, scout drones5, heavy drones5
THIS SUCKS!!!! Please dont implement this change cause you Devs think it lags. I will have wasted my training time for nothing and will have ZERO defence when mining with a Domi in 0.0
Demarcus on 02 November 2005
Why no scavenger drones. Flying around at 132 m/s to loot cans is getting very old.
Countess Amarisia on 02 November 2005
Well the dom was a nice ship, now its a peice of junk, thanks :)
Countess Amarisia on 02 November 2005
that sucks wasted my time training for a Ishkur only to have it cut in half when i ejoy having 10 Light drones, there are some changes that really suck, why not nerf gunners next, cause now drone users pretty much have no place on the battle field
retro spect on 02 November 2005
yeah i been thinking about cargo scanning or scavenger drones, they would save a lot of boredoom
TotensBurntCorpse on 02 November 2005
still havent seen CCP comment on what is the GIVE for the TAKE of mining drones !?!?!??!? All I see is alot of comments about the poor gallante well thats true they are getting nerfed but WHAT ABOUT EVERYONE WHO MINES !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Neil armstrong on 02 November 2005
if you lose 1 drone now with a domi you lose 6.6% dmg but if you lose 1 of 5 you lose 20% seems rather painfull to me + what about mining drones they are essential to me
Marwolaeth on 02 November 2005
Firstly as echo'd by alot of people on this thread I did not train up Drone interfacing for a measley 10% dmg per drone, I did it for the ability to fly extra drones....now it seems my time spent learning this skill is to be rewarded with something I did not want!
Secondly regarding the Domi, you miss out the point that at present a domi can fly 15 mining drones to make it one of the best ships for solo mining... Even taking into account the fact that each level of drone interfacing gives 20% mining yield that still only equates to 10 drones worth of mining by my calculations....
Marwolaeth on 02 November 2005
That said....if you introduce a drone that will go and loot cans for us then all will be forgiven :)
Brede Cleary on 02 November 2005
This sounds more like let's reduce drag on servers by making less drones than anything else :/
Fourdub Viper on 02 November 2005
This is complete crap. You worthless bastards cant run a server without lag, so u start taking some of the features away. reminds me of EA.
How about standing behind your damn game, upgrading the servers so drones dont make the server lag (they lag cuz your coder sucks, yes u with the pcoket protector(*points*)). We need more drones, not less.
My goal in this game was 15 drones, not many will ever have that many. Your not helping your hurting.
Upgrade server to accomandate the drones, dont remove good features so you can fix lag.
Fricking lazy bums.
Viper
CCP - "i wonder if i put this fork in this eletrical socket it'll make my toast cook faster in the microwave"
Luthien Niell on 02 November 2005
Ok, some drones chages. NIce, I like it. But i'm missing some bonuses for all galente ships, because after changes, all galente ships get weaked. Every ships now can have equal numbers of drones as gallente ships!!! But drones are gallente speciality. What speciality now left for gallente? Nothing!
sparkle firey on 02 November 2005
Totally agree with Luthien Niell on the weaken gallente ships. Gallente are famous for their drones. Perhaps the dominix and ishtar should retain their +1 drone controlled per level of ship skills. That will make a clear distinction between other races. If everyone gets to use 5 drones max, gallente will lose one of its strength against other races. Its like a trademark thingy. Gallente goes with drones. I can imagine a torp raven or mega pulse geddon laughing at a dominix when they can easily tank the damage and kill the dominix fast. The dominix favourite weapon is dual 250mm large railguns (due to limited PG) which does so so damage even with high skills/modules and lousy tracking compared to lasers. That is why drones are so important. Please don't take away this clear distinction and advantage for gallente!
Alric Evil on 02 November 2005
Its a good try to reduce server lag. But it seems that CCP is sacrificing our gaming experience to achieve that. Personally, I enjoy using drones vs npc. And it is a fact that gallente has bonus for the most drones controlled. Many players trained for months to achieve the ability to control more drones and have fun with them. Now CCP takes away our fun by saying 'it reduce lag'. My question is, how much lag can be reduced? How do you gauge that reduction? Is it justifiable by doing so? Have you taken into consideration the amount of gallente players getting hit? If it isn't broken, then don't fix it. If CCP really values us (players) as their customers, then please listen to our feedback before we switch attention to other online games. CCP has done a great job with EVE so far. Why make a lousy decision now to cripple gallente ships? I'm getting the impression that CCP don't like to fly gallente ships. :)
Warm0nger on 03 November 2005
Give the dominix a +1k per Bs level to drone orbit/optimal range.
Grimster on 03 November 2005
Tuxford blogs make me cry - often wonder if he plays eve at all :( - pfft thermal damage - sorry - almost laughable if it wasn't so serious...
Please step away from the keyboard.
kthx
Dakath on 03 November 2005
This will not fix the lag anymore than removing the highways did.
How about removing all those un-used secure cans? When I started playing over a year ago CCP had warned everyone some months before I joined to remove all their cans from 0.8 and above or lose them.
Those cans are still there.
This is a poorly thought out idea and will not fix anything.
It WILL be wildly successful at making paying customers unhappy. Bad move.
Sarthu on 03 November 2005
This is Bull.
So all the training I've done to get in a Dominix and control drones has been for nothing.
uhm...
Hello CCP! Drones are the Gallente specialty. You are corn-holing an entire race.
Leneerra on 03 November 2005
I see the need to reduce lag
I can accept that reducing the amount of active drones is part of that
Currently collisions occur with drones with the folowing results:
1 Collision calculation causing lag
2 collisions causing unwanted drone behavior as they cling together
and all this occurs in a universe where ammunition and missiles can be fired trough objects. Please remove drone collision.
The stated changes have one extra thing for the so called drone carrier ships. Those ships sacrefice more than other ships if they choose to use a non damage, non mining drone. please find a way to ballance this so they at least get a better benefit for their larger sacrefice.
You could of course also ignore this and admit drone carrier ships were nerfed. Might even have been needed, as those ships were currently most effective in killing ships below their size in a actual fight (= not a sniper gank)
spRAYed on 03 November 2005
Think about this:
How long does it take to web 15 drones and shoot them 1 by 1? Now how long does it take to web 5 drones and shoot them. Even though they will have more HP, i doubt they will live longer or anywhere near 15 normal ones.
Plus the Limit to 1 type DMG bonus is not acceptable. And HAC wise, Isn't the Deimos already expensive enough? Ishy will be useless.
Ki Shodan on 03 November 2005
wtf,
Ki Shodan on 03 November 2005
wtf,
killfest on 03 November 2005
this is bs i love my domi and all the drone 5 drone will look flip stupid gellente r drone carryers and that is the reson i and many others when gellente was because the amout of drones u could control FUCKIN SORT IT OUT!
Great Guardian on 03 November 2005
I do not like this at all. With my tempest I will be able to carry only 3 heavy drones, instead of 6.
So in order to maintain same damage output as before I MUST raise drone interfacing to lvl5. Right now I have no need to go beyond lvl 1. Memory is not my strong attribute so when I was planning my character there was no way to know this.
So my main defense against frigates and interceptors has been nerfed. Not good… Actually I call it BS !!!
Lyrsa on 03 November 2005
Ahja,
And you're thinking this will be allright?
What about these funny mining barges?
Shall i now mine with these ships in 1.0 space only?
Am I better on going to skill Missiles now?
Akiman on 03 November 2005
...i trained drone interfacing for MORE drones not for more DAMAGE......do you understand this?...you take my right
you just cant change a trained skill?!! and whats that lag stuff? you cant change gaming strategy just for lag
lag is NOT a reason to change gaming strategy.
NOT A REASON
if you have lag go get better men or stuff.
if u ask me MAKE A POLL İNSİDE OF LOGİN SCREEN
you can put advertisements on it...
lets choose which one gonna happen about this drone stuffs...
if we dont have a choice...dont even post add ons and changes in this forum...
and about others add ons...i have no comment...need to test...
nlun on 03 November 2005
Looks good but,
I use differant types of drones on my ishtar/dominix for a mix of damage output EM/Thermic/Kinematic and explosive now the only drones i must use for getting my bonus are the one with thermic damage, thats a increase of my type of damage output. Also becuase anyone can use resist only for thermic damage. is it not more fare to give 10% more damage to all types of damage.????
Jacob ocho on 03 November 2005
CCP has finally become a victim of it's own success. Congratulations on reaching over 70k subs, more than 17k people in the same universe and all your other records but comiserations for the consequences it is forcing you to face. You could almost say you've grown too quick, so many people and not enough time to accomodate them.
It's a shame that you feel you must do these sorts of things in order to keep the servers working.
You'll only find those most willing to stay and play eve when they're still here a year later after experiencing bugs, nerfs, crashes and other "unforseen circumstances". Are you really more focused on being the largest unsharded world in the mmog market than the happiness of your customers who have proven that they will stay with you? We love eve because it is different, I'm Gallente and we could fly 15 drones when no-one else could, we were different to other races, we had to rely on drones instead of missiles, now we're just another race with guns/missile launchers instead of guns and a shed load of drones, and even then we don't have a lot of ships with launcher points so in fact we're even more disadvantaged.
I really hope you are more interested in your players than records and subs, if you're not then you're not that special after all.
Ashes Nei on 03 November 2005
I don't like this one bit, what about those of us who use the Domi for mining? Now we have a grand total of 5 mining drones down from anywhere up to 15, and they get a nice thermal damage bonus... man, sure makes me want to take a Domi mining.
Bala Dwinn on 03 November 2005
Is this a really required fix for performance or just a way to introduce more time/isk sink to keep rolling in or generate more? It seems like everthing CCP does -- new ships/equipment -- is just more training, isk, etc. Inflation is huge. Bah. Tired of the million skills I have to train. Screw it.
Bala Dwinn on 03 November 2005
insert *revenue* into my last message where it is applicable.
Elroy Cruise on 04 November 2005
OK, diversity is good.
Hence the new drones types are a boon, me is very happy.
Lagy server is bad.
Reducing the average amount of drones to keep track of in space can be a way towards a solution: so be it. I will mourn my 15 drones swarm scary effect for a bit, but hey...
Still, some of the intended changes will hurt diversity big time if they go as planned, hence fun, in my view.
Gallente have precious few enough ways to make a difference in weaponry without blocking them in a full-thermal mandatory setup on drone carrier ships.
Two ways out imho:
- as suggested many times above, make that a blanket damage bonus so mixed swarms remains viable ;
- or make the ship-specific boni a skill boni multiplier, implant style, thus ensuring more diversity as a pilot would benefit from the ship boni according to how skilled he is in various drone specializations (drone interfacing and others).
Ship specific: While the DoT of the Moros doesn't need a boost, ability to sustain long engagments seems critical for a dreadnought.
Problem is, the Moros firepower largely depends on drones, which means its DoT can be reduced by means of actually destroying part of its arsenal (no other dread is in such a position).
I suggest reducing drone bay size by only one third on this ship, to make up for this.
FWIW I'm not a dread pilot nor plan to be, I'm an Ishtar pilot.
Elroy Cruise on 04 November 2005
Oh, and maybe drone-control related implants would be worth considering (no relation to the above analogy with ship-specific boni).
Rigsta on 04 November 2005
This should be Christmas for the Dominix but instead I'm getting this feeling of dread... Overall it looks like the effectiveness of the ship will be going down for quite some time to come, if not forever? I hope the practice proves more promising than the theory.
"Alright - my first concern is that Dominix is stuck with only Thermal drones. That's no good, it's now yet another turretship that can only do one real sort of damage - Thermal in this case - which really sucks against a) player tanks and b) NPC tanks, especially those of the Arch Angels. Why not just make it a blanket boost to drone damage? Tempest gets a boost to all projectile damage, not just with ammo that does kinetic/explosive damage, for example."
I'm not really a fan of thermal damage (or ogres for that matter) but I guess I'll see how it goes... can always switch to the Tempest if the Domi changes don't work out.
(Please please consider the Domi here, it is the only battlship that specialises in drones after all).
Leumas Ebmocnud on 04 November 2005
So, i have just achieved the ability to fly 15 drones for no reason at all?
With the Domi, sometimes getting all of the drones out is a deterrent against people attackiing me, "wow, 15 drones, he must have battleship 5 and interfaceing 5, i`m not gonna mess" Now it will be "Wow, he has 5 drones, he must have between gallente bs 1 and 5, I`d better kill him"
Honestly, When will this incessant need to nerf all that i enjoy about this game end? Seriously, you want to change an IMPORTANT aspect of the game merely to reduce lag?? Hell, buy some better servers for gods sake, and remember who pays your bills.
I knew it would only be a matter of time before domi's recieved a MAJOR nerf, Dammit they wont stop until all ships are white in colour, and no ship outdamages any other in any configuration.
Please, do not nerf the amount of drones i can carry. Yes you have lag problems, but dont "nerf" my fun, "nerf" your hardware or i`m gone.
Olivin on 04 November 2005
Drones hp and damage boost look like a cover up for the big nerf of drone specialists and drone ships.
Please don't touch "Drone Interfacing" skill current bonus.
Please do not reduce dronebay.
Please do not implemet racial damage bonus.
Dark Avatar on 04 November 2005
There is an effective way to stop drones from being destroyed by Smartbombs so easily. Just apply the new missile nerf to smartbombs!
Ok smartbomb does 300 effective damage.... against a large target. HOWEVER against a small target with low signature radius that 300 damage is not going to be fully applied... perhaps 10-50dmg max.
CCP have used their own theory with the missile patch and explosion/damage application. The same nerf should apply to smartbombs. Nerf the damage against the smaller targets in keeping with your missile/explosion damage theory :)
Sakura Nihil on 04 November 2005
Guys, I expect better than this from you - I know you work hard maintaining the software and readying Kali/RMR for launch, but this is taking the easy way out of a problem. If there is lag, fix it, but don't kick us in the teeth to do it.
/me shakes head, poor Gallente, feel the pain we felt after the nerf bat pwned our missiles...
fairimear on 04 November 2005
why has it a ton of the negative feed back seems to have vanished?
is some 1 deleting it to make tuxford feel better.
Big Moo on 04 November 2005
Well, as a happy Dominix pilot, I wait with nervous apprehension. Shame I wasted those skill points on drones...
sliver 0xD on 04 November 2005
well iam looking at it while iam training up my drone skills. but i fear my training will be for nothing again.
but like ccp works, we will whine, adapt and wait with happy faces for the next nerf :)
Al Steel on 04 November 2005
I hear a lot from Pvp'rs and fighers but what about us Miners?
The nerf to drone capacity will simply kill us. Solo mining in all but .9 and 1.0 space will be impossible or at the very least, contantly interrupted by rat spawns that we will not be able to repel or withstand.
An Osprey with a 40m3 drone bay can just barely fend off attacking rats in .5/.6 if loaded up with 4 Medium Scouts. Mind you this is in SECURE space. Luckily you can mount a missile turret to act as a support for the 4 drones, but I almost always lose at least one drone.
Now, the mighty Mining Barge will be all but defenseless. A Retriever with a 50m3 bay goes to 25m3?! You are taking them down to just 2 medium drones + 1 light... come on! You can't mount a weapon on a Barge so the drones are its ONLY defense. Halve the drones and solo mining in a barge will be nearly impossible. Right now with 5 Medium Scouts, if I lose a single drone, I only lose 20% of my defenses. But if I can only deploy 2 drones I'm down 50% if I lose just one!!! Which means I have to return to a station to buy new drones or reload.
If you MUST nerf the drone bay then may I suggest a new Low-slot item: The Drone Bay Expander. This would be a low slot fitted module that increases drone bay capacity just like a cargo expander.
Only time will tell if this nerf will be good or bad but right now I can't see the benefit. If it makes solo mining an arduous task that takes more time then it already does then I will seriously have to consider a career change. hmmm... since I know miners are now even more defenseless can you say "Yarrrr!" ?
Kichigai on 05 November 2005
WTS Domi, Vexor,and my new never used Ishkur.
Maybe someone with good refining skills will be able to get more out of them than I will after these changes.
Torquemanda Corteaz on 05 November 2005
this is all fine and dandy by my books, but where the hell are the loot collecting drones whispered at previously? I'd be a millionaire if i had a facilitator for my extreme lazyness of collecting loot cans.
MAKE IT SO TUX!
thanks.
Paul Castrin on 05 November 2005
Kichigai >> WTS Domi, Vexor,and my new never used Ishkur.
Feel free to convo me, I'll take them off your hands at 10 cents on the dollar (ship buy value * .1).
I won't even ask you to transport them. :)
BlueSmok on 05 November 2005
Out of all the Changes the reduction in drone bay size is the worst! Not only does it kill the defenses of a barge to mount decent defense. But with all the new drones coming in it severly limits your options for multitasking drones. And What about the salavage drones? Or were these being replaced with a tractor beam? it's hard to keep track sometimes..
Odin Tahmorrex on 05 November 2005
Take a loan out from the government? Surely Iceland won't let CCP die.
Reto on 05 November 2005
oh damn ! man imagine the moros dreadnaught...with 5 drones....patethic!...guys u screwing up the game...
The Looser on 05 November 2005
It will reduce lag :)
But hey scratch all drones and make new type of
"drone" with better control ability and max used per player should be 3
like for mining make a Wingman frigate class with equivalent to what maxed miningdrone with best drones etc.
for killing make another wingman frigate class with strenght of a good pvp frigate..
maybe u makem that way we can fit or choose whats on this frigate fited...
Rastilin on 05 November 2005
This blows :( Gallante ships are already nerfed enough as is now ur gonna take away the only good aspect of them and if so u decrease the bay of the Domi so just about all the battel ships can fly 5 drones what the point of a Domi now. U need to give something in place maybe more hight slots and more powergrid for the Domi.
Villium Ezeart on 05 November 2005
BAH! I just spent the last 2 months training for an Ishtar. But this is supposed to be fun right? Who was the genius to propose that this would fix your lag issues? Why is it I spend less time playin this game while training skills attempting to catch up to the latest NERF?
Zyrtan Keb'Lektar on 05 November 2005
When is loot drones being implented??
Us bs user have a real drag on going +40 km to get a single can and then 35 km to the other, and using alts or other people to do it is risky..
Please implement em, and oh yeah, i agree on prev argument on the gallente bonus on drones, only therm damage is not a good idea since gallente are the nr1 drone users and limiting them to 1 damage typ does IMO not reflect their place in the game
VantDre on 05 November 2005
I think the community would be better with not just normal hitpoint increase but a 30% over that of 15 drones to 5 and only a 30% reduction to drone bay, and exceptions for certain ship types (stabber among others).
Tiridus on 05 November 2005
Im not so bothered about the limit on drones as i can only control 5 anyway, but it seems a bit odd to halve the drone bay, would there be room for extras if one popped? The only problem i have in this new idea is the increase in thermal damage on gallente. Its very easy to tank, couldnt you bring out smaller ones built with a blaster, a railgun or a missile launcher on? and you charge it up with ammo before setting off as you would with the actual turrets?
Kichigai on 05 November 2005
I think this kinda sums it up for the Gallante ships its taken from the Thorax discription: "typical of modern Gallente design
philosophy it is most effective when working
at extreme close range where it's blasters
and hordes of combat drones tear through
even the toughest of enemies." Hmm kind went back on that one didnt we CCP?
Xan Frits on 05 November 2005
what about raven now it can only have 3x HW drones then? man this sucks
Shimba on 05 November 2005
Typical HAC prices atm
Eagle 73mill; Cerberus 89mill; Muninn 79mill
Deimos 135mill; Ishtar 128mill.
Might have something to do with the unbalanced advantage given by drones atm?
As to the restriction to one damage type bonus (thermal for gallente),caldari missile ships (kessie, caracal, cerberus) only get kinetic bonus
Raven doesnt get a specific damage type bonus so for gallente maybe Domi should be the exception to the one damage type only, especially if it will only have 5 drones
Shimba on 05 November 2005
wish i'd discovered 2nd dev blog before trawling through this :)
http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=285
OniNoShinji on 06 November 2005
hard to compair the dominix to the raven since the dom is a tier i BS and the raven is a tier 2 BS.
Thermal damage mods seem the only way to make the galante drone ships worth wile. i think a better option would be to limit non drone specialized ships to less drones. a missle boat should be a missle boat and so forth.
Alucia Gebir on 06 November 2005
Ok well I find that this is getting rediculous,
Caldari= Kinetic, Gallente=Thermal, etc WTF.
If you wanted to "balance" drones a bit I can understand that with the lag but I also find that the Caldari are nerfed to hell and back (have Gallente main char.) Why cant it be spread out accross the board of damage types for both drones and missiles (would also like to see lasers that do kinetic and explosive, no idea how for the exp. but the kinetic could be explained by saying rp style that the laser generates a "heavy beam" of light that pushes/ crashes against the shields etc). Looking forward to a review to this thread.
P.s. New types of drones and lag reducing :thumbs up cant be bad:
<3 Alucia.
Lord Meriak on 06 November 2005
The changes do sound very good and well seem to add depth on may lvls:
But I do have 1 complaint with the missiles be changes so much, and Raven now fear frigs lol.. It seemed like every time the Gallenteans came up with something sleek and speedy and powerful the Caldari would soon respond with something even sleeker and more powerful.
So cal ships / race not match the gal drones by now or be just behind them? and not be the weakest?
Lord Meriak on 06 November 2005
I would also like to see a mine laying drone.. miss the mines.. be good sentry drones and mine laying drone say 5 mines per drones.
Tsabrock on 07 November 2005
I also greatly disagree with the limited Damage Bonus to Gallente (or even Amarr) ships. Comparing Missiles to Drones, Caldari Battleships/HAC's don't get specific damage-type bonuses to missiles, why should Gallente-equivalent ships get this limitation to their drones?
Rask on 07 November 2005
can i sugest a module that increases the mineing yield of drones?
And possible strip mining sentry drone. Works like a half streangth stripminer, and then we can have another set of droped drone types like the harvy and such.
Lunanie on 07 November 2005
I hope the drone bay size stays the same for all ships. I think this way most people don't complain and lag is still reduced.
Eron Lygera on 07 November 2005
... aaand another weapon is useless. CCP MUST try to understand that not all players operate in groups at all times. Think of small corporations who mine. However its a great way for them to get us buying more alt-accounts. This will also kill an entry path for new players, who rely more on drones.
Besides, this will not ballance anything! It adds to the emerging uselesness of gallente ships.
Hopefully they will redesign the whole gallente race, since there is not much to come for.
Bendraxus on 07 November 2005
Reducing the drone bays, only reduces the options for a ship. make it insted that you can only have 5 in space at one time.
Then those ships with larger drone bays could have resurves or alterate set of drons to suit a situation.
Also alowing the ship levels to be a bonus to 2 or more damage types but at a reduced increas might be less limiting to the combat power of a given ship.
Aristilus on 07 November 2005
Having read this whole post, took me more then a hour :-) i noticed that lots of ppl are not happy with the comming changes, altho lots are happy with it, so if any one disides to stop playing Eve because of these changes i will take all there stuf.
Yazoul Samaiel on 08 November 2005
First of all where are the can extractor drones????????? wouldnt have been a bad addition sicne you guys are already working on drones.
Second , Sentry droens need more explanation for sure coz if i get this right and ppl are gonna anchor them and wait till they get online then start firing at enemies then every one who is gonna rat and depend on droens to take out those killer frigs is awefully dead or he is gonna lose drones on every single round he deployes them.
Third Less drones idea is terrible for a very emptional reason that it is always good to see loads of drones flying around and also relaisticly 5 drones on a dommi will look so bad coz it is supposed to be a droen ship , what about apocs ravens mega ??? will they be carring 1.5 drones then ???
as most ppl said first part is cool 2nd part is sooo making me cry.
Yazoul Samaiel on 08 November 2005
Also in combat u need to be 100% sure that killing those 5 drones will take exactly the same time to be killed just as it takes 15 to die or else this will be a serious missbalancign of the game since ppl who invested a lot in controlling many drones (interfacing 5 and Gall BS lvl 5 ) will be seriously screwed over this investment.
Elendar on 09 November 2005
The 20% dmg bonus per level for drone interfacing seems far too high, most other similar skills are only +5%
Queen Agave on 09 November 2005
Arbitrator is pretty well damned with 10%em boost. Acolytes are like the worst drone in the game. - Also, light/med drones seem to be getting the shaft compared to heavies.
Babalon on 09 November 2005
This Is ALTNAMES Favorite ALTERNATE CHARACTER. I have told you, and few believed me, Missiles were changed and now embarrasingly useless because of the TACKLER LOBBY, and now DRONES are being made USELESS, by that same lobby. Lol, nobody sees the NERFS at all, notably the SKILLS. At first ALL drones will be NERFED into USELESS, POWERLESS, and UTTERLY HIT-POINTLESS wastes of money. Leveling up the skills listed above, no doubt level 5 skills requiring perhaps god knows how long to return drones unto their former stats. And as MISSILES, the promise of MORE POWERFUL missiles after SKILLING UP, is COMPLETELY FALSE. Expect drones to in reality do less damage, due to tracking, and become useless points of embarassment.
Maorio on 09 November 2005
I tried a vexor with my half decent skills and it rocked! 12 med drones. I have alot of sp in drones and love watching drones swarm people but with these changes all that will be gone. to compensate for the loss of drones will you increase the locking time for drone? no sig radius decrease just increasing the locking time giving them some special ability. but I'm totally against these changes. keep the drones as they are. change something else to reduce the server lag but leave my swarm alone. like removing some of the effect when shooting missiles. but don't take the fun out of using drones. try the game for once, and get a good drone ship and toss out 10-15 drones and watch them tear your enemies to peices! that's the most amusing sight I've found so far. because you are making changes like this that will completly ruin some of the more amusing parts of the game you might as well play something else that doesn't change as much and as fast. these huge changes are what you usually see in games that are in the beta stages not in games that have been released a few years back. so if you want to change something do it really slowly and over a long period of time
Ky Vatta on 09 November 2005
Lovely..why don`t you just make it that frigates can`t use any drones?? Coz this dumb idea almost does exactly that.....
DOC MARCUS on 11 November 2005
another thing that makes me mad is i will now have to train new skills to do what i have the skills to do now so now time training - its all about money for them boy and girl bottom line
Chalid on 11 November 2005
My scared little mind thinks, what can an enyo do with theese new drones. Reps, webbers etc. Its already the ship of choice :) I know im getting one. think about it .. its an extra mid or low module slot.
JoeFred on 11 November 2005
screwed again
DOC MARCUS on 11 November 2005
i use 10 mining drones how does a +20% replace a 50% loss - the numbers dont add up or im i missing thing - or screed again
DOC MARCUS on 11 November 2005
or am i missing something - or screwed again
ThunderZeus on 11 November 2005
I CANT BELIEVE THIS DRONE NERF, I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO GET CAUGHT UP WITH MY FIGHTING SKILLS AFTER CCP TOTALY WRECKED MISSILES SO I SWITCHED FROM THE RAVEN TO GALLENTE SHIPS SO I CAN USE DRONES. I HAVE ALMOST ALL OF MY DRONE SKILLS MAXED NOW AND NOW THEY PLAN ON SCREWING THAT UP. I WILL NEVER GET AHEAD IN THIS GAME. YA CALL ME A WINER, DONT CARE. I PAY MY $$ FOR THIS GAME AND THIS CHANGE WOULD MEAN I HAVE WASTED YET MORE SKILL TRAINING ON SOMETHING THEY JUST TAKE AWAY WHEN YOU ARE SO SO CLOSE.
CCP YOU SUCK
SoldierOfFortune on 12 November 2005
ThunderZeus - Chillout man, if you left Caladri ships you weren't doing it right, i do level 4s in my raven and get dam good damage levels, you just have to work the skills and think about the mission more,
Marquain Calleur on 13 November 2005
We all know that the CCP agenda is to make all ships perform exactly the same, and to have all weapons behave identically. We've seen it with lasers, then missiles, and countless ship "adjustments".
Apparently no ship may have a special strength or useful purpose, because that would be unfair to all the other ships. No weapon system may have a reach or damage that is different from any other weapon system. Blasters and projectiles and lasers must behave precisely the same way, or someone will start crying and we can't have that.
This drone nerf is a logical step in the direction towards total, universal harmonization. Eve is turning into the European Parliament.
Why are you all crying about this? Since as long as I can remember, CCP has *never* announced a nerf and subsequently listened to objections and suggestions from the public in these forums.
So stop wasting your time, drones and Domi's join the rest of the great specialized ships, like the raven, the scorpion and, some laserheads would argue, the armageddon.
It's a real shame because the Domi was one of the last great ships with a unique speciality. Rest in peace.
Ansuru Starlancer on 14 November 2005
As has been stated by others, I'm very concerned about the reduction in the Gallentean drone carriers' flexibility with these changes.
One of the greatest strengths of these ships was the ability to carry multiple types of damage in the form of separate groups of drones to use in different situations...and giving a bonus ONLY to thermal damage simply kills that flexibility.
To squeeze out the most damage, Thermal becomes Required...people fit thermal resistance, and the bonus becomes worthless...
Normally, we could switch to a different flight of drones if we saw we weren't hurting anything. Now, any flight we switch to is going to do us little good, since it already takes a hit by not having any bonuses as compared to the thermal drones. A bonus which, I must remind you, is intended to offset the loss of numerical support.
The long and the short of it is, you restrict us to ONLY thermal drones, and this is a very painful hit to Gallente pilots.
Fastbikkel on 15 November 2005
I hate patches :) altho i CAN understand the reason behind it.
For some reason i chose the wrong skills here.
Fastbikkel on 15 November 2005
Again
Nokia Connecting on 16 November 2005
Why can't you FIX the drones while you're at it. I.e my drones like to attack my gang mates for no reason and get me blown up by Concord. And they also like to aggro everything I never told them to. Stupid!!!
Nokia Connecting on 16 November 2005
Stop limiting things and making such HUMONGOUS changes long after u launched the game. You should have waited longer before u launched the game, instead of coming now two years after and totally screwing everything up. More skills, YEAH WE LOVE THAT, more skills more skills! So we can get to 50% of where we were pre-nerft!! WOOOOT!!!!!!! *kisses and hugs ccp*
Miklos Atreides on 19 November 2005
jesus chirst nokia no one says you HAVE to play.
at any rate *plunks down some sentry drones while mining in his domi*
BRING IT!
=D
Radix Salvilines on 23 November 2005
CRAP how much comments!!!!
Sivlar Sylvannathas on 23 November 2005
As usual, CCP makes it sound nice on paper, but when they actually implement it, it will end up crap and seem more like a nerf.
Why the hell did I just finish Drone interfacing lvl5 to control 10 drones if you all are going to nerf the crap out of it.
Less drones = Gay
Even with the bonuses you are touting, it will still be pretty damn gay. A BS with 5 drones is laughable. My ishkur is a joke now too.
Thermal damage limit and bonuses = Gay
Can you add some variety please? Thermal damage sucks ass. Why do you all have hard-on's over thermal damage at CCP? Every time you want to add a bonus use more imagination please instead of just giving thermal bonuses.
Why does CCP always have to screw things up. Another set of skills down the toilet.
Mozzy on 27 November 2005
Drone control bonus of Dominx gets changed to 10% drone thermal damage per level - I dont think this is very fair at all. Before the 1 extra drone per lvl helped every domi pilot in whatever they are doing while using drones, now, you're limiting this skill to benefit one type of combat drone damage. Is it not blindingly obvious this is a huge set back. Having spent the full 35 odd days on battleship lvl 5 to get the full benefits of the dominix, its now only good for using a single type of drone. Its easier taking on gallente or amarr using Beserkers, or caldari with praetors, which the previous skill bonus aided in as it gave your more drones doing whatever damage you wanted, now it does not. Makes me feel that 35 days was a total waste of time.
caesura on 28 November 2005
The excuse that drones cause too much lag is a poor one for this change. We the players of this game pay for our opportunity to play, and this is not a change that fully serves to enhance the enjoyment, it actually detracts. A little more thought needs to be put into this change, keeping in mind that player satisfaction pays your salary.
rgreat on 28 November 2005
This sucks.
Specialised "Drone carrier's" with 5 drones.
Again, this sucks.
I want all my drone skill points to be exchanged.
Zachios Primos on 28 November 2005
WORST IDEA EVER, i agree with the above post^^
Tolmech on 30 November 2005
How about not signing new players until the system can cope with the current demand? Instead of removing parts of the game than many players seem to want to keep. I'm dreaming i know but just a thought. As a thought to lessening database load how about a 'autorecycle' method that give u say 20% of the base isk value of all that crap we have all left all over empire. I know this is not active data but if its all removed then the index is smaller and the system doesnt have to work so hard to find what its looking for each time. My two cents.
Coeleth on 30 November 2005
Am very, very upset about the effect on Gallente ships. I always thought the point of flying Gallente was to have drones.. and the point of using drones with Gallente was to get access to different damage types. Everyone's tanked hard against kinetic and thermal. Assault and Heavy Assault ships by default get massive, massive resistances to kinetic and thermal. *repackages Dominix"
Ghossen on 08 December 2005
Lots of good comments. Let's try another angle.
We have a working part of the game. Drones. Allows for surprise, different damage, different types of ships, i.e. drone ships, etc. Everything works.
We take another totally separate problem, lag, and 'fix' it by destroying a working system.
What happens when we go to Carriers, and fleet battles? What happens when we go to 19000 online members at the same time.
Lag is the problem. Fix the problem. This is no fix, it is a weak and uncreative way to buy time. If the game cannot handle 18000 people then it cannot handle 18000 people.
It concerns me how they will handle lag?
Thorsten Kabrinski on 10 December 2005
hm..now what to do with this ishtar in my hangar... ishtar anyone? =)
Namo Iluvatar on 11 December 2005
"first half gave me goosebumps, second half made me cringe."
I couldn't agree more. While the damage potential may be there... getting there will be hard as hell since there are so many more skills to train to make an equivilant output. and as numerous people already mentiond... restricting to one damage type is going to royally suck.
And as for the morose, domi, and ishtar... why have one now? half of thier cool points came from the swarms of drones they could control. sure, they may have the same strength once all skills are maxed. but lets face it, how many people do you expect to max every skill? and i am quite scepticle of hit points being adjusted sufficiently to make them just as strong as a complement of current drones. seriously... will the domi's drones have 3 times the hit points? will the moroses drones have 7 times the hit points? some how i think not.
and what's all this about reducing drone bay capacity? why? why? why? you are introducing even more drone types into the game and not reducing the size of the drones. so doesn't it make sence to allow different drone types to be carried to provide variety? at least give us that one. throw me a bone people. ships that can only cary 2 or 3 will now only deploy 1!?!? and what about the few ships that only can have 1 drone? they get enough to tease them... they have a drone bay but can't cary a drone in it? WTF?
Taiza on 11 December 2005
What's about the production time of the drones?
I think you have to double the time per drone, because if 5 new drones are the same like 10 old drones, the change doubles the production of drones, if the time per drone is still the same.
KamikazeYourAss on 11 December 2005
ewwww... so... SoE just bought CCP ?
Star Wars Galaxy instantly died because the same excact bs you just did. Ignore your customers and their ideas on how THEY want to play the game which they pay for every month.
MMO's only exist because of the monthly fee the customers are willing to pay, screw your customers badly like this and they will say bye bye the next month. You, CCP, must understand that this game exist only because WE, subscribers, like how it is balanced right now.
Screw 3/4 of the subscribers with some bs argument to satisfy your record-peak ego race and I guarantee you that you will never break a single peak anymore.
RiP ©S00N EvE ? I hope not. You own the cards now...
Lavi Head on 12 December 2005
There is a way to nullify smartbombs! I do know the answer as many do here! If you CANNOT figure out countermeasures to opponents' setups/tactics with the modules and we have now, DON'T PLAY EVE! Dont't whine about uber ships there are none! The game is about teamwork and smart module and skill combos. Please be careful with that NERF! But I will try Red Moon Rising. I just have a bad feeling about the changes, especially for the gallente!
Alan Ratkiller on 12 December 2005
Bustards (oops typo)...why!!!!!!!!!!! Leave me drones alone!!!!!u already added t2 ones which caught a lot of gall peeps addicted to get t2 drones..now u say only 5 max....so what....we want 15 from our vexors and ishturs.....
Ariana MaXjolt on 12 December 2005
I was just wondering : How come the Moros is the only 'drone-boat' that doesn't get a mining-bonus for it's drones ? I mean, a fully T2-fitted moros would rival a Covetor any day, so for the Moros-operator that wanted to make some ISK in mining between engagements would be seriously nerfed IMO.
Is it a typo ? Or have you just not considered that scenario ?
Vorgus on 13 December 2005
Drone bay limit is stupid and a major nurf. When barge mining I keep both a set of mining drones and light or medium combat drones depending on sec of system. When pirates spawn, I call in the mining drones and send out the combat drones. Now the only place we can solo mine with drones is in .9-1.0 space where there are no rats to keep clearing.
Anatole Faucet on 13 December 2005
I'm gonn amiss all those Drones whirling about
Tercias on 14 December 2005
As a Gallente pilot I can say this patch could well be the one that kills EVE for me, half the fun was our drone bonuses and the fact that its not just the damage 10+ drones do, its the psychological effect.
Ferfax on 14 December 2005
So what about for those of us who set our characters up for drone and we are getting nerfed. Now i wish i went a whole differnt bloodline i pick my bloodline for the skills for drone skills if i know this was on the way i wouldnt havent pick drones thanks for screwin those of us over
Fridola Frigide on 14 December 2005
Tercias is right, CPP please DO something about that..
Raven Black on 14 December 2005
That doesn't look to bad, but instead of having control over several numbers of drones now we're going to have to pay through the nose for the new skills and drones themselves.....because you know people will drive the price beyond the reach of the smaller players.
P.S. I forgot to mention, all the time spent on training new skills......god I love this game!
Tallfellar on 15 December 2005
This is absolut Rubbish. The Dom is now totally outclasses by even a BC her only advantage was her drones and her capacity no she is worth nothing she cand even out mine a Brutix now, you have excelled in stupidity this time. :(
Sattracer on 15 December 2005
I would like to thank CCP for reaching it's hand into our ingame pockets and taking even MORE isk from the pockets of the little guys. Nerfing the drones of the Dominix was pure stupidity. You must be related to George W. Bush.
Sco Ra'sco on 15 December 2005
Just about everything in the new ideas has possibilities, except I don't agree with the idea of reducing the drone bay size. I mean, sure, take away max controllable drones, no problem. But leave us some room to put in reinforcements so we can launch another 5 when the first 5 get destroyed :)
Also like to add my agreement with the idea of the Dom thermal damage being kinda lame.
Apart from that, looks good.
Durethia on 15 December 2005
I understand the need to lessen lag, and the eagerness to nerf the Gallente... but, at the same time I think a reduction to only 5 drones is a bit too far.
I would rather face 1 well armed soldier, than 15 every day people only armed with equal determination to kill me. There is a real overwhelming factor involved in sheer numbers, a factor that can not be compensated by defense and prospective immediate lethality.
It won't matter, within reason, how powerful you make our drones, reducing them to only five will greatly tip the scales in the other direction.
Also, I'm concerned about the break away ideologies from the story line. Gallente are supposed to be the drone specialists... damage restrictions are questionable. Perhaps, restricting Gallente ships to a max of 10 drones? Everybody else to 5... or no restrictions on damage type, and all round bonuses on drones for damage? Or, even better, Gallente do not require sacrifice of precious module space for same threat level with even less drones. When the Gallente are known for their drones, they are supposed to have a clear advantage with use of drones over all others. Leveling the playing field in the area of drones, is contradictory to story line... it'll be like halving the missile launcher hardpoints on Caldari... doesn't seem feasible.
Cleaner on 15 December 2005
not shure, but think for a ship to have drone boosting modules is kinda good idea.... if it wasnt mentioned already...
Zeebros on 15 December 2005
"ewwww... so... SoE just bought CCP ?"
I left their games to come back to EvE. and now u nerf my favourite ships.
I'm seeing a pattern forming here.. and the wife will be happy fer me to quit online games too... aswell as the bank...
Zed Morgan on 15 December 2005
Well thats my mining Fu*ked!
Zar Massasi on 16 December 2005
So basically they figure that making the drones more powerful is better than havng more.
Zar Massasi on 16 December 2005
So basically they figure that making the drones more powerful is better than having more drones on the field.
This would be good if we had the old 'mine or kill' strategy wherein numbers don't really matter as long as you get the same on-paper results.
But now that you hae a large variety of drones, quantity would be useful over quality, so that you can have a respectable fighting force (say five combat drones) and a few EWAR drones and a repair drone. But now you get a limited fighting force and two freaking utilities out there, so you can't be as tactical, which was the whole point of making the new drone types.
To sum it up, EVE, you just completley gimped yourselves: you took away what we needed to make the new variety useful. I see nothing good about making them more powerful per unit.
Congratulations.
Delta23 on 17 December 2005
Personelly I built my ships to operate with drone support, and being gallent that was a bonus for me! Mining was my game, as well but what now? do i get axed and can i still mine effectivly? I dont care what any one says, when i mined with 10 drones i seen a diferance in ores being collected as to haveing none in space. Will these 5 drone limit be the same as 10 in space? we need clarification!!!!
karrak on 20 December 2005
this might have been asked/answeard befor but, How on earth do you get the armor rep drones to rep your own ship. plz PLZ tell me!
Further commenting has been disabled. If you want to discuss this post then head on to the forums
