reported by
CCP Tuxford | 2005.11.01 16:25:54
Seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about the new drone reduction proposal. So for your convenience I'm going to make a few examples about popular ships and how this effects them. Another misunderstanding, which is mostly my fault is that the ship bonuses that used to be control bonuses give bonus to all damage types. More on that later though. First lets check out what exactly is being done.
- Drone Interfacing Skill changed from 1 drone per leve to 20% drone damage per level and 20% drone mining yield per level. That is at level 5 you get 100% increase to drone damage output and drone mining yield
- Ships that give 1 drone per ship skill level has been changed to 10% drone damage and in some cases 10% damage (all damage types) and mining yield per level. They also get a bonus to drone hitpoints
- Drone bays reduced. In most cases this will just be done by halving the drone bay but some ships will get a special attention. Read on for further information
- Drone hitpoint increase. With fewer drones it makes sense that they should be tougher. 50% increase in drone armor hitpoints, shield capacity and hull hitpoints.
Now for a few examples on how this will effect few popular ships with a bit of a drone bay.
Ishtar
Let's start by looking at it's drone related bonuses. It gets 1 drone controlled for
Gallente Cruiser level and as it needs
Gallente Cruiser at level 5 to fly the ship it gets 5 extra drones. From it's
Heavy Assault Ships skill it gets 5km bonus to drone range and +50m
3 drone capacity per level. Ishtar has drone capacity of 250m
3.
With
Drone Interfacing at level 5 Ishtar can control 15 drones. It can also hold 15 drones as long as it has
Heavy Assault Ships at level 3 or more. If
Heavy Assault Ships skill is higher then level 3 then he can carry more spare drones until at level 5 it has drone capacity of 500m
3 so it can carry 20 heavy drones that is 5 spare drones.
After these changes the 5 extra drones would change to 50% drone damage. The range bonus wouldn't change at all. The drone capacity would be halved to 125m
3. It would seem normal to halve the drone capacity bonus but as Ishtar can already carry 5 heavy drones with it's 125m
3 drone bay all the bonus does is to give it more spare drones so I'm keeping the +50m
3 drone capacity bonus.
Lets do pure damage output before and after changes. Assuming
Drone Interfacing and
Gallente Cruiser at level 5 Ishtar can now launch 15 drones and has 5 extra drones in it's drone bay. After the changes it could only use use 5 drones but each of these drones would do the same damage as 3 did before the changes and it has a drone capacity of 375m
3 which means it can carry 10 extra drones in it's drone bay. Not only that but since it's using only 5 drones in each wave then it means that Ishtar can carry 3 waves of heavy drones in it's drone bay but before the changes it had 1 and 1/3.
Drone durability is another story. It's easier to kill 5 drones that it is to kill 15 drones but each of the drone after the changes has more hitpoints. Lets remember that drones are getting a static 50% increase in hitpoints. Lets say that it also gets 10% per cruiser level which means it gets another 50% increase in hitpoints then one drone after the changes has 2.25 times more hitpoints than drones before the changes. If we add the hitpoint of 15 drones as they are today and 5 drones with increased hitpoint then the five drones have combined hitpoints of 11.25 drones as we they are today. Sure it's less total hitpoints then the 15 current drones but on the other hand they take over twice as long to kill with a smartbomb and if your five drones die you have two waves in your drone bay whereas if you lost all your 15 drones before you would only have 5 drones left. That is if you lose your 15 drones your drone damage output is down to 1/3 of what you had.
Ishkur
Ishkur is not as dependant on drones as it's bigger brother Ishtar. It has a drone capacity of 25m
3 and it's only drone related bonus is a +5m
3 drone capacity per
Assault Ship level. Right now it can launch 10 light drones or 5 medium.
What happens to it after the changes is that the base drone capacity gets halved and rounded up to nearest multple of 5. That is it will have 15m
3 drone bay. It's drone bonus stays at 5m
3 which means if it has
Assault Ships at level 5 it has a total drone bay capacity of 40m
3. It can then launch either 5 light drones or 4 medium ones.
For the light drones the damage output stays the same. If you have
Drone Interfacing at level 3 then you can use 8 light drones now after the changes assuming the same skills then you can use 5 drones but get a 60% damage bonus from
Drone Interfacing skill meaning that each of it's 5 drones does 1.6 times the damage that the drones do before changes. That means that the 5 drones have the same damage output as 8 drones before the changes.
For medium drone you have the potential of doing more damage. With
Assault Ships at level 5 you have 40m
3 drone bay which means you can fit 4 medium drones. Before the changes you could fit 5. If you have
Drone Interfacing at level 4 each of your drones after the changes does 1.8 times the damage of the drones before the changes that means that after the changes assuming
Drone Interfacing level 5 you have the same damage output of 7.2 medium drones before the changes
Armageddon
Armageddon used to have room in it's drone bay for 10 heavy drones. To make use of it's 10 drones it would need two skills at level 5,
drones and
drone interfacing.
After the changes Armageddon could only use 5 drones but those drones would get 20% bonus to damage and mining yield per
Drone Interfacing level that is a total of 100% bonus to drone damage and drone mining yield. The damage output compared to the "old" Armageddon would then be the same each drone would have double the damage output of the drones before changes.
Now what happens if that Armageddon didn't have
Drone Interfacing at level 5 but level 3? It would be the same again. Before you could use 8 drones but after you could use 5. These 5 drones would have 1.6 times the damage output of drones before changes resulting in damage output of 8 drones.
How about durability then, surely it's easier to kill 5 drones then 10 drones. Well that applies to most cases but not all. All drones are getting some static hitpoint increase lets say for sake of this example 50%. The 5 drones after changes would then have the same hitpoints as 7.5 drones before changes. They certainly would die faster if they were targeted and shot at but if they are being smartbombed then they would survive a little longer.
Dominix
Before it could use 15 with
Drones,
Drone Interfacing and
Gallente Battleship at level 5. After the changes with the same skills it will be able to use 5 drones but each drone will have the firepower of 3 drones before the changes. (20% damage per level on
Drone Interfacing and 10% damage per level on
Gallente Battleship). Actually as long as you have
Drone Interfacing at level 5 then your damage output shouldn't change at all although the durability of your drones will.
If you don't have drone interfacing at level 5 then it's a little bit of reduction in damage output. For example if you have
Drone Interfacing at level 4 and
Gallente Battleship at level 4 then you could now use 13 drones. After the changes you could use 5 but they would have the effective damage output of 12.6
The durability would still be, assuming 50% increase in drone hitpoints, 7.5 effective drones but it wouldn't be that unrealistic that these ships would also get drone hitpoint bonuses lets say 10% per level which means that with
Gallente Battleship at level 5 the drones would have 2.25 times the hitpoint of the drones before the changes, that is combined hitpoints of 5 drones with
Gallente Battleship level 5 would be the same as 11.25 drones before the changes.
Vexor and Arbitrator
These ships can now use 15 medium drones or 6 heavy drones. If you use medium drones then the example looks pretty much the same as for the Dominix. If you use heavy drones then you should be very happy with your new damage output.
Before you had room for 6 heavy drones, after the changes you have room for 3 but if you have
Drone Interfacing and
Gallente/Amarr Cruiser level 4 your 3 heavy drones after the changes would have the same damage output as 8.1 heavy drones before the changes.
Here the drone durability of the 5 heavy Drones, assuming 50% hitpoint boost, is about the same as 4.5 heavy drones. Since it should get some drone hitpoint bonus from it's
Gallente/Amarr Cruiser skill lets say 50% then it gets combined hitpoints of 6.75 drones before the changes if it has
Gallente/Amarr Cruiser at level 5.
The reduction of the drone bays
I see a lot of confusion about why this is being done but I will try my best to explain it. Lets look at the current drone bays on the battleships. Raven, Scorpion, Tempest and Apocalypse can all carry 6 heavy drones. Megathron and Armageddon have room for 10 drones, Typhoon 14 and Dominix 30. If the dronebay wouldn't be halved then all these ships, except the Dominix, would have the same drone damage output. The only difference would be that Megathron, Armageddon, Typhoon and Dominx could carry more spare drones. By halving the drone bay the drone balance between the ship is maintained.
Dominix has the added benefit of having more waves of drones. It had room for 30 heavy drones but could use 15. That is two waves of drones. Now it has room for 15 and can use 5 which in most cases give the same effect as having 15 before changes. Since it only uses 5 drones at a time each spare drone it can carry has bigger value for it so Dominix can now launch 3 waves of heavy drones after the changes but before it could only launch two.
Now lets take a look at the
Raven. It was limited to 6 drones due to it's small drone bay. As it is limited by it's drone bay size he can't carry any spare drones in his cargo hold. After the changes he would have room for 3 drones and their performance would depend on the
Drone Interfacing skill giving him the max damage output the same as of 6 drones at
Drone Interfacing level 5. I doubt that a lot of Raven pilots bothered to train
Drone Interfacing to level 5 so this will probably be a bit of a damage reduction to them.
How are you halving the drone bay
A lot of ships, especially frigates have drone bays of 5m
3, 15m
3 or 25m
3. If you divide those numbers by 2 you get 2.5m
3, 7.5m
3 and 12.5m
3. As the smallest drone is 5m
3 these values seem silly. In all these cases I rounded it up to nearest multiple of 5. That is 5m
3 drone bay would remain 5m
3 and a 25m
3 would become 15m
3.
Why all damage types
Well at first this seemed to be pretty obvious to give them only bonus to their race specific damage types like is done on missiles. There are however few key differences that can not be ignored. The bonus on drones is 50% but on missiles it's 25% so the drone user has a lot more to lose if he ignores his bonus. The drone user also has to make the decision whether he is going to ignore his bonus when he's fitting. Tech 2 drones are out and Dominix pilots didn't necessarily train to use Gallente drones not to mention all the manufacturers that have blueprints of other drones than Gallente.
This whole project is also not about "nerfing" drones. This is about reducing server lag and at the end give you a more joyful experience while playing. The fact is though that something will change. Having 15 drones is not the same as having 5 drones. As you hopefully have noticed in this blog then it's not a lot of damage reduction you take, in some cases none at all and in some cases it's even a damage boost. The defense might be less in some cases and more in some cases. It all depends on how your drones are being killed.
I've made a lot of examples in this blog about how these changes will affect certain ships. Obviously I can't make example about every ship but hopefully I've put a lot of minds at ease. If you think any ships have been nerfed especially hard with these changes please say so and better yet give me some examples like the ones I did above of how you have been nerfed.
Note from Oveur based on comments:
I'd just like to point out that the optimizations are being done from not one, not two but from THREE sides. It may come as a surprise to some players but we are actually optmizing code, optimizing content (this change) and buying more hardware.
Drones take a lot of resources on the client and the server and although it may seem very little to some of you, doing this change alone actually reduces the resource usage by almost half. I think that's quite a lot ;)
Comments
Chribba on 02 November 2005
mmm... :)
Denrace on 02 November 2005
Hmm...I am still annoyed about the Cladari ships losing out even more with these changes. They already have almost no drone capability whatsoever, and I rely on drones in my Raven and Scorp to kill fast frigates. Mainly NPC, but sometimes for PVP too.
Garia666 on 02 November 2005
hehehe i am not an drone user but it still sucks.. This works for npc but not for pvp
It doesnt matter how much damadge you make a single drone do or how much it can take.
you still have less drones to worry about no matter the outcome ..
But thats the whole idea
Garia666 on 02 November 2005
Take an fight
If 15 drones lock me i cant target someone else. either i have to blow em apart or deselect them to select my target.. How ever if you have 5 drones you still have room to lock
Nobues on 02 November 2005
you might want to do somesomething about the BPO's and BPO make it cast more to build the drones, becouse this is only casting the builders big time!
Centurin on 02 November 2005
When I first heard about the changes, I was quite worried. The examples have definately cleared things up. A reduction of the imicus from 25 to 15 isn't too bad. However, I am still concerned about mining drones. Have the mining drones been boosted to compensate?
Garia666 on 02 November 2005
Oh yes a little comment on the raven aswell ..
Now people can use 6 heavy drones with just 2 skills
1 at lvl 5
and 1 at lvl 1
after the patch he can use only 3 drones
wich could do the damage of the 6 he currently has. If he would train max skils to do so..
In other words people need to learn more skills then do have done now to do the same dmg..
Thats pretty unfair if you ask me..
or i am i incorrect?
chossuh on 02 November 2005
Whoa good job! :)
Alex Harumichi on 02 November 2005
Ok, as a drone specialist I'm a bit happier now. Actually, my only leftover concern is the Dom: using anything else except damage drones on it isn't smart, since that cuts you firepower by a huge amount. In effect, the other battleships will be more free to make tactical choices with their drones.
However, I see that you have noted the need to maybe do something about this, with your mention of slightly more drone hps for Dom. This would be good, and might balance things out. Another option would be to give the Dom a bonus for the upcoming drone modules, that would give it a small extra edge in the drone department and let it stay the "drone battleship".
At the moment, many of the other battleships are almost as good as the Dom in the drone dept (and actually more flexible with them), and can do lots of other stuff besides. Being able to carry lots of drones is fine and good, but what matters most is what you can actually use in a combat situation.
So overall, looking better, with some small tweaks still needed.
PinaNi on 02 November 2005
some ppl stil not get it.... it is a boost not a nerf... for real drone users this is clearly a boost.. you get the same DMG output, but you can hold more waves of drons, and your little babys have better chance to survive a smartbomb atack...
dronebay / 2 + dmg * 2 = SMAE DAMAGE...
old drone hit point x , new hit point x * 1,5
this is a DAMN BOOST...
and think about the sentrydrones... yumm yumm...
Belshamarothx on 02 November 2005
Hmm; so in the end, after all the Gallente whining, this change results in yet another nerf to my raven if I don't have drone interfacing 5. Ta :p
Lord Timelord on 02 November 2005
As a Gallente pilot that specializes in drone warfare/mining... I'm both intrigued and worried about these changes. I reserve final jugement until the changes go live.
As many other players have stated in numerous threads on the forums, many things in the game are in the severe need of more balancing.
Hopefully you get this all straightened out before you start loosing customers due to their frustrations at their issues not being addressed in a timely manner.
buo yollocks on 02 November 2005
seems u suck people in to train a skill for a specific reason then change the goal posts (again) why not just stick us all in a ibis and be done with it. All though for reasons of lag i can at least see some reason in this 1 MAJOR PROBLEM AS I SEE IT IS WHEN people ctd and npc,s kill ur drones u login again to find all ur drones dead some ships have extra drone cap so have spares which is good because u lauch more and still get the job done the change will alter that and people will lose ships because of the change.
Tiuwaz on 02 November 2005
Garia666 you can turn autolock off, and i know many who do so, especially in empire wars its crucial for survival
Tiuwaz on 02 November 2005
this is a boost for drone users, the Ishtar was already scary enough, this is gonna make it even more powerful :/
Gunstar Zero on 02 November 2005
omg drone changes suck! :-)
It looks good, some diversity and less lag.
P.S. pls work your magic on Caldari and Missiles.
Garia666 on 02 November 2005
yeah i was thinking about the same thing :)
ramptrick on 02 November 2005
this has put my mind at ease now.. thanks so much for clearly it all up.. seems like a good idea now.. cheers
chillz on 02 November 2005
The Typhoon could do with a drone bonus to replace one of the rubbish 'only apply to half the slots' gunnery bouns
Justin Thyme on 02 November 2005
My biggest problem here is that in order to have the same effectiveness that i have not i need to train BS up 2 more levels and Drone interfacing up 2 more levels. And that will get me what I already have now. That is at least a month more of training to make up for , almost, what is being taken away.
fairimear on 02 November 2005
as far as im concerned as a REAL drone user.
this change is a nerf as long as you don't have the same total hp as 15drone from 5 and the same possible damg output accross all drone types.
you can say it's not a nerf all you want but any idiot can see that drones will die faster.
and frankly i could't give 2 hoot's about how long they will last vs smartbombs now.
as even if it's twice as long thats still going to leave the ship droneless before the target dies.
on paper you may convince some but frankly this is still a very bad idea.
EvilDoomer on 02 November 2005
Im still mad. BUT! in a fairness.
I could be a good thing.
I will hold judgement and see.
But sounds good.
fairimear on 02 November 2005
As for ecm drones.
personaly i don't like ecm 1 bit but if they are limited they may work.
sentry drones are a DAM good idea aslong as they are limited to deploying if your alliance has soverignty over the system.
Whitethorn on 02 November 2005
As a drone manufacturer, I'd like to know whether there will be any changes to the BPOs/BPCs. Given the details above, it basically means my income from sales of drones and drone BPCs will drop by well over 50% (tougher drones and fewer used).
Have the builders been considered when mucking about with the drones?
fairimear on 02 November 2005
and as this is all about lag reduction i take it ALL rogue drone complex will be removed in the patch.
Toqua on 02 November 2005
I understand that it's as balanced as it goes.
THE SIMPLE FACT IS THAT YOU TRY TO REDUCE LAG FROM THE FALSE DIRECTION, by making everything dull and equal!!!
You will probably 'fix' a bit of the lag-problem. But you will not 'repair' it. Please, finally face the fact that, the more complicated it becomes, the more Nodes you will need.
You still make a 'all can have max 5 drones out'. THIS IS WRONG. Gallente = Drone Techs and Rail users. SO LET THEM USE DRONES. MAKE A DIFFERENCE to other Bloodlines.
We more and more getting to the thing that all and every ships is interchangable. NOT the right direction.
Give the Caldaris more and better Missile Bonuses.
Give the Amarrs more and better Beam Bonuses
Give the Minmatars more and better Projectile Bonuses...
Don't try to 'equalize' everything...
Hawtchick on 02 November 2005
Hmmm... I am really curious on how this will effect the Mining Barges. Combat drones are virtually the only defense on rats in belts. How many drones will the barges be able to use/carry. I always have extra combat drones to deploy after I scoop my mining drones to safety to take care of the rats. With this change will I still be able to keep on mining when rats appear or will i have to run for cover?
And also, will this also effect the npc drones in the complexes and missions as well? If so, how will they be different? I for one am hoping they'll be easier to kill and drop better loot!! lol
I am soo gonna finish that last level in drones interfacing now!! That's for sure!! :-)
Bsport on 02 November 2005
i'm still not happy, as its still going to be alot easier to kill your 5 drones and render you drone ship useless than to kill 15 drones, and i also think you will increase server load as alot more ppl will be using drones after the changes because of the different types that you can now use
it still seems as tho your not fixing the performance issues. you just doing a quick fix.
Noillia Durmot on 02 November 2005
Thx for the clarification. Here`s 1 Dominix pilot who will sleep better tonite. I have almost no problem with these changes.
Almost? Well please think very carefully about the extra hitpoints for drones. 5 drones will be much much easier to kill than 15 in almost all situations. Trebling drone hitpoints wouldn`t be over the top IMHO.
Kremnican on 02 November 2005
As a Raven pilot, this sucks for me. The "bit of reduction" if nonsense, since I do have Drone Interfacing at lvl 1 exactly because of the size of the drone bay.
Also if Drone Interfacing gives 20% / level and if ship skill gives 10% / level for damage, isn't the total damage bonus 150% (20%*5 + 10%*5)? Or the bonuses do stack in different way?
Bsport on 02 November 2005
These points still come to mind
1. with the chages ppl will shoot drones, as instead of having to target 15 drones they only have to take 5 out for the drone ship, which relates back to my post. as instead of only taking out 1/15 of the damage output your taking out 3/15 of the damage output. so damage output will decrease alot with each of the 5 drone you kill.
2.It will be quicker even with the hp increase to take out the 5 drones and be down with it. example
With changes 3 drones into one(15 drones into 5)
{targetlock--->shot--->dead drone}
Instead of
{targetlock--->shot--->dead drone}{targetlock--->shot--->dead drone}{targetlock--->shot--->dead drone}
So you tell me which is quick kill 3 drones or killing 1 even with the hp increase
3.CCP are not correcting the cause of the lag, just another quick fix.
4.The lag will get worse, as with these changes everyone and there dog will be using drones to take advantage of the new drone types, sentry, EWAR, repair.
Gronsak on 02 November 2005
yay, now everyone leave the man alone to work on rmr so we can have the new toys to play with before christmass break
Rexx Roxx on 02 November 2005
Hmm...I am confused about the Ishkur
"What happens to it after the changes is that the base drone capacity gets halved and rounded up to nearest multple of 5. That is it will have 15m3 drone bay. It's drone bonus stays at 5m3 which means if it has Assault Ships at level 5 it has a total drone bay capacity of 30m3. It can then launch either 5 light drones or 3 medium ones."
If base drone bay is reduded to 15m3, and Assault Ship skill still gives 5m3 per level then you have an additional 25m3 at level 5(5m3*5 = 25m3)...so, 15m3 base + 25m3 A.S. skill bonus = 40m3. That gives an extra 10m3, and the possibility of having 4 medium drones, not 3.
Does that sound correct, or did I misunderstand something?
Kitia on 02 November 2005
Ultimately its going to be a nurf to drone power. For example if you have 10 drones attacking you, you have to target each one and destroy them, that’s 10 of select target attack, if you only 50% of this number of drones but the drones have 100% more armour and damage output. That half as many targets to click on and fire on so your be able to do it quicker.
Also there is this point those 10 drones attacking you once again
10 drones doing for example 2 dam a second each for example
Starting damage you’re getting
10 drones 20 damage
Click you kill one drone you’re now getting
1 second for example to target, 1 second to kill
9 drones 18 damage (2s)
8 drones 16 damage (4s)
7 drones 14 damage (6s)
6 drones 12 damage (8s)
5 drones 10 damage (10s)
4 drones 8 damage (12s)
3 drones 6 damage (14s)
2 drones 4 damage (16s)
1 drones 2 damage (18s)
So its took 18seconds to kill them all and you took 90 damage
But with half as many drones with twice the power and armour
5 drones doing for example 4 dam a second each for example
1 second for example to target, 2 seconds to kill
5 drones 20 damage (3)
4 drones 16 damage (6)
3 drones 12 damage (9)
2 drones 8 damage (12)
1 drones 4 damage (15)
So its took 15seconds to kill them all and you took 60 damage
Electric Mistress on 02 November 2005
Without racial damage restrictions, the changes look good! :D
Cor'len on 02 November 2005
Well, as I've said time and again, stop nerfing stuff and upgrade the cluster a bit instead. Great job on the new SQL database, now add 20 more nodes.
Tuxford on 02 November 2005
holy **** I made an error on the Ishkur o.O It is indeed 40m3
Phi Crysae on 02 November 2005
looks good ;-)
I can see the new style of gate camps now. 4-5 domi's all using sentry drones, cepters with stasis and ecm drones.
I cannot wait, it will make the game way more interesting for me (as a drone user).
I would still like to see some way to change the range your drone orbits at, but hell. Ill take all of this other cool stuff!!
Sirilonwe on 02 November 2005
? About the "all damage for drones": what you're trying to say to us is that "the bonus for the raven is crap. It's normal that gallente drones gets bonus on all damage types because the raven bonus is crap, and we don't want to do such a mess with gallente." ;)
May I suggest you to do the same with raven ships? after all they are the king of missiles, and they only got bonus to their main damage type :devil:
Dreez on 02 November 2005
Still sucks that the main offense on the dominix
can be blown away with 2 blasts from a L-smartbomb.
Drones needs better protection from them.
I made a suggestion about it on the forum about
a new skill that required 2skills at lvl 5
which included about 2 months of training alone
on those 2.
AGENT KW on 02 November 2005
This is how it should be done:
Done hit points remain the same
Drone interfacing + 20% drone efficiency per level.
Drone ship gets +10% drone efficiency per level.
The efficiency bonus increases drone HP, damage, mining drone yield, and EWAR bonus.
Therefore a Domi pilot with drones 5/5/5
would drop 5 Uber drones with 3x multiplier on stats and hit points.
A 5/5 Geddon pilot with drones 5/5 would drop 5 moderately uber drones with 2x multiplier on stats and hit points.
A Noob Geddon pilot with drones 5 would still drop 5 heavies but with 1x multiplier on all stats – same as they are now
This is the only way to balance things and reduce lag.
The sum total of drone hit points, mining yields, damage would be approximately the same as prepatch.
Anything else is a NERF to drone interfacing skill and a slap in the face to drone pilots who levelled the ship shill.
Drone ships should get the EWAR bonus as I stated, and pilots in other ships who have trained drone interfacing up would get the EWAR bonus up also.
This is not a whinge; I have drones 5/3 on one account and 5/4 with Gal BS at 0, and 3 respectively.
I want the balance in the game to remain the same while lag is reduced.
This method I’m suggesting is simple and elegant solution to the stated goal of the drone overhaul:
Less lag but keep the balance the same.
See forum thread:
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=242691
Fornost on 02 November 2005
Read the bit about the Isthar again. Yes you will be able to kill the 5 drones quicker, but then its going to have another two waves to throw at you, whereas before it would only have had at most another two thirds of a wave.
Kurren on 02 November 2005
I'm still wondering if this change was simply to nerf drones or to actually fix something...
Cause i still see lots of secure cans out in space with nobody next to them...
Corp advertising at the gates and stations...
A system with 15 stations in it... and everybody goes to the ONE with the "security" agent in it...
I mean, if you're trying to fix lag... is there any way you could do it without f*cking with our fighting skills/mechanics?
The Multiplicity on 02 November 2005
perhaps removing all abandoned drones from deadspace would help lag matters?
How many times have you opened the scanner and seen abandoned shuttles, noobie ships and drones? Give them a lifespan of a month before they die due to vacuum ablation and that would remove alot of data from the DB.
Somatic Neuron on 02 November 2005
I like the changes, except for the drone bay size changes. We're already too limited in drone diversity, especially since you need specific sized drones for various sized targets now. At least give us the ability to increase the drone bay size, either by skill (preferred) or modules or both.
Lauriers on 02 November 2005
loot collector drones - please!
Ebedar on 02 November 2005
Maybe I'm missing the maths somewhere but wouldn't the 'new' Ishkur have a total drone bay of 40 m3 not 30 m3?
15 m3 base
5 x 5 m3 (for lvl 5 Assault Ships) = 25 m3
15 m3 + 25 m3 = 40 m3
Hafthor on 02 November 2005
"...and Dominix 30..."
"...Before it had room for 20 drones and..."
You keep messing up the numbers, get the facts straight.
Why does Drone Interfacing give massive boost to all combat drones while Heavy Drone Operations gives the same as before to only heavy drones? These two skills have the same rank and prerequisites.
And why not fix "ECM burst" before adding super drones? It's a module meant to counter drones. While you're at it you may want to fix defenders too.
Oveur on 02 November 2005
I'd just like to point out that the optimizations are being done from not one, not two but from THREE sides. It may come as a surprise to some players but we are actually optmizing code, optimizing content (this change) and buying more hardware.
Drones take a lot of resources on the client and the server and although it may seem very little to some of you, doing this change alone actually reduces the resource usage by almost half. I think that's quite a lot ;)
Pepperami on 02 November 2005
It's still a nerf, and EWAR drones are a bad idea. I still hate the idea.
Increasing damage does not mean they're as good as more drones, even if they have higher hit points. Anyone can see that. And as for making drone interfacing a dmg skill.. Er, we already have that with Heavy Drones skill. Not to mention being able to put drones in groups and use them on different targets.
Rubbish. Pft, it's Not broke, don't fix it. Fix my overview or something.
Pepperami on 02 November 2005
What happens when eve gets 120,000 subscribers...? Do we need to only have 4 turrets on BS to reduce lag?
kessah on 02 November 2005
I understand now ty, but id really think you guys should go over light drones again. They are very weak and as said above there pretty much the same after the patch considering the max of 5 drones u can use.
Can you please look over it again and perhaps boost there dmg "alittle" bit more, either that or better explain your reasons not to.
Alot of people think that there under powered. Considering the lame Sacrilege those 5 light drones may well make it alittle more tollerable to fly.
Oveur on 02 November 2005
Pepperami: Thank you very much, that was very constructive. Of course nothing is broke, it just lags the sh*t out of people. Wait, wouldn't you call that broken?
Tuxford on 02 November 2005
fixed the ishkur error did it in a hurry though, might have made another one :-P
Pepperami on 02 November 2005
Ugh, I don't mean to be unconstructive, I just feel that it seems like a crappy way to fix lag. There has to be better ways, especially things like agent distribution.
Kollgorholl on 02 November 2005
"That is [the ishkur] will have 15m3 drone bay. It's drone bonus stays at 5m3 which means if it has Assault Ships at level 5 it has a total drone bay capacity of 30m3. It can then launch either 5 light drones or 3 medium ones."
If this was the case wouldn't it mean that the ishkur has a drone bay of 40m3 at level 5. in order for the drone bay size to be 30m3 the drone bay bonus would have to be an extra 3m3 per level. Other than this little point, good changes i like the whole drone thing now that race specific damage is gone.
Kollgorholl on 02 November 2005
never mind, the ishkur error was fixed whilst i was typing my last comment. ignore it :-)
Heelay Ashrum on 02 November 2005
First off: i have gal BS5, gal cruiser 5, HAC 4 , and drone interfacing 4 and i use Both Isthar and Dominix.
my considerations:
I can agree that things continue to be ballanced if u talk about combat drones, but things will not be the same if we speack about new type of drones.
For example the scrambling drone are better on standard ships instead of drone oriented ships, simply because using this sort of drones mean loose the "10% dammage per skill level".
U can simply compare what will loose an armageddon if use a scrambling drone instead of a heavy combat, and what will loose a dominix.
As far i see the main problem that persist is that the ship bouns on drones will apply on only on dammage, but not on webbing, scrambling, nossing etc...
In conclusion, to use those sort of drones it's better do not use done specific ships... If u will not nerf the "specific drone ships" u should apply a bonus to all sort of effectivnes not only the dammage. Make those webbing drones affective as they was 15 on "old style domi".
Tuxford on 02 November 2005
and the dominix
Oveur on 02 November 2005
Pepperami: We're of course also doing that. This is just one of very many optimizations in Red Moon Rising. If we have to modify game mechanics to get big boosts in performance, we will.
I should also note that the load the agents are causing is not entirely the same as drones, beacause it's number of NPC's and Deadspace Complexes associated that cause most of that load, so the solution there is to distribute the agents so that the inherent - and natural load of running NPC's is spread out amongst the CPU's. If they are all in the same system you have 1 CPU @ 100% while you have the 6 neighbouring systems @ 40% which is our average CPU utilization.
Andouus La on 02 November 2005
I dont care how you calculate this, the raven is fryed bbq. Torps and cruises dont do mucho againts a fast small radius object. Everybody know that. Most caldari ships have a mono dammage bonus, last nerf will be to get the missiles on the raven to kinetic only inline with the rest of the caldari ships.
Listen up. PVP in eve two years ago was a blasting party. Today, whith the newbie skills i have now, i dont even want to mess with this cuz it's got outragously complicated. I am here to have fun. So, pvp is totally out because it got into some sort of mathematical elaborate intricate analysis i am not here to have.
Got eve to do pvp. Yes I am a newb, idiot bla bla bla dont care about smacktalk either here or in the forums.
Where did my game go? Out up Mt everest learning stack of pvp skills related x4 and x5 time multiplyer skills.
Ebedar on 02 November 2005
Well I asked this in the drone discussion thread but looks as though this is the place for a quick answer...
Given that you're giving the Domi a bonus to drone HP, will it be losing the hybrid damage bonus as a result?
Oveur on 02 November 2005
Ebedar: You didn't read the blog, now did you :)
Pepperami on 02 November 2005
Ok, Altho I really don't like the idea of removing drones, if there's no other option, there's no other option.
But I still think EWAR drones is a bad idea.. Just feels wrong that we have slots and ships for that, and now every ship with a drone bay can do it. Why not only limit that sort of behaviour to XL Drones, and thus only usable on carriers?
Bsport on 02 November 2005
but because of the new drones wont more ppl use drones and effectivly
Joerd Toastius on 02 November 2005
Hey Tux,
"It's" only has an apostrophe when it's a contraction - the posessive form is "its". Weird but true.
Hugs and kisses,
Toastie
Ebedar on 02 November 2005
Oveur: I did, perhaps I missed the relevant part?
There's a secondary bonus, dependent on Gallente BS skill level, that increases drone HP.
Is that in addition to the other bonuses (i.e. a 3rd BS skill bonus) or a replacement? I honestly can't see where it says anything about that.
Bsport on 02 November 2005
sorry press before i was ready
..remove any performance grains given by the nerf
Lansfear on 02 November 2005
Drone specialization means something now. I'm all for these changes. Especialy since i already have most drone skills to L5. >:)
Tuxford on 02 November 2005
Thanks Joerd, I mean that I want to be corrected when my grammar is all off. Of course I have no idea what apostrophe means :-P
Tuxford on 02 November 2005
Ebedar it's just one bloated bonus, which is kind of what the drone control bonus was.
Lansfear on 02 November 2005
Oops. Fogot my question. Will the new Drone Hitpoint skills add even more to the 50% static increase and 10%/L ship bonus?
Rexx Roxx on 02 November 2005
"holy **** I made an error on the Ishkur o.O It is indeed 40m3"
Thanks for the correction Tux, but...
Nothing has been mentioned about the Mining ships. How will those be impacted by these changes? (Barges as well as other ships that have a mining yield bonus or otherwise are currently used for mining.)
Oh yea, I second Laurier's nomination for loot collector drones! Please! 8-)
Tiny Carlos on 02 November 2005
"If you use medium drones then the example looks pretty much the same as for the Dominix. If you use heavy drones then you should be very happy with your new damage output."
To me that just looks wrong when talking about a cruiser, it's mediums they should be getting better with...somehow.
Tuxford on 02 November 2005
Rexx Roxx: They shouldn't really be effected at all. Mining drones are pretty small and chances are you won't be limited by your drone bay. The drone interfacing gives you 20% mining yield per level so at level 1 5 mining drones should be mining like 6 drones now, at level two they get 40% bonus and should mine like 7 drones and so on.
Mindlles on 02 November 2005
Im not sure if i say its a nerf,, we scream nerf to everything, when they are making things just abit more advance,, and if we dont want a advance game play with alot to think about. well we always got tetris, or doom :P
Ebedar on 02 November 2005
Thanks Tuxford, so the new bonus will incorporate both drone damage and HP, meaning the hybrid damage bonus will be left alone?
Tuxford on 02 November 2005
Ebedar: yeah and in some cases it will even get a mining yield bonus o.O
Rychek on 02 November 2005
and I the only one that saw
"Drone hitpoint increase. With fewer drones it makes sense that they should be tougher. 50% increase in drone armor hitpoints, shield capacity and hull hitpoints."
Everyone is saying "nerf, they need triple hp!" before we even know what the increase in armor, shield and hull will be.
Orrin Danestarr on 02 November 2005
Question: I currently use a Scythe cruiser to mine and i have a tiny 10m3 drone bay. Is this getting dropped to 5m3 or are you going to individually evaluate each ship. I currently use my drone bay to lauch 2 mining drones and would like the capacity ot lauch at least a harvestor drone (10m3) in the future.
Tiny Carlos on 02 November 2005
And how about what this effect has right at the bottom:-
Incursus, current drone bay 10m3, new drone bay 5m3.
It goes from 1 medium to one light with no damage bonus, so if you happen to have DI lvl 5, you'll still do less damage, all frigs with no specific drone bonus will suffer like this.
You can't expect T1 frig pilots to have DI trained at all let alone a usefull level of it.
Think of the Noobs!
Rychek on 02 November 2005
clarification: no one is doing math themselves. I meant no one has worked out on drones, what the increase in hp, armor, shield, and hull will actually be before they cried nerf.
Ebedar on 02 November 2005
Thanks for that Tuxford.
Please don't mention mining, it makes me itch :S
David Corbett on 02 November 2005
Yeah, this isn't so bad at all. Not only that it gives more opportunities for sentry drones. Should be cool stuff.
ElCapitan on 02 November 2005
Tuxford,
what about calculating in the fact that 5 drones are actually easier to lock and kill than 15. Just about anybody can lock 5 drones at once and kill them much faster than lets say 10-15 drones. When you fight somebody with drones you need to lock them in batches of 4-5, but when there are only 5 drones they are going to be dramatically faster to lock and kill. Where in these changes the compensation for that comes in?
Also another concern is drone manufacturing, with people being able to use only 5 drones at a time, people will lose a lot less drones. perhaps increase in manufacturing requirements or production time of drones is in order?
Red Angelus on 02 November 2005
Ok, I read the new dev blog...
...and i still dont like losing my massive swarm of drones....
...but I'm willing to give this a chance...
which leaves me with 2 questions:
1. There have been talks of reducing the dronebay capacity of the thorax before this one...so will the thorax drone capacity be reduced 2x?
2. When is this change to my precious drone fleet going to take place?
Elfaen Ethenwe on 02 November 2005
still no to theother drones
Tiny Carlos on 02 November 2005
Imicus, with drones lvl3 (fair for this ship) an Imicus could deploy 2 meds and a light from 25m3 drone bay. It will now have 15m3 alowing either 3 lights or 1 med and 1 light, doing 59% damage.
So an Imicus pilot will need to train from drones lvl 3, to Drones 5, Drone Inerfacing 4 to do the same damgage. If the frig has an even sized drone bay you need DI 5 to do the same damage as you don't get the rounding advantage.
Andouus La on 02 November 2005
Hehe spammed my post in 5 mins lol.
ccp is something like croud control production is it not?
Evelyne DeBoissiere on 02 November 2005
Well, it's looking a bit better than the initial devblog/plan, but I'm still a bit worried about the drone HP for droneships, since shooting/jamming at 5 drones is much more realistic than having to do all 15 ...
Also, what about the Moros ? I know you can't give examples for everything, but since it is/was THE droneship, what will happen to it ? Will it get an even bigger drone HP bonus ? How about the damage bonus ?
Because going from 35 to 5 drones is kind of .. uhh .. steep ;)
Anyway, looking forward to see how things shape up.
Verlan on 02 November 2005
Well this is a lot better post than the previous one. Mind you I still feel that drone masters will be loosing especially for PvP. I just hope that the Dom will get both the +10 damage AND the +10 mining bonus to dones!!!!!
Pegas on 02 November 2005
Will drones remain active on the target they attack when the ship is jammed or they will be sepparate as now are? (Mening the drones still attack u regardless if the engaged ship still has/did not have u targeted anymore?)
Verlan on 02 November 2005
Anyone calculated what will be the mining yield of 5 mining drones now (versus 15 before on Dom)?
Verlan on 02 November 2005
I like Pegas question, drones are supposed to be intelligent (relatively, at least smarter than a "smartbomb") should they not be capable of acting like FOF missiles? Even if that means making a separate skill and drone type? That would definetely compensate for the number loss in PVP...
MortiSeraphim on 02 November 2005
dominix better get a ship bonus that adds drone HP to balance out the 10 drones youll loose at level 5 bship. cus smartbombs are going to be the bane of the dominix...im still convinced this is going to suck hard wet donkey nuts
Tobber Harley on 02 November 2005
Hmmm... Nerf or not, optimization or not. I'm still going to be really sad when I can't have my SWARM of 14 drones around my Ishtar (sounds SO cool with surround sound!).
Now it's going to be max 5 drones, same as almost all other ships with drone bay? BORING!
You are really taking the fun and coolness with drones out of the game with this (which I think is almost worse than everything else) and makes those of us who spent lots of time training for specialized drones ships just because you can have MORE drones out.
I'm sad... :(
Takitoo on 02 November 2005
I might consider using drones now. The ECM and logistics drones look tasty.
As for the changes, it makes sense to me. Better quakity, less quantity. And for the low end frigs that'll be a considerable boost.
Sandokan on 02 November 2005
Drones now can go for EW, sentry... you name it. Its not just about dmg anymore. Apoc can't use any of thoos. Will be a very big point!
Till now it was only about drones for dmg and defence, but with all new drones types... there is one ship left behind... Apoc!
Not that it realy hurts me, i'm caladri and after the laser nerf, i don't fly apoc anymore.
Wondering why? well try to hunt with a apoc in angel space!
With the new drones, who would like to use a apoc?
Professor Los on 02 November 2005
This seems to cause a real problem for Thorax pilots, since the real advantage was being able to use many Heavy drones. Now, since the Thorax doesn't have any common drone bonuses, this seems to really impact the damage potential for the Thorax's drones.
Zeb Boregar on 02 November 2005
Good for me.
There is still the pb that players using carriers, as they MUST use combat drones for their damages will have difficulties to use the new ones.
Then I don't see any words on the Thorax. With 50m3 of drones bay (including MK2) it's ONE set of 2 combat drones. And for sure 2 drones are FAR easier to kill than 8 or even 4. This will make the Thorax useless as a PvP ship. And that's not cool at all.
Limit the Thorax to 2 heavies in space at a time but allow her to have a spare pair.
Fusedbrain on 02 November 2005
A couple issues,
-1-
If you're going to cut our drone count there is no reason to cut drone bay capacity. At least this way we'll have multiple waves of drones available. Seem realistic to me. This would cost you no server overhead and increase game play satisfaction. Why change our ships that we've skilled to have and use. Diminishing our ability to control multiple drones I can live with.
-2-
Instead of nerfing our drone count, fix the problem on your server. It is not acceptable that we pay for your server problems or lack of nodes. Invest some money in your infrastructure.
Queen Chthonic on 02 November 2005
Sorry to waist your time. The Thorax will be fine. I did the math, and my post was wrong. This is a great idea for server load purposes. Go CCP!
Helmut Rul on 02 November 2005
I am happy for the Gallente droneusers that get an good bonus for their ships.
I however must say that i am getting mighty pissed when you consider how quickly the devs caved in on this issue compared to the massive wall of silence caldari missileusers face when they raise concerns about the problems they face using their chosen weapon.
Can we get any comment on the missile situation that does not boil down to " We might take a look at it later ... possibly ....next year.... perhaps .... what are you still here , go away and dont bother us any more"
babylonstew on 02 November 2005
well, as i suspected, us lovely 150m^3 bs pilots have just lost a big chunk of anti frig defense unl;ess we stop all our current skills and train 24 days for interfacing lvl 5, yep great, tnaks a bunch.
and btw, i fly, raven, apoc and machariel so this isnt a berfed raven whine.
NoLock LetsNegociate on 02 November 2005
Hi,
Thx for those precisions.
Tuxford, can you please tell us if Mining barge hold will realy be halved.
The problem I see is :
Procurer : old 10m3 (2 mining or 2 light as defence)
Retriever : old 50m3 (lets say 5 miners and 5 light or 2 miners and 3 med)
Covetor old 100m3 (for example 10 miners and 5 medium)
In most places combat drones listed are enough to manage pirates pops son long you dont venture too far away in low sec systems.
Now new ones :
Procurer : new 5m3 (2 light : unless you mine in 0.9+ you can no longer use mining drones)
Retriever : new 25m3 (5 lights or 2 meds and a light. Here again you must keep drone bay for a minimal protection)
Covetor new 50m3 (5 lights and 5 miners or 5 med or 2 heavy or even 3med and 4 miners). BUT 3med or 5 lights is no enought in 0.5 for example, by far.
Drones bay now look too small to get efficient protection an miners in bay.
What do you think about only 25% reduction ?
Procurer 10 (no change)
Retiever 40 (rounded up)
Covetor 75
NoLock LetsNegociate on 02 November 2005
Erf sry a little bit hard to read.
Forgot paragraphs
Azia Burgi on 02 November 2005
this is a nerf, dressed up as a nerf.
Lisa Payne on 02 November 2005
How about some loot fetching drones *wink*
Professor Los on 02 November 2005
So, after reviewing my thoughts on the Thorax, and reading the posts about barges, it would be cool if you guys said something specific about these ships. Will the Thorax get 4 drones or 5? If it's only 4 then the Thorax is only at 80% potential. Barges have been mentioned, but I'm curious about the specifics.
Ti anna on 02 November 2005
How is the Moros affected? is the +70%/level now for all damage types or just thermal still?
Necolycan on 02 November 2005
Still lame. Drones are fine. Huge ass NAY to this.
Ashraaf on 02 November 2005
I'm afraid that's this is good for drones using ship, same for gallantean ship, and a indirect nerf for other race.
I will see after test
Foog on 02 November 2005
CCP this might fix your lag problem for now. but not forever. Try revamping the code or get more servers! It seems like CCP is a poorly ran buisness to me. Do you think pepsi would put pop in a smaller can and sell it for the same price so they could ship more cans in one truck thus saving money on shipping. They could but its a bad buisness decision. CCP is taking away from the game so they don't have to invest $$ on servers. BAD MOVE. I wunder what other bad decisions are in store for EVE!
Hafthor on 02 November 2005
Tuxford: and the dominix
Good, how about answering my question too instead of just fixing your own errors? I'll repeat them so you won't have to go look for them.
Why does the DI skill get the heavy bonus when the skill HDO has exactly the same difficulty to train?
I think it might be better to make the two skills different or else closer in effect.
I'd also like to see some info on what sort of other drone skills are being considered. Will there finally be a "Light drone operations" skill?
Maybe HDO could give a speed boost as well as damage to heavy drones and you could introduce LDO and MDO for similar purposes?
Helmut Rul: Missiles have more than 45km range. Missiles are ammo that you can reload to change damage types. Missiles are faster than drones. Missiles have an F.O.F. type, give me F.O.F. drones and I'll MAYBE feel sorry for you. I still find it ridiculous that a missile ship gives a bonus to a specific type of missile rather than all, and a kinetic one at that, big slug missiles 4TW!!!
Lisa Payne: There will be tractor beams instead. Thats why noone is answering anyone that asks for loot drones ;)
God forbid on 02 November 2005
I dont like the Ewar DRones thats just to much.. But all the other change's about drones are cool.. ; )
Snake Jankins on 02 November 2005
Well, the only big change that I see except the new drones is that everybody has to train drone interface now. My chars have it at 3 or 4, but now I think it's time to train it to 5.
Like someone stated, damage bonuses for ships should also be mining bonuses. I use a Dominix for mining from time to time and the main reason why it's a nice mining ship are the mining drones.
Snake Jankins on 02 November 2005
Just to add, I think the changes make sense, I remember when everyone used his drones when we attacked a station and I had 5.7 fps. It's not only to much for the server, but also for the client.
Neslo on 02 November 2005
Is there anyway that we can get another class of drones that will not attack but will shoot incoming missles. Call it the defender drone. It would help with larger ships not having to worry about frigate missles / rockets... Battleships still have to deal with cruise missles and torpedo damage... but at least we can choose to have a point defense with drones from smaller ships?
Kind of a mixed fleet promoter instead of all battleship or all frigate... I dunno my 2 cents...
Daemon Bourne on 02 November 2005
I don't know what rank the drone interfacing skill is but it's likely to take about a week minimum and anything up to a month to train, just to do something I can do before the changes. I would rather be training for something new that my character can't already do.
If this isn't just a case of "oh sh*t, how many new skills can we create? dammit, lets just make the players train unnecessarily for existing abilities" - then perhaps, everyone should have their drone interfacing skill boosted automatically to adjust for these changes, otherwise it's about more than just lag.
P.S. why are caldari pilots always getting a bum deal, first missiles, now this!!!
Noriath on 02 November 2005
The appeal of drone ships is still gone, no matter how they tweak the numbers. People don't fly them because their drones magicaly do more damage, but because they have lots of drones!
Arpanet on 02 November 2005
Man, just stop calling 5 drones a WAVE of drones.
That's just pathetic.
Qin Yu on 02 November 2005
Two things I've noticed
1 Kieron... Im sorry but your post and the dev blog was patronising and quite snidey against people who've brought complaints up about the new proposed Drone changes. Forgive the people who answer "OMG you suck!" But people in those very channels were offering constructive criticism which was ignored.
2 Despite the slight change in the new dev blog it still doesn't excuse for CCP's totally ignoring player opinion on this subject. A large portion of the active FORUM population tell you something's wrong why not address those issues and reach a compromise?
3 A suggestion.
Ok, change all the bonuses as you guys want (not as if we can stop you anyway). Change the max number of drones in control at once BUT keep the damn drone bays the same size. It'll be FAR more tactically useful for a Drone ship pilot to mix and match waves of drones in which it could launch/dock and launch a different one..
Andouus La on 02 November 2005
I read the thread on the forum following this blog. After my reading my first thaught was
"this is impossible to evaluate or calculate the outcome of a battle situation with this new drone warfare."
Still I went on trying to figure out the matrix and all the possibilities of getting into a fight with these new drones, fits, weapon systems and circumstances added to the skills necessary and money wise ship costs plus ship equipment.
A quote of an old movie popped in my mind. Was in the movie War games from the beginning of the 80's.
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?"
Alex Harumichi on 02 November 2005
Tux, I'm a drone user so it might surprise you to hear this, but:
Could we please have a reduction in heavy drone tracking / effective damage vs. small ships? Along with this, I'd like a boost to light drone effectiveness against those same small ships.
At the moment, heavy drones are *much* too effective vs all ship types (sort of the old missile problem), while light drones are very close to useles (even a swarm of them won't really harm an interceptor).
I'd like some reason to also use light and medium drones, please, instead of always just heavies if I can fit them.
Kadafu on 02 November 2005
I'd still like some comment regarding the issue of those who don't rely on drones for damage getting free utility from the new drone types.
An Armageddon can out-damage my Megathron very easily (even with my drones) but now it can out-damage it and carry the new drone types for more functionality that I simply cannot use because MY drones are doing a necessary portion of my damage.
I feel better about the changes, but I *STILL* disagree with halving the drone bays.
Rusty PwnStar on 02 November 2005
It's just a numbers game atm it seems.
I.E. ohh look 15k online.... ohh look 16k online... rinse and repeat.
But it's also a numbers game for us.
I.E. ohh months spent training = money, ohh more skills to train = money, our money.
I know this is negative but i'm felling really nerfed off with this.
No matter how you word it, the changes are bad.
5 drones = i've wasted money and time.
Dukath on 02 November 2005
1 moros: 35 drones, at least he ahs defense against a small swarm of frigates or cruisers. Target jam 5 drones and you still got 30 drones shooting at you
1 moros: 5 drones, each doing damage worth 7 drones. jam 5 of them and no drone shooting at you.
I'm taking the most extreme example here but its still valid for the other drone ships who lose out on numbers here. It is much easier to take out 5 drones, eitehr killing them or disabling them in another way than to take out 15 or 35.
whatever way you want to turn this, it IS a nerf for the gallente.
Also 12.5 drones worth of hitpoints is a loss compared to 15, while other non drone related ships get a boost.
Can we please half the missile slots on all ships, and reduce it by 2/3rd on missile ships? having less missiles in the air will reduce lag a lot. Just give them a small missile bonus to compensate. I mean if its ok to do this to drone users, then why not missile users too?
Paul Castrin on 02 November 2005
Wish someone would address the questions about the Thorax. From the info provided so far it looks like it's seriously getting taken tot he wood shed on this. 200m3 -> 100m3 -> 50m3 == useless at just about everything.
Unless the above is wrong the changes will take a great cruiser and make it the worse Tier 3 cruiser in the game.
Some clarity is needed where all these proposed changes are overlapping.
Sanky on 02 November 2005
It's still wrong u make it all the same, taking out the flavor, feeling of being in a domi surrounded by a bunch of drones, what is the matter with u? this is how u solve problems? Make it all the same and just tweak the bonuses and numbers? If i want a difference i also want it visual, that gives the feeling and the pleasure to play, when u will reach the perfect equilibrium the game will be shit, i'm sure of it, and no lag cause not so much people will be online LOL
Think about it !!!
Lady Chiron on 02 November 2005
After reading this page I feel somewhat better about the changes to drones, however I do have to agree with Sanky. People like the ships like the Dominix and Vexor etc for the visual and the feeling of power of having that massive horde of drones they can send rushing at the enemy. True, those ships will still usually be able to field the most drones still, but lets face it. Its just not the same.
Dreez on 02 November 2005
Tuxford: What is your opinion on Smartbombs Vs Drones then ?. Cuz atm all it takes is a skill that requires about 1hour of training to disable a training of 2-3 months.
Smartbombs are way to effective against drones.
I send 15 Heavy drones on a Megathron that was camping a gate and before i knew it, his 2 L-Smartbombs has trashed all 15 drones.
Can i get a comment please ?
infused on 02 November 2005
I agree with Toqua.
Lady Chiron on 02 November 2005
I also have to agree with Dukath, this change will seriously effect the Moros Dreadnaught. Its main power above the other Dreadnaughts was its drones. It, at least, should still have a drone control bonus of some sort.
Dreez on 02 November 2005
I´ll have to fully agree with Sanky on this one. Doing all these changes to get rid of some lag is not the right way to do it, its the worst kind of way.
If i spend 4 months of training Gallente 5 and all droneskills to 5, i dont want to see 5 puny drones around my Domi, i wanna see a cloud of 15 nasty lookin t2 heavy drones. and i want my enemy to see them and fear them.¨
Feels like you´re taking the easy way out, and the easy way is never the right way.
Verlan on 02 November 2005
I am wondering also about what will happen when right after the patch, thousand of ships will have their drone bay shrink by half but with twice the amount of drones that it can carry? Will there be hull breeches?
Seriously, if the problem is just lag, keep the drone bays the same size. At least we have spares for those that will go POP three times faster. It will be good for the economy for more drones will be bought(who wants a half full drone bay?). When ship go POP too, then more drones to replace... Ferengueis would be happy...
Santiak on 02 November 2005
I've already touched the subject in the related thread, but after a quick scan i couldn't find any comment on this "issue".
The numbers look good and dandy, but are you also doing something to maintain the drones "fear factor"? As it is now, the only weapon in the game that has some sort of visual effect that makes you go "oooh" is the missiles, and sheer number of drones that can come flying at you. It would be a shame if that of the drones would be degraded to the level of hybrid trails :)
Any plans of resizing drone models to make them more visible (increasing the visual effect of them) or any such visual enhancements to go with this change?
Omnious Prime on 02 November 2005
I still dnt like the idea but you devs seem adamint on changing it so i spose ill just have to warm up to it.......and by the way there is no amount of damage increase tht can compare to using 15 medium drones at a time..........
Lady Chiron on 02 November 2005
Toqua has an extremely valid point. We all know the main reason behind these updates is the server lag. And taking away the Gallente's racial trademark is wrong, no matter what angle you look at it. Next thing that will happen is you will reduce missile bays on Caldari ships and make missiles more powerful. Add more hardware.
This game has gained 10000 more players since the first time I logged onto it. More players = more stress on the system resources. Therefore, add more resources.
Whitethorn also had a valid point. Industrialists who make there living off of selling drones will now lose major profits unless the prices of drones and drone bpo/bpcs are raised. They will sell less because people need less. Simple as that.
Lady Chiron on 02 November 2005
Santiak, as we know this is an effort to reduce server lag, increasing the drone model size would recreate the same problem.
Birger VI on 02 November 2005
CCP : A suggestion while you are with the drone thing. I think that apoc and geddon should switch drone bay. As it is now, the geddon has all the good things while the apoc nada. Not saying the apoc is a bad ship, i just seems more logical that the geddons bigbrother has the large dronebay as it is a bigger ship :) well just an idea. (not sure its the right place to post it, but think about it)
Engar Anduve on 02 November 2005
I love all the "CCP bashing" that occurred with the last dev blog, and all the people heading to sell their domis and such. But if they just would have waited a while they would have seen that CCP was listening, and after the clarification I'm looking forward to having a drone carrier more than ever. Lets face it 3 waves is better than 2, and the added hp make smartbombs not AS effective vs. drones as they were. Not to mention it'll now take 3 smartbomb bursts to kill the 3 waves, IF the hp aren't enough. It might even take 6 smartbomb bursts to kill the 3 waves. I think this *nerf* actually raised the importance of drone skills as well as the usefulness of drones as well.
Kaotic on 02 November 2005
If you have to reduce the number of active drones to help with lag, then so be it. But please dont reduce the drone bay of dedicated drone ships, being be able to carry more and mixed drones is the one true advantage they will have over other ship types. Maybe drop the +5% hybrid damage bonus on the domi and give it a drone bay bonus per lvl instead,'cos tbh you cant realistically fit Large hybrids to a domi due to grid limitations anyway. The Domi NEEDS some sort drone enhancements because drones are its primary weapon, not secondary.
Santiac on 02 November 2005
Granted Lady Chiron, but aren't the sort of lag they are aiming to cure, due to server load? and not client load? :)
Seeing as drones already aren't more then everlasting missiles with a crosshair over them, unless you zoom in on the rare occasion, wouldn't it be an idea to make the model size an option you could toggle off/on? (On generating new resized models of drones, Off rendering them to the visuals of that of missiles)
Somewhere i can't quite see why 10 battleships, using only 3 - 5 modules, orbiting at 700m/s, would generate more server side load then 10 frigs orbiting at the same speed :)
Lady Chiron on 02 November 2005
Good point Santiac. I believe they should just leave drones alone and just upgrade there hardware personally. Stop taking the cheap/easy way out. They may even lose players over this. I know the drones were one of the things that hooked me into this game.
Kipkruide on 02 November 2005
coudl you add the calc for the 40 drones on the moros, or does that ship do about 8 times more damage now ?
Rowan Lyon on 02 November 2005
I think this is a nerf for one simple reason. You are giving us more toys to play with (EWAR, sentry, etc drones) and less space to play with them. A Domi with only five drones would out of necessity HAVE to make all of them damage drones in order to keep the firepower it has now. Why not make the skill changes specific to drone type, so that way ppl can have five combat drones plus one EWAR drone plus one sentry or so forth?
You are punishing the players who have spent months training skills for a particular goal, and you are setting a dangerous precedent for changing skills to the point that new players won't be able to trust that six months from now their skills are going to be what you say they are now. That's simply not good business.
Frezik on 02 November 2005
People seem to be forgetting the other half of the drone changes: addition of EWAR drones. The Raven can use 3 heavy webbing drones, which will give around a 94% reduction in speed. That will bring any inty to a standstill, ripe for killing off with missiles. Therefore, the Raven will once again become a prime anti-frig platform. And it won't have to spend any cap or fitting space to do it.
Bugger the change in hitpoints and damage on current drones. The intresting part is the EWAR drones.
Iynara Maeral on 02 November 2005
You go to danger zones with mining drones?
Also think of this: less drones will maybe mean less drone sticking/mating/whatever it is they do for many of us right now.
Niki Silver on 02 November 2005
How about a new module that increases drone bay? Alpha mod drone bay expander anyone?
Hotice on 02 November 2005
With drones now do EW as well, what happened to the ships that don't have drone bay? Before they just missing out on some damage but now they miss out far more than that. After this change, ships with drone bay could release EW drones on ships without drones. Since there is no real way to counter the EW effects, what could the ships that don't have drones do besides just run away? Consider 4 jamming/tracking disrruptor drones can make maller totally useless. So isn't it a bit unbalanced here? Maybe all ships should be able to use at least 4 light drones or 2 medium drones. Or simply take away the EW drones all together.
Fusedbrain on 02 November 2005
The more I think about this drone nerf the more disapointed I am in this game. I skiled to get into a Domi for the sole reason of the huge drone bay and now you're cutting it in half!!! Come on CCP fix your server problems and stop screwing the players.
AT THE VERY LEAST LEAVE DRONE BAY SIZE ON DOMI INTACT.
What is a drone race with a crappy drone bay ships??
Skulmar on 02 November 2005
first of all i want to thank you for this second dev blog cause i got realy upset yesterday after reading the first one but now it seems ok for me except:
why dont u reduce the signature radius as a drone bonus of ishtar, domi.. instead of increasing the hp?
it would be more familar to the old 15 drones model cause it would increase targeting time, drones would take less damage from missiles and they would be harder to hit.
still it wont be the same but i think its a better approuch to the current drone model then increasing the hp.
i dont know if anyone already came up with this idea, but i havnt found anything so far.
Engar Anduve on 02 November 2005
Nevermind what I said about the "CCP Bashing" lessening. I think people should wait until it's tested and see the "actual effects" before they start complaining.
After all a lot of things don't seem that great on paper, but are awesome in reality. Also there is a skill now that boosts drone speed, so won't that effectively make them harder to hit?
Nelius on 02 November 2005
NOW im happy, all the things that i was worried about in the last blog, has been corrected, i will keep mu Ishtar, and look forward too an even better EVE, without as much lag :-)
ALTNAME on 02 November 2005
I knew my raven would get screwed in the butt
Claude Leon on 02 November 2005
Tuxford and Ovuer, no matter what way you sugger coat it. The fact of the matter is that the appeal of drones have been lost. You all can't actually be serious with a Moros launching only FIVE drones. Oh wait, you are. Carriers only launching FIVE drones? Give me a break. Better yet, get a freaking clue. I see hundreds of "adcans" daily floating around and yet nothing is done about them. I promise you that this is my last comment on this suggestion. Hell, I have already been getting interested in other games. Way, to go CCP! You are doing a fantastic job.
No wonder this information was released AFTER fanfest. Iceland would have been on CNN for the first time, with some very bad news.
Mallik Hendrake on 02 November 2005
I think it might be wise to consider adjusting the 1500 drone bay battleships selectively to 1000 - as they then get a small bump if they have drone interfacing 5, but, frankly, most of these battleships already have huge problems with frigates (apoc, raven, scorp, tempest) compared to the others. They could use a small boost in dronebay performance.
My point is that heavy drones on a raven/apoc/etc currently are certainly not overpowered, and may even be slightly underpowered - so erring on the side of under-nerfing is good in this case.
Sonjeir on 02 November 2005
I can't add much to all these complaints about this seriously terrible proposed change. All I can do is beg you CCP to listen to your customers, unlike so many other game companies.
Taking things away, changing skills we have much time invested in...What ever motivated you to come up with this is beyond me. Even the excuse of reducing lag seems to me a terribly lame attempt at justifying it.
Consider it a threat or not, I won't be quitting if these changes go live but the second account for a drone fighter definitely won't be happening.
Please do not follow this path I am begging you listen to our desires and come up with a more intelligent solution to your problems.
Santiac on 02 November 2005
Even tho the moros will only be able to release 5 drones, those drones will, in time, turn into XLarge drones, considering it's drone bay on 500m^3 will be lowered to 250m^3, and following the size increment of drone types, Xlarge would probably end at around 50m^3, all guessing tho' :)
But i'll admit, it's not as scary as it was before, as i've rambled on about further up, unless those Xlarge drones will be the size of cruisers/battlecruisers.. jousa :o
The Anointed on 02 November 2005
Im all for less lag, so like the idea of the changes, so hows this one;
Because there will be a smaller number of drones, and thus easier targets lets educate them, possibly give them a passive and defensive setting.
Passive being that they will just orbit you untill you tell them to attack something.
Defensive meaning they will attack anything that attacks you (thus if your jammed, they wont sit there and orbit you whilst being blown up)
You never know what about even making them intelligent enough that heavy drones wont go after targets they will never be able to kill, for instace a scrambling ceptor?
I would love to see these changes brought in as long as while you are changing things to reduce lag, you optimise them so that they are mor intelligent as well. Make out lives easier, and im sure nobody will moan if you want to make the server's life easier as well.
Sorry, I forgot to say please.
Santiac on 02 November 2005
Sorry for the second comment, but, keep in mind that this is the last "niche" tree (like gunnery , missile, engineering, etc.) that has near to no spectacular skills that do anything else then allow the use of higher quality items, rather then improve current items belonging to that tree.
So keeping that in mind, i think this is the last "extending" of a tree with all the side effects and drama that follows. :)
Dave Sector on 02 November 2005
well, im a drone user and im very sceptical about all this.
and one of my best and longest mates on eve has just quite over this (along with all the other times he has trained skills only to have the goal posts moved) but this was the last straw for him. so im very unhappy cuz ive lost an in game mate :'(
Joachim Laurent on 02 November 2005
Very good update, this was sorely needed. =)
There are only two issues left to think about:
One is the fact that a ship able to field 5 drones (for instance the armageddon) will be just as good with these new special (EW) drones as a drone carrier (which can also field only 5 with no special bonuses). This seems a bit wrong to me, but not devastating.
The other issue is the impact these new drones might have on ship roles. Ships without drone bays will also lose alot of versatility compared to ships with a generous drone bay (not compared to drone carriers which pretty much must use combat drones due to the new bonus).
All in all though I feel much more at ease with these planned changes. Good luck trying to maintain balance, hope you manage to get it right first time around. =)
Caullus on 02 November 2005
Instead of skills to control more drones, why not an implant to maybe get one or 2, maybe even 3 extra active drones? Just an idea..
NoNamium on 02 November 2005
I'm not protesting the damage drones. I'm protesting against web-drones and jammer-drones.
These are going to mess up the game.
Why would anyone want to fly a frigate if you can get webbed at 50km?
The Typhoon would now be my jammer-ship of choice. Large dronebay ships are now going to be the new EW PvP ships and Caldari can just sit and cry.
xuqutain on 02 November 2005
i still dont want this change. i love the drones as they are now. why change the drone all togheter? moore specialized drones why? i dont want the change, i will serious contemplating on leaving eve all togheter.
Gwenvahar on 02 November 2005
Again Tux, Oveur.. Thanks for the blogs on drones.
Again I would like spcific answers for these 3 questions;
Will drones use their speed boosting better and fly right? (ie not get stuck on each other, and be able to keep pace with my ship)
Will drones targeting logic be fixed? (ie not attack non hostile targets automaticly)
Will drones follow commands? (ie can I stop wearing out my mouse clicking drone commands to get them all to obey)
I know 'optimizations' is a word that can cover alot of specifics all at once, but please please please can I have some responce to these questions?
nahtoh on 02 November 2005
Attention all raven pilots report indotoration so getting screwed over by all ships smaller than a BS will instantly be forgotten...great fucked again...
nahtoh on 02 November 2005
oops like the profanity filter messed up...
Princess Jodi on 02 November 2005
Will the Armor Repair drones fix you, or only someone you target? I've seen lots of conjecture, but no definitive answer. In other words, am I trading drones for an Armor Repair - or a Remote Armor Repair?
The same goes for the other logistic drones. Do they aid the launching ship, or are they only for aiding other allied ships?
Blade Kinnerson on 02 November 2005
Now knowing that the damage bonus will be for all types, i am more optermistic about these changes. I am however still slightly concerned about the loss of the confusing effect of 15 drones racing out towards a target compared to just 5.
However, i'll stick with it, train my drone interfacing lvl 5 and see what happens
Nienna Farrahsan on 03 November 2005
omg I'm having a vision of the future...
"In the news MMORPG Eve Online breaks yet another concurrent user record with 120k users! On a related note, CCP reduced all ships to a one turret limit to improve performance. This is of course not a nerf because of fabulous new bonuses that make the one remaining turret as powerful as 15 turrets. Hurrah for innovation!"
:P
Futher Bezluden on 03 November 2005
Great, Dedicated drone carriers control as many drones as every other ship in the game, but do more damage and carry fewer reserves. I'm definitely training up pulse weapon 5 so I can render them useless. Halved Dronebays is moronic with the 5 controlled drone max limit. Keep the drone bays as is, give them some reserves to put on the field. The Thorax drone bay was the problem, not every other ship.
shamonebiatch on 03 November 2005
I tried to post this on the dev blog but not sure if it worked.
Is there no practical way to change the drone code as such:
First off run a check on the players skills and ship, (this part is probably already there as the game always knows how many drones a player can launch)
then perform the following test:
if drones controlled 0 - 5, use the existing method of controlling them.
if drones controlled 6 - 10, pair up the drones, so that server side they still operate under the new system, but on screen they look the same. (basically processes 10 as 5)
(graphics i would assume are processed by the client, but im no expert)
if drones controlled 11 - 15, process the drones in groups of 3, (so that 15 drones is again controlled as 5)
this code will only have to be called once so shouldnt affect too much.
this is where you can talk about making the 5 drones have the hp of 15, so that the "teams" have the same HP as before and all you need is a test so that if the teams are at size 3, at 66% hp one drone dies, at 33% the second drone dies and at 0% all drones are dead, the only problem i forsee is the damage calcualtions, but again if they are all counted as one, then i would assume the damage values are totalled, so that the damage of one drone is equal to 3 in the old system.
If this is indeed impractical or you have any feedback or questions, feel free to ask :)
SolarKnight on 03 November 2005
alts ftl ^^
Bruce on 03 November 2005
this is all good, and glad to see that the devs are making the change, but my concern here is that if the drones get an overall increase of dmg(all dmg types) then the Caldari missile boats should get an all dmg types missle dmg increase instead fo just kinetic...its only fair, the caldari ships are the only ones that get dmg increase on a single dmg type, everyone else gets all dmg type increase, please change this.
Niki Silver on 03 November 2005
I would very much like to see drones move faster. Both in combat and out. I like to use a mix of damage types, so a combination of different kinds of drones. It is annoying to the extreme to litterally have to stop my ship so that the slow arse ogre can catch up enough to scoop into bay.
velocoraptor on 03 November 2005
Quote:
Note from Oveur based on comments:
I'd just like to point out that the optimizations are being done from not one, not two but from THREE sides. It may come as a surprise to some players but we are actually optmizing code, optimizing content (this change) and buying more hardware.
Drones take a lot of resources on the client and the server and although it may seem very little to some of you, doing this change alone actually reduces the resource usage by almost half. I think that's quite a lot ;) End Quote.
Lol was this reffering to my "drone nerf should not be a solo lag-pawnmobile-OveURlocoraptor" post, oveur? Should I be watching out for you ZOMGWTFPWNBBQ!!!! Uber-Titan ship when it shows up in my home system? Lol and lol again.
Hey, but seriously, I’m sure u do try and implement other methods of reducing lag.
(/me is scarred sh*tless of Uber-Titan-dreadnaught thingies)
Franken Slammer on 03 November 2005
I'm guilty.
I fly a raven.
I have drone interfacing to lvl4.
To maximise my damage vs frigates and such i use 4 heavy and 5 medium drones.
Now i can only use 5 heavies (or 5 others)? Tell me how this is not a massive nerf and a massive kick in the nuts for me.
Please. I dare ya.
Cochise on 03 November 2005
There I was tonight sitting at a gate all 10 of my heavy drones out and its was sad to think that this was going to be cut to 5. You cut my power, my cpu and nerfed my missles and guns now your taking my drones. I guess sooner now than later your going to have to nerf your wallet and buy some nodes. Then your wallets will lag, :)))))))) Lag Fix That!!!
DarkZelot on 03 November 2005
Franken your forgetting that you could use webber drones on frigates.
Duffs on 03 November 2005
seriously dont bug the drones what about the miners that need the protection and the Waste of skills used for drone linking and stuff i mean c'mon just get a thorax and now its useless great....sigh i was hopeing u guys wont do it...but i am starting to see a patren frist SWG with the new combat upgrade which was suppose to be helpfull Ie which made me come to EVE...and now this with the drone bugs welp..guess i should put the sheet over my meduim barge since its gonna go pop in .8 space with out the drone cover or etc...if u guys catch my drift
Deva Salacious on 03 November 2005
Weird changes. Only thing I miss is an exact explanation of your reasons for doing these changes. To reduce lag?
Btw, I hate that my raven now needs 80 torps to kill a ******* frigate npc.
"Train the new skills" you say. Yeah, I know... Waste more time to get back to not even CLOSE where I was earlier, and you earn an extra 20 bucks on two months training time.
Thanks! That's all.
Deva Salacious on 03 November 2005
Quoting Bruce:
"this is all good, and glad to see that the devs are making the change, but my concern here is that if the drones get an overall increase of dmg(all dmg types) then the Caldari missile boats should get an all dmg types missle dmg increase instead fo just kinetic...its only fair, the caldari ships are the only ones that get dmg increase on a single dmg type, everyone else gets all dmg type increase, please change this."
I second that!!!
Duffs on 03 November 2005
i mean also since i feel a little light headed lol just turn the game into SWG when i was on there before the CU we had the server i was on Full 24/7..after well the cities looked like ghost towns...i hope not to see eve when i log on and see the player count at 1
Duffs on 03 November 2005
since u guys are at it takeing drones away i suggest barges should get an armor/shield boost and electrionics/power and why not a few more High slots too lol for Some Real difence since the med barge could only carry 5 med drones guess it will be 2 and a light....sigh the economy is gonna get worse i bet....
PsychoBitch on 03 November 2005
Why does this seem more like a sofeware engineering problem, that instead of being solved by the sofeware engineers is being solved by the displeasure of the clients not seing their beloved winky lights zooming around their ship?
Aldrick Highwind on 03 November 2005
Well if you need to reduce lag by reducing the amount of drones controlled in space so be it. But reducing the drone bay capacity is unnecessary since all it will do is make it harder for people to mine in barges as they will no longer be able to hold combat and mining drones. As Arpanet put it 5 drones is not a wave heh, more like a fart.
Duffs on 03 November 2005
lol how true ald...and right now barges are like wet paper in a hurricane
...id hate to be in a small barge
maximyus on 03 November 2005
Can somebody explain something to me
WHAT FUCKING LAG are u all going on about only time i get lag is when i'm in a really bust connection honestly i don't know where u are hetting this from.
Anyhow guys there is nothing we can do they making changes if we like it or not.
So i have 8 drones atm so after i will have 5 drones but 60% extra damage from drones that to me seems like a fair compromise but i like all them drones flying around.
I suggest you u put in the extra drones and skills but leave the amount of drones and drone bay sizes.
Why not spend some of our subsription money on new hardware and give us t2 battleships instead eh ?
maximyus on 03 November 2005
i aplogise for the bad spelling i'm drunk and i meant i only get lag in a busy system ie 200 odd people
maximyus on 03 November 2005
And if this is a proposel why not have a vote on the changes now that would be fair instead of you just changing OUR game ?????
Duffs on 03 November 2005
lol np true....but i think the whole point of haveing drones is to over whelm ones targeting/defenses...like all battles its always the ones that have the more ppl that win...most of the time...and who whould not run when u see someone launch like 8 hvy drones at u lol id hate to be on the reciveing end
Storm Mage on 03 November 2005
I can understand the changes better now, but one thing I would like to mention, sorry if it has been mentioned before. That is the fact that most battleships pilots (that I know of) bar the Dominix pilots, fly with medium or light drones as you can fit more in, they track better and move faster thus making them more viable in pvp.
Storm Mage on 03 November 2005
Sorry for the double comment. Another thing to reduce lag would be to add a timer to drones, if they are abandoned for more than 30m they self destruct.
Also, leave EW to scorpians and blackbirds. We do not need EW drones at all. Sentry drones are a nice thought but you should make them require a control module to be fitted and restrict them to mining ships.
Piper Krul on 03 November 2005
I'm commenting from the viewpoint of the Ishtar, which is the most affected ship IMO. You are making it way too easy to kill the drones, even with the hitpoint increase. It is impossible for someone to lock and target 15 drones, while it is relatively easy to do so on 5 drones, especially with the damage output of some ships. You are removing the shock and overwhelming nature of being an ishtar's target, and that is it's main weapon.
Squid Lord on 03 November 2005
my 5 drones would last about 10 seconds against a good pilot. Sorry CCP This is another lame attempt to cover the fact that its a NERF.
Either upgrade the servers, or you will lose people. Paying customers will not stand a NERF every time your server gets laggy.
NoLock LetsNegociate on 03 November 2005
What about creating a new ship caracteristic :
"Number of cubic meters of drones available in space" and keep drone bay as it is ?
I understant what you say about 3 hvy drone for an Apoc and 5 for a mega. And a agree with this. Gallentes are specialists but not Amarrs or any other race.
With this idea every ship could have a decent reserve in drone bay (as nowaday) but will be limited in number (ie m3) of drones in spaces.
Kuolematon on 03 November 2005
RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE! RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE! RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE! RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE!
Oh wait, nerf?
NoLock LetsNegociate on 03 November 2005
Saying you'll quit the game is stupid.
Eve get dozens of new players daily.
If you leave, servers will get less lagy. And CCP will no longer need to take such drastic decisions. Good for us.
Leave boys, this will free more space for us.
May I have your stuf ? :D
Rambler on 03 November 2005
Well this is a bit better I guess. It will still change the nature of Dom warfare though. As has been stated previously, the mass swarms of drones were a definite advantage for Dom-ers. On paper it may all the the same, but human error still gave Dom pilots the slight edge they needed if they were good enough. Also, this marks an end to the Dom's ability to tank and swarm/scare facaes out of multiple target. Fleet ops time?
ChronoLynx on 03 November 2005
Well, as I use the Domi to mine as well as pvp in the bonus for the thermal should also, in therory, add to mining drone yeild. I would be a very, very unhappy person if this comes along.
Still though, drone change is going from bad to worse imho.
Phoenixhawk on 03 November 2005
What the FRACK! First CCP Kills the Raven's Missles and Torps, Raven Pilots go from 700ish Damage to Crap, till we train 1.5 mill more sp of missles or so, to get back to where we were. now the Raven is back to doing its normal damage so long as someone player/rat didnt bring a Frig to the Fight (Retreat they've got Frig's!!!!) Which leaves us Raven Pilots turning to Using Drones for the Frigs, either that or spaming 20 or so cruise missles per frig. Now CCP is cutting its drone bay in half, yea your gonna up the drones HP's so they "last longer" and after they pop there's nuffin left in reserve. Pretty Bad when a Tier 2 Battleship cant even solo a Level 3 Ganza anymore. and us Solo runners get screw once again
ChronoLynx on 03 November 2005
I realized after posting my comment how badly I typed that out... Plain and simple, think about the MINERS out there that use drones in a domi, me not being a major miner...
Rambler on 03 November 2005
Oh, and even if it wasn't your primary purpose, this will end up being a major Nerf. Seriously, you have more players, you have more money, there must be another, less user-hated way of reducing lag. Couldn't you just delete pirates? :P jk
Kythoma on 03 November 2005
only one word: these changes will come, we can't stop it. but to show/make a good compromise, let the size of the dronebay as it is to have a small angel of variance/some spare drones ...
Hilabana on 03 November 2005
Lets look way back first Mines killed off, Hanger Money gone, ammo cut down, lasers cut down, missiles and fof cut down and now our Drones will be taken away from us! so not we all need to trash all our BPO's and Trash even more stuff like our old drones .
and whats next ? take away our shields and our armor ? I no longer do missions any more do to all the crap that has taken place with the real money I pay you think you will do this a little at a time not pull the rug out from under a blind man!
I am not part of and mega in game corp.
And I do not have a lot of ISK to buy skills any more and I can no longer even buy a Clone do to what has taken place on eve!
the new players may not care but what about the players that has held in with all this mess?
All i do is mine ore by my self in 0.5 space how will 5 drones fight 6 NPC ship attacking you when you have no guns?
And people with a DOM BS that flys 12 drones now will not stand up to 6 NPC's attacking them!
Seems like I will need to go back to the New Player station and just strip out all the ore!
After all the new players will not need it they all do them missions.
May me you will fix the real lag prob like Assets and Market!
kveldulfson on 03 November 2005
Well I approve of the code optimisation and of the hardware improvements, and at least you admit this is all about lag and not gameplay.
But you are still not going to solve your lag issues this way. As a professional server engineer in R/L I can tell you that load balancing will do far more long term good than this short term fix. and removing the eronious junk (unused secure cans etc)from the systems will remove a huge load permamently and is a long term solution.
And further to other comments, the reaction to these proposals has been swift, forceful and numerous. As these people pay the wages via their subscription it might be an idea to take their views into consideration.
And lastly, your predictions about 5 drones lasting longer that 15 are far from close, as you have made targeting so much easier, and as its far from safe in empire space to use smartbombs due to the risk of hitting something you shouldnt most players dont use them in empire space. And also if you are mining in a barge and 6 npc rats turn up you will lose your drones very quickly as they target your drones first, so instead of launching 10 and losing 2 or 3 but winning the engagement you will have to run.
FalconHawk on 03 November 2005
great another 30 days for a skill to get the damage output of my apoc/geddon to what it was ... 30 days without duo of death lv4 cause the drones will not be able to kill the spider drones fast enough ...
Grey Area on 03 November 2005
Quote: "Now lets take a look at the Raven."
Dev speak for "let's nerf Caldari some more". You have already MASSIVELY reduced the ability of the Raven to counter small targets, now you are going to reduce it still further. Was one of you frightened by a Caldari as a baby or something? PLEASE before you implement these changes, consider applying a slight REDUCTION of the sig radius rules on missiles FIRST - I know you are looking at this. The Raven will just become an obsolete paperweight if you keep nerfing it like this.
MickeyFinn on 03 November 2005
Gallente drone ships still need to be more unique - they are not specialised enough, now everyone will be wanting to use drones (especially EW and sentry) so how will it reduce lag??. Like someone else said, the ability to use a swarm of drones to scare the shit out of ure opponent will be lost forever. :(
Mortiis Goro on 03 November 2005
great changes. now go fix missiles.
Doc Punkiller on 03 November 2005
Quote: "Drones take a lot of resources on the client and the server and although it may seem very little to some of you, doing this change alone actually reduces the resource usage by almost half. I think that's quite a lot ;)"
True, if drone are taking too much resource, remove them totally... well, remove also frigates, inty, pirates, roids (in belt they cause too much lag)...
No, serioulsy, i'v trained the new missile skills just to see that i need more cruise missiles to destroy a frigate than a BS, then i trained heavy drones and drone interfacing to get the full potential of the "drone bay" of my raven to take care of those frigs.
Now i have to train other new skills ? it's a joke ? I'm fed up training skills just to compensate the nerfs.
Nayomi on 03 November 2005
just decrease signature radius for the new drones and you will no longer have the problem with them being target->lock->kill 'ed faster. im sure its possible to get it to around the same amount of time.
s1mon4 on 03 November 2005
This is FUBAR ... we need numbers on drones in PVP, in a domi u could make two groups and attack two targets in the same time now with 5 drones u will be dead meat
Damir36 on 03 November 2005
I miss some Information about the building cost of the new Drones and what you are planning to do with the old ones? Am I going to bild several thouthand and wait to sell them when they are getting more expensive? Will there be new BPOs and if not, how are the old BPOs changed in Mineralamount and building time?
Ralitge boyter on 03 November 2005
It seems like a reasonable idea but still no talk about how these sentury drone type is going to be handled... If these are simply deployable like control towers and the like you will soon see 90% of all items deployed in space are drones.
This is my main fear, I do not see any talk on preventing the seting up of a army of drones in every belt in the galaxy and at every gate.
Why is CCP not talking about this why is there no explanation on this subject.
And I have to agree with the complaints about the added mandatory skills. It is getting to the point that both new and old players just have to train mandatory skills like the gunnery/missile/drones/engeneering/mechenic/electronics/spaceship command skills just to be able to operate their ships with any kind of efficiency.
The current time needed to be able to fly any races ships with a decent degree of success is about 3 months (not counting the training of the learning skills which most do before they train other stuff)
At this rate new players will soon need about half a year to be able to say they are good enough to operate a frigate. Going for anything the size of a BS will take them more than a year.
CCP please look back at the game or better yet start a few new accounts your selfs and see how you feel about EVE after having trained the borring mandatory skills for monts and months just to discover that more of them have been put in the game during the time you have been playing and you will just have to go back and revisit all of those you thought you where done with.
Dreez on 03 November 2005
I still dont see any comment concerning how easy it is now to defend against drones. And If its easy now, i´ll be easier after the patch.
A pilot that has spent 4 months of training should not have his drones raped in a second by something that requires less then an hour.
If you have a faction smartbomb that can hit beyond 10km i´d understand since it take some investement in that module. But not when all my 15 t2 heavydrones pop from a single standard t1 L-smartbomb. That is not balanced.
Justice Bringer on 03 November 2005
Not sure if this will get printed as I wrote a comment yesterday.
If drones take up so much of the resources throughout the entire map then reducing their numbers seem like the way forward in terms of alleviating this problem.
However, having just trained my Ishtar to lvl 4 and being able to summon forth 15 heavies is truly an awesome sight that will be missed if the changes go ahead.
I do missions in Rens out of BTT station and the place is always busy. Partly due to the stargates being closed and partly because there are agents from lvl 1 - lvl 3 all in the same place.
How about moving some the agents to Ryddinjorn which is the next jump into a different region. Won't that helpt ot reduce the load somewhat???
Correct me if I'm wrong but won't the Ishtar be able to field 10 heavy drones at once and not the 5 you are using as an example?
In any case making them tougher by boosting armor, shield and structure simply isn't enough. You need to make them difficult to target, just as it would be to target 15 drones in total.
If their signature radius is not greatly reduced, if the changes go ahead, then drone ships will quickly become a thing of the past.
Please try moving agents first and then see how that affects the servers first. Having new drones is fine, but reducing the numbers is premature I think.
Just my thoughts.
Justice Bringer
Blanca on 03 November 2005
There is nothing i can add that hasn't been said, changes suck! if u would be near me i would like to nerf u a little bit for my time and my money invested in this game.
Bambi on 03 November 2005
I still think the absolute flat value of 5 drones for ANY ship is crazy. What is the point of a specialist drone ship if it is no more specialist than any other ship
Give the drones a little more firepower, and a little more HP but be real, how hard is to to pop a drone really? 1 hit maybe 2 if you half miss from 100km....
Lets say you are floating about in your Raven and get jumped by a Dominix, he launches 15 drones on your ass, you now have 16 targets to pick from and destroy, the small drones taking 15+ seconds to lock onto then 5 seconds to kill.
The new drones will still take 15 seconds to lock and 5 to kill. So you are still looking at 2 mins + spent locking 15 targets.
One of my favoured tactics is to flood a victim with scout drones, 14 of them, and shoot him while he locks a couple and works out they are lame. These die fast another 14 come out and another 14 and another 14 etc..
keeps him busy while the Ishtars guns tear holes in him.
I can understand the need to reduce the number of entities in game at any one time, but a FLAT 5 drone limit is silly. Someone somewhere woul;d have worked out a way to control more than 5 drones...
How about a specialist drone control implant?
There must be another way..
Oooh its lunchtime, rant over...
Marla Ramsey on 03 November 2005
What happens to T2 drones?
Working on reseqrch agent for T2 BPO´s for long now?
Unitas Galactica on 03 November 2005
I fly a raven. So, if I used heavy drones, ok, the drone interfacing might help me, even if I don't get more drones.
It seems as if you hadn't considered that many players use medium drones on lvl4 missions though. Killing the frigates in a raven is tough as it is, heavy drones are too slow.
Most people I know use medium drones for that, and obviously they are only useful if you can use more than 5.
I can't help the impression that once again the people who fly ravens and are not into PvP are the victims of CCP's greed for new subscribers. If your servers can't handle them, don't let them subscribe. I don't really see why the old players should pay for it by being practically disabled to do lvl4 missions just because of the nerfing.
Changes are ok if they improve things, but honestly, since I started playing Eve, things have gradually got worse and worse.
Raoul 2 on 03 November 2005
"[...] since I started playing Eve, things have gradually got worse and worse. [...]"
I agree 100,000,000,000,000%
CCP has been Fu...ing up the whole game
Reducing the number of drones in game will probably reduce server load ... allowing CCP to handle more new subscribers and increase that worthless "Peak Concurrent User Record".
Caroline 888 on 03 November 2005
So now my Ishtar can carry 3 waves of different types of drones so I can launch depending on what im attacking and pick 1 of 3 damage types :) - Assuming that ive understood correctly and the 20% bonus is now not limited to thermal damage - is that the case ??
Baudolino on 03 November 2005
I`m mostly worried about the hitpoint increase to the drones- 50% an all stats may be too little. Each drone representing 20% of the total damage output, it becomes a more entertaining option to kill the drones. Killing only 2-3 drones gives a reduction in sustained damage of 40-60%- not many ships have reserves of drones and those who will still be more voulnerable to a pair of AS then they are today. The reduction in drones control should be paired with an 100-200% increase in hitpoints to counter this effect.
Lady Chiron on 03 November 2005
Gallente are being hit hard by this one, true. I personally don't like the idea of the EWAR drones. Yeah it is a good idea, but now anyone with 5 drones can be just as effective as a person who has trained for months to perfect there Blackbird or what have you. They will just be to powerful in my opinion. It is really not fair to the players. As for the drone numbers, I still believe that CCP just needs to upgrade the servers instead of just decreasing one of the game's unique features. C'mon guys, stop taking the easy way out. Oh, and a Thorax with 50m3 of drone cargo space? Thats just bad.
Caroline 888 on 03 November 2005
So is the damage now 20% to all damege types for gallente pilots and not only thermal ?
Tricore on 03 November 2005
Hmmmmz I guess if it really *DOES* help a lot with server lag then go for it. Altho I have a few concerns:
1) Might want to increase the drone size of battleships that can currently hold 6 heavies to 4 heavies, as theese changes will nerf those ships ability to deal with smaller ships (which the raven has gotten plenty of TBH). This would mean a slight increase in the potential damage of those ships, but is that really so bad?
2) So you are keeping the racial damage bonus on the gallente ships? Well I'm worried that Thermal is just gonna be WAAAY too used, considering that almost all ships (Amarr EM/THERM - Gallente THERM/KIN - MINMATAR - KIN/THERM/EXP) are gonna be doing Thermal damage.
3) Will the build times and requirements on drones be increased also, as they will be silly easy to manufacture after this patch considering that people will only need 1/2 - 1/3 of what they needed before.
000Hunter000 on 03 November 2005
Can we atleast not reduce the dronebay as much? I just got used to the fact we now can't pwn friggies that easy anymore in the raven (which i think is fair btw mind u) but now ur again messing with the raven users ability to fend of smaller foes? Whats with that? Just let us use at least the max drones for the makers sake.
Btw, will the dronebays on the barges be reduced as well? barge users are totally dependant on drones for defence, if that gets 'nerfed' in any way thats gonna be sooo bad.
less drones = less lag = good
but less drones = less firepower = less lag = TOTALLY STOOPID!!!
Startica on 03 November 2005
What about rof through numbers? Some examples of how this effects pilots that are not specialized in drone usage or are just starting to train through it would be nice too. These changes do alter or obliterate the tactics of pilots that use mediocre drone skills for a defensive-offence against frigates, (a number of these pilots use drones this way because they didn't want to spend time maxing missile skills after that change). Can we see examples of different stages here or just ones after Drone Interfacing 4-5. The "well these things are great/useful (again) after you max the skills" could also be a big turn-off for the multitude of noobies. I don't doubt your number crunching or the need to adjust drones, it's just that I see (drones/smartbombs/missiles)'s secondary defencive offence measures as a major factor in having things balanced throughout the entire length of thier respective skill trees and I would feel better if this is confirmed as non-nerfed.
TuRtLe HeAd on 03 November 2005
Looks much better laid out and explained.
Still Hate the idea of a Drone reliant Vessel looking pathetic with 5 drones around it. But then its for the best.
Reevus on 03 November 2005
The Osprey is going to take a major hit with a halved drone bay. Currently it is 40m, which allows it to carry 4 medium drones. These are primarily used to defend it from belt rats during mining operations (for which this curiser was designed). Taking that down to 2 mediums will seriously impact its ability to defend itself from some belt rats, even with the increased damange, as now a pilot will have to train up droid interacing to V, instead of just Drones IV in order to have the same damage from its drones, that it currently has.
Please consider leaving the drone bay alone on this one. It is far from unbalancing, considering it currently holds only 40m of drones to begin with.
Reevus on 03 November 2005
The above comment regarding the Osprey also applies to all the Mining Barges as well.
George X on 03 November 2005
Thank you for (once again) giving your "special love" to my Raven.
Justice Bringer on 03 November 2005
Edit:
I misread the Gallente Cruiser Bonus being changed from +1 drone controlled to +10% bonus to damage.
Damn, so only 5 drones out MAX at any one time for a DRONE ship. But hold on, that means that there will be no more drone ships if all ships can use a maximum of 5. Right?!?!?!?
Whatever you do, make sure the descriptions for all ships are corrected. Don't let them read 'Dedicated Drone Cruiser...'
It still sucks though having trained for so long.
15 drones out at one time is an awesome sight as i've already stated and that's what people expect from DRONE carriers, not 5, no matter how powerful.
If this change goes ahead it will definitely be a sad day to see the end of drone ships....
Justice
OpusDei on 03 November 2005
I'm not 100% against the changes but the reason why annoys me.
Lowering the maximum number of drones to reduce lag is, imho, a temporary solution (if any).
What is next ? Max number of people online ? Max number of people in 1 system ? Max number of guns you can fire at once ?
Please focus on the real problems and on long term fixing because this, to me, sounds like someone pressed the panic button.
Perhaps one you could post some figures on the server load drones cause because i can't believe my 15 little drones cause such a lag fest.
Amarro Gallente on 03 November 2005
Damn! I was training Gallente Dreadnought to lvl 5 so I can use 35 drones. Now it seems it was going to be a waste of the time I already spent on it. I did not read anything about the Moros in the thread but they was talking about drones across the board.
Mad Scot on 03 November 2005
My main gripe about all this is as a raven pilot I primarily use the med drones for frigate defence, now before people tell me battleships shouldn't be able to hit frigates thats insane who in their right minds makes a ship with such an obvious weakness that frigates are SO hard to hit and take more effort than ANY other ship class.
Mad Scot on 03 November 2005
The other thing is like me people probably stopped traning drone interfacing at the limits of their ship capacity ( formerlly apoc pilot) so training drone interfacing tup to 5 was never a real option, now we have to abandon whataver plans we have had to train drone interfacing up just to do the same damage as before.
Mad Scot on 03 November 2005
I don't like to see the fact that CCP have moved to the opposite side of the lets increase hardware solution to the lets rip things out the game solution. What will be 'optimised' next?
Da Oracle on 03 November 2005
lets go crazy if we are going to mess with the drones so drasticly. I propose leaving the drone bays alone so that one can set up multiple drone combinations with out having to dock and here is the crazy sugestion drones do so mutch regular damage but why not add some hard pionts and a cargo hold to drones to make them even more dangerouse. Example might be 1 high slot for light drones, 2 highslots for med drones and 3 high slots for heavy drones. The weaponse some one puts on the drones would just do base weapon damagen and not get any of your skill or ship bonuses. Keep the powergrid and cpu low on the drones so only small weapons could be used.
suza on 03 November 2005
The comment about Ravens made me laugh. So this will be a bit of a damage reduction for them, drones are now our only protection against cruisers and below, following the missile changes and even that is being reduced. Why not allow us to have 5 to just ballance it out a bit. Same with the scorp, if the drones are going to be way under the power of an ew modules, they will be of limmied use. So dont kill our ability to do a bit of damage against smaller targets.
Leto Nyx on 03 November 2005
Drone changes sound interesting, but please, please, please can we have some keyboard shortcuts for drone use? My mouse is about to expire from repeatedly clicking on "return to dronebay" before the drones respond. Being able to send them off to attack the selected target with one press of a keyboard button would be dead handy too, instead of right click, find "attack" in the list, and then click it. Then find that cos it's a bit laggy you've clicked on the wrong thing, right click again, find "attack", click it....and by that time your shields are gone and half your armour is too!
Pretty please?
dazedandconfused on 03 November 2005
+
dazedandconfused on 03 November 2005
Bah, spend all the time to write something of merit, and it doesn't show, yet my little plus sign test shows! Why god!
TotensBurntCorpse on 03 November 2005
well unlike the original blog atleast there is language as to what gets done with mining drones.
only comment beyond that is if barges lose 1/2 their drone bays now then running cap seems to be back for mining as it was prebarges.
Ti anna on 03 November 2005
Well, having a couple days to digest these proposed changes, I think there are a few items that are not being addressed.
I am going to use the Moros as an example because it is the most extreme case that this will seriously affect. All other Drone carriers that had the ability to launch more drones than normal due to bonuses will be affected to a lesser extent.
The moros was capable of launching 35 drones at max skills. With the drop from 35 - 5 a lot more is being affected than just the damage output, but the damage output seems to be the only thing that is being retained (even though it really isn't, not even close. If you doubt this, there is an excellent post detailing the timeline of killing off 5 drones verses 15 and the damage output during battle etc...).
Ti anna on 03 November 2005
Killing them off... Obviously it will be a lot faster and easier to kill off 5 drones than 35 drones, even if they have 7x the hitpoints of their counterparts.
Jamming them... It would be almost impossible to take 35 drones out of a battle by jamming them without using a FLEET. 5 drones? That can almost be completely neutralized by ONE ship.[:roll:] And this is not a nerf?
Mining... Obviously 35 drones will be able to mine a LOT more ore than 5, even if they are boosted to be 7x as efficient. The only way they would be equivalent is if their Capacity to hold ore, AND the rate of ore aquisition was multiplied by 7x. (therefore returning 7x as much ore to the ship per run in same amount of time as one currently does)
Ti anna on 03 November 2005
The addition of the new drones... I know they are not in currently, but they will be eventually. Limiting drone carriers to just 5 total is seriously denigrating their effectiveness and is putting them on almost the EXACT same footing as a non drone carrier. First of all, Drone carriers main damage output is from their drones. The use of just ONE of these new drones will effectively reduce their firepower by 20%!! switch out 2 or 3 and, well, you get the picture.
Reduction of Drone bays... OMG, where do I start, this is just so wrong on soooo many levels. I will leave the reasoning of this to those who have gone before.
I would like to also relay that I have never flown a Moros or a Domi, nor was I ever planning to. My biggest ship is a Mega, I love it and the only thing bigger I will ever fly is a Carrier or, dare I hope, a Titan :))
I understand that the sheer number of drones in use on the server needs to be reduced to help reduce lag. I just feel that the changes as proposed were not very well thought out, as exemplified by the rapid revision and addition of this second Blog. I think more thought needs to go into it before this drastic of a change is even tested. Please rethink these changes a little more.
P.S. Not only is this my main, this is my ONLY (other 2 slots are used for stuck petitions ONLY)
Arleonenis on 03 November 2005
Do I mentioned here already: "do not touch ishkur drone bay!!"?
Etto Neppeo on 03 November 2005
If indeed the only thing you want is to reduce lag then those 5 drones should be similar to 15 not only in firepower, but also in longevity.
Because the main benefit of drones is their numbers and thus hardiness to lock/hit them all, there should be boni to either speed or sig radius of drones..
Maybe. to make if more interesting, let the drone interfacing, in addition to damage bonus, reduce sig, and give drone carriers drone speed bonus... Combined, these effects will bring difficulty of drones killing closer to what we have now.
Another idea is to just leave drone carriers their +1 drone bonus .. come on, you still have your 5 drones away, maybe it's a viable compromise? :)
Etto Neppeo on 03 November 2005
More thought on the last drone carrier idea.. Ok, doubling the drones firepower is too much.
To balance it, perhaps make ship bonus add maximum of 3 additional drones, so that it would be about 1.5 increase comparing to drones5+interfacing5, like it is now.
So it will be like +1 drone for lvl 1, +2 drones for lvl 4 and +3 drones for lvl5, with some slight additional bonus (drone bay size?) so that lvl 1 and 2 would mean anything.
Time Killer on 03 November 2005
OK my first read-over looks like the Drone change is just like the missile change: unless you have all the (new?) skills at 5 it's a nerf. Well, crap. Cut drone numbers to reduce lag, sure, but if your own maths is showing that in order to be as effective in combat as before you need to have a lot more skills a lot higher (and for some of them they will never get to that level regardless of how many level 5s they have) - well that's a drop in effectiveness (i.e. nerf) no matter how you slice it.
Barbens on 03 November 2005
So essentially everyone whos been training drones to use the max number has been wasting their time. Thats just great...
BlueSmok on 03 November 2005
Since the amount of drones in the air is directly related to your damage potential then give us Drone bay modules that fit in the HighSlot! say 50m3 each or two heavies in exchange for a highslot?
Elroy Cruise on 04 November 2005
All good changes, imo, even though I'll be among those who miss this warm cozy feeling of 15 drones orbiting my cruiser until they swarm an opponent.
Drones could maybe do with a slight tweaking on their signature so they get a tiny headstart now that they will become much easier to target and disable or take out individually, but all in all it's not that bad.
...but for the Moros.
Keep some sort of bonus on the number of drones controlled with this boat, be it 2 per level, or even 1, but nobody can buy the argument dropping from 30-35 heavies to 5 can be made up by damage/armor boni on drones, even if you give them ceptor+AF stats.
Moreover, how often do you expect to see dreadnoughts lag a system because they launch too many drones ?
These are no cruisers, they must be less than 50 dreads in flying order on TQ as a whole atm, and I don't expect them to become as commonplace as BS anytime soon, if ever.
So I suspect we can live with the insane extra amount of lag induced by each of these Moroses being able to send up to 10-15 drones in space simultaneously.
Seriously.
Oh... and what about the friggin expensive to train racial specializations drone skills, do they stick to this 2% damage bonus, or can we expect them to actually mean anything besides the mandatory grinding to enable tech2 drones ?
Kylun on 04 November 2005
Usually I get very angry when the rules changes in the middle of the game, and this case is no exception.
ccp changes the rules, making we lose a lot of training time and in some cases (most of them) we get a power down.
I wouldn´t be sad if it´s a free game, but guess what... it´s not!!!!
I´m really disappointed with CCP!
StarMartyr on 04 November 2005
OK....I'll withdraw the needles from the Voodou Doll....
Slowly.
I'm still not happy with the changes but I may be able to live with them.
Just answer this question: How big is the Rax's drone bay going to be?
BadDad on 04 November 2005
Thank you for doing such a good explanation on your reasons for us. I can now see that you have thought this change through and it isn't a nerf - especially for us Gallente drone specialists :)
I'm much happier with the changes now that I can see exactly how it will change.
Hopefully, we can have this sort of dev blog for all changes so we don't all feel we have to flame you again in future ;)
HighlanderUK on 04 November 2005
To also reduce lag shouldn't you be also looking at other DB issues, such as BM's and player hogging tonnes on EVE mails???
Surely these two items alone woudl reduce over-all usage of the DB and data lag??
Marcuis on 04 November 2005
welll i think the new idea is great but the only thing i recon u should keep if the ships bonus for extra drone so the Dom can have 10 and vexor and arb can have 10 but the changes for the rest is goood idea dont change the ships bonus for extra drone makes the dom a aswome ship if u take it away the people wont fly the dom anymore
DarkPhate Endovari on 04 November 2005
So because of more players joining hte game we are getting more lag because the hardware cannot take the data, hence the reason we are getting the drone nerf? Thats right yes?
Damn I hope we don't get any more popular then...
Drilla on 04 November 2005
I think there's alot more things than just drones that could be nerfed to reduce lag.
Abandoned ships disappear after DT, boost concord so 1 concord ship can wtfpwn you instantly (even if you are a dread in siegemode) and then despawn concord once justice has been served.
Cyleth on 04 November 2005
Tux,
Can you answer on this Moros issue. I think it's huge nerf for it, 35 drones decreased to 5. It's ridiculous. How are you gonna handle this? With the same changes as with others or does the moros have chances to keep it's current bonuses due to being a rare ship(for a while atleast :))?
Shawbaly on 04 November 2005
So Reducing the drone number with 66.6% is justifyed with giving them a 50% hit point increase?
there are other ways to reduce the drone resources use if you guys was aiming at that.
what about drone attack range? fewer drone also mean fewer clusters of drones attacking, bombs are a bigger threat to them then before even with the increased hit points.
There is few drone ships in eve let them remain drone ships, and just remove drone bays from all the others. or have FOF missles ignore them so that everyone dont see the point of using them as much they do today.
Reducing drone control number also hit the ones specialized on drone mining, what you guys supposed to do to compensate that? doubble the mining yield since you halfed the number?
Im sure the reason is a good one, but the way its done and justified is all about combat and that seam to be the one track this game is heading down in.
Kcel Chim on 04 November 2005
In general if it reduces the lag it gets a thumb up from me.
However be very carefull about ewar / webbing and other special drones, they can lead to hillarious results if not balanced properly.
OpusDei on 04 November 2005
Why not remove drones all together ? That would like the insta remove lag button!
And while you're remving stuff why not remove all pretty gfx and replace them with low res crappy stuff, wouldn't that make the game even less laggy ? Or the best thing i can come up with: remove all paying people, that would be the best solution to your lag problem ever!
(yes, this nerf is annoying me more then all others because it is for the wrong reason. If you have lag problems you shouldn't solve them by removing/changing things in game!)
Elroy Cruise on 04 November 2005
/me hands a clue to OpusDei and a friendly link to next blog in line:
http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=286
BTW, shall somebody petition this character name of yours ? It's kinda offensive for the non-fundamentilst christians out there ? :P
/TIC mode off.
Ravenowl on 04 November 2005
the only non balance I see is my Raven.. maybe you should just leave its drone bay alone.. as its bay is tiny anyway.. how do you expect Ravens to handle fast ships... maybe you could give missles another targetting skill or maybe had add a med or high slot to fix this..
Buzzmong on 04 November 2005
Hmmm, oddly, I think this will benefit the mimitar alot more than anyone else if they come against gallente ships.
Seeing as gallente will now be limited to Thermal damage (well, if you want to do decent damage), it means that mimitar with their natural therm resists will fair alot better. Actually, everyone will fair better...thermal is easy to tank against :S
I think that the damage should just be a general damage boost, rather than specific damage (The should apply to Caldari and their missiles as well, as that's just tad unfair)
Heratio on 04 November 2005
Nice update from the original, this has cleared up my concerns considerably (Err Buzzmong, go back up and read the top post, this has been fixed since the prvious blog).
IMHO there is no point to keep saying leave it alone and throw more hardware at it... They are doing that As Well but any one doing a big mining Op knows that drones just lag way too much. The game is great and will continue to grow, it has to addapt and I fully intend to addapt with it.
I personally love the divercity this introduces as it makes you think more which is one of the strong points of the game.
PS I wouldn't mind an official nod on the Rax bay size though... 200 > 100 or 50?
Destroyer Draxx on 04 November 2005
To sum it up if u want to go for these changes, all race BS should be able to carry 5 drones, all BS cruisers n HACs should be able to carry 5 meds (assuming that new drones come in all sizes). Exceptions should be drone ships. Those should carry say 7-8 drones so that they still have an advantage using drones. Having drones on ur drone cargo is not an advantage in PVP. Also pve side should be looked at. Missile ships only defence against frigs are drones atm. 2 small lasers alone wont cut it on a Raven against npc frigs even if ur hunting sansha.
Duffs on 04 November 2005
since u are capin drones and i am about to be sarcastic take out all the drones leave 1 station in the game 1 ship 1 skill and 1 race so everyone can be "even on the playing field"
PhaseliS on 04 November 2005
It isn't fair i think, because my ship always known as a drone ships.. and i want to use my drones.... !!!!!!!!!! anymore i dont want to play in this game...
Reto on 04 November 2005
the HELIOS covert ops frigate:
if u cut the dronebay it will only be able to use one small drone, its easy to kill a single drone and u will again weaken the gallentean frig as it has very limited combat abilities compared with the cheeta or the buzzard. so plz let the friggy use 2 drones for a better ability of defending itself. at least it could be as useful as those two coverts mentioned above.
Ossprey on 04 November 2005
Umm what About mineing Barges that use Drones for self Defence and don't have time to Trundle back to the station at a measly 80 m/s for more drones
AND What's this About Raven Pilots not maxing their Drone Skills?? I have!!! I use my drones to Kill the Stuff close in as my missiles Won't hit Anything Small (SEE Missile Nerf Re cold war Patch)
Are you also going to Halve repair Cost's Associated with carrying Half the number of protective drones??
Why change the ships that can only carry a limited number of drones and What about those that are Touted as "Drone Carriers" in their Discriptions? Won't they just become totaly useless??
I want to be able to Kill a frig in my Raven without haveing to use more than double the Ammo to Kill a cruiser and what about Ceptors ow is one suposed to protect yourself from them without drones?? and as for reduction and doubleing drone space HMMM Less targets to Kill?? therefor you can Triple the firepower on the drones that are Active!! It's a square Root thing.
Aww Well I guess we are Stuck with more Americans Wining about "TO MANY DRONES"
bathalus on 04 November 2005
this will Not reduce lag as claimed because the server and client will actually be subjected to more load figuring out what 5 different ew drones are doing at same time as normal modul use...poorly thought out
lokkin on 05 November 2005
this is ganna really suck for ships like moros the whole point was to have massive amounts of drones to fend of your enemies not enemy dont think this is ganna be liked
Spaja Saist on 05 November 2005
Ok this has been asked a hundred times but the Devs keep ignoring us.
Why don't you remove all the space junk to help reduce lag??
You promised over a year ago to remove all the anchored crap in high sec and you still haven't done it.
Reto on 05 November 2005
A retriever mining barge cant use 5 med drones witha hold sliced to 25m³. and assuming u got the drone interfacing skill at lvl 4 u wont get the same damage output as with the 5 meds. so u actually need to train drone interfacing to lvl 5 to get twice the dmg of small drones which is 8 and still 1 less compared to med drones with a base damage output of 9.
Glarion Garnier on 05 November 2005
What I'm conserned is . what happens to tech 2 drone bpo's. Will the min reqs go up.. ? and all related stuff. How about Drones that are allready produced are they updated.
I hope we get the modules out as soon as these drone chainges take effect. so ppl who hunt with drones and dont have Drone interfacing 5 but 4 can fix the difference.
The production side od tech 2 drones Makes me worry .
Kozak on 05 November 2005
WTF??? You dont' mention the Moros at all! You are telling me that my 5 heavy drones will be as powerfull ast 35 heavy drones with dreadnought level 4?
EXPLAIN what this will do to the Moros Dreadnought! Otherwise, I'm going to petition to get my skill training back to a different Dreadnought.
Olivin on 05 November 2005
Changes suck. And what will happen with "heavy drones" skill? Also damage bonus, like interfacing? What is the point of beign drone specialist when you can launch 5 drones, like everybody else? Changes suck big time, epecially the fact that it's in order to reduce lag. What a lame excuse!
Lady Chiron on 05 November 2005
Ossprey...I am American. I love drones. Please do not go pointing fingers. I am totally against this patch. I think the EW drones will unbalance the game even more than the drone control nerfs will. And I would rather keep my 15 drones on my Dominix.
HonorHarrington on 05 November 2005
I still dont understand why you are changing the drone bay size. IT doesnt produce more lag to have a larger bay. Is it really so terrible to have extra drone storage. They die so fast anyway. Angels will still smoke these guys and now they will cost alot more. IMO I wish you would stick with enhancments and leave play mechanics alone. Its the worst part of this game that you feel compeled to change play balance in every release
Treboris on 05 November 2005
Tuxford wrote 'Ships that give 1 drone per ship skill level has been changed to 10% drone damage and in some cases 10% damage (all damage types) and mining yield per level.'
Does that mean all ships that gave +1 to drone all give 10% mining yield? or does that mean that only some of them do? If so, which ships?
Amarrian Android on 05 November 2005
one sentence:
WHERE ARE THE "LOOT FETCHERS"!!!!!???!?!?!!!?
Jorus Zebaoth on 05 November 2005
Your slingshot strikes gurista pirate perfectly wrecking for 0.1 damage
yay, by all means, let reduce server lag by taking more fun out the game.
BUY SOME FREAKING HARDWARE, GUYS!!!!
Iamg on 06 November 2005
What was wrong with how it is.
How long will it take for more people playing for you to have to cut back on something else to reduce client loading...
Fix the clients!!! Dont damage the game!!!
Caztra Tor on 06 November 2005
Well, I have to say that your blog dealt with the blow to be suffered by the Raven and its reduction in drone bay capacity in a very backhanded way. Wazzup w/ the hate for everything Caldari?
If you care here is what your really doing to the Raven --- after the missle nerf frigates became a primary threat they can't be ignored the SB's that many of us rely on for the most part have a range of 5k many of the frigs orbit outside of this range. So we wind up in situations where we are limited to only our drones and the little tank that can't. In other words shield tanking sucks in comparison to armor tanking no matter how you slice it. So you see, we don't have very long to deal with any problems like that and now, w/o us training a skill all the way to level five, namely drone interfacing, we are going to take further loss in our ability to effectively deal with frigs. The least you could do is allow us to keep a whole three drones more for a second wave if we need it to clear ourselves of frigs.
Its a good idea, but your very blog where you compare the missle nerf to the drone change shows that Ravens are being gimped and not balanced. If it were balancing you would make an accomodation of some sort to take into account the actualities of gameplay -- namely a need to deal w/ frigs effectively in he Raven.
Thank you for your time.
Rask on 06 November 2005
Has anyone done the math for mining barges yet, they use drones for defense in empire space.
how will the drone changes affect them in survivability.
Right now I can run 10 drones off my large barge, usally run 2 heavys for defense and 8 mining drones. There are no drone bonuses to mining barges to make the drones stronger and mor capable.
will I need 1 heavy and 4 mining, or will I still need 2 heavys but only 3 miners now?
Nytemaster on 06 November 2005
Clearly many of you haven't bothered to read or understand the mathematics behind the game as you are still complaining. There is virtually no change in the damage output of your ship with this change as was shown in the devblog but still you maintain problems with this. What they are doing is taking more drones and compacting them into less with virtually the same effectiveness as before.
Shows just how many people are going to whine no matter what you do. Anytime you lower something, someone thinks you are nerfing it. Clearly this is not the case yet people persist they are getting screwed.
I know many of you cannot add, subtract or divide very well because you were taking Algebra 1/2 when I was in calculus but cmon, you should have learned something by now.
fghr on 06 November 2005
how can 100% plus 50% be same as 15 drones to me the damage on each drone will be 2.5 not 3 but hey maby the 50% is added on the total when 100% is alredy added
plaap on 07 November 2005
only thing that worries me is that the devs seem to be anti caldari NPCing. first nerf missiles (kinda okayish though was kinda easy) but now also the drones, like raven cant eat those frigs / cruisers with it's drones anymore.
also it's in favor of gallente, cuz they're dronedependant, the caldari just get punched back by the drone nerfing tbh. like 2/3rd dmg output with same skills, while a drone pilot (read gallente specced) will get like 90% dmg output.
Roxanna Kell on 07 November 2005
it will be easier to get rude of the enemys drones now:-)
honestly u should give them even more dmg than what they had, as in if dominix did 15 drone damage before, it should do 20 drones dmg now, because of Targetting comes into play
no one will find it harder to target 5 drones than to target 15,
true or false.
plus. if they re not as goot as 15 than they loose out,
Emeline Cabernet on 07 November 2005
this comment didnt make the change any better at all..
Smalum on 07 November 2005
I want many drones, hordes of them! That's the only reason needed to keep them. We're the players damnit, we should decide.
Jobiwan on 07 November 2005
EW drones is a really, really bad idea. No cap use for EW drones, while those ships relying on traditional EW must use valuable cap to sustain it?
Leneerra on 07 November 2005
doing it like this seems more fair to me
drones skill
allows use of 1 drone
adds 20% damage and mining amount a level
drone interfacing
+1 drone / level
the fact that a high skilled char can then field 6 drones makes up for the reduced total amount of defence they have. Also the interfacing skill gives versatility again
this seems more fair to high skilled chars to me, especially with the new drones that will be released.
And yes, it does mean you will have to have drone skill at 5 before you can field a seccond drone.
But i think forcing a casual drone user to train a rank 5 skill to level 5 just to keep almost what he had is way more unfair
Minanie on 07 November 2005
So drone ships get a boost and the Caldari ships are nerfed AGAIN!!! . This is really unfair.
kptLepra on 07 November 2005
Caldari ships and players had thair time to utilise the nerf we all others had. Basicly in earlier days all u needed to do is to take a raven, train a few missile skills up to cruises and presto.... u make 500 damage to all with one shot. While we others (especialy Minmatars) had to wait in the dark with our ussless Tempest for which we trained gunnery like nuts. Than the patch came out and the missiles were put at the same level as gunnery and this is to be Honest a VERY FAIR THING. Couse u missile guys had all the time in the world to solo lvl4s and do complexes solo. Making drones a thing to skill fro is only way to balance out the training times of each weapon type. So CCP go ahead and do this.
vanBuskirk on 07 November 2005
I make all types of tech 1 drones as part of my living in EVE. Logically, these changes will mean half as many drones will be sold (maybe less than half as less will die) so are the building costs going to go up to compensate? And will we get some warning this time? (I remember well the missile batch change that severely cost a lot of producers.)
NephI AsantE on 07 November 2005
Please read my question in the forum.
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=244794
Thanks
TotensBurntCorpse on 07 November 2005
ok try this one....
Drones 1 - 1 drone at +50%hps
...
Drones 4 - 4 drones at +50%hps
Drones 5 - 5 drones at +50%hps
so far i have what anyone gets normally
With DI IV i get the above with 80% increase in damage per drone (or mining increase).
What I lose is 50% of my drones hps x 4 drones, plus the extra collisions to prevent warp out speed, plus the extra targets to clutter the enemies screen, plus spares on board and finally the flexibility to field drone waves that do specific damage.
Throw in the new drone types and I might as well not bother learning to use support ships either since I can do it with drones at a fraction of the skill points.
NephI AsantE on 08 November 2005
Oh, does this mean a Vigilant pilot won't even be able to carry a single heavy drone now? Suxors 4 my CEO... LOL
gasnor on 08 November 2005
caldari take another hit yay... not
Theoraden on 08 November 2005
You saved another account from cancellation.
Thanks.
Toh San on 08 November 2005
Another slap in the face, another nerf, another inch closer to quitting the game. For those of you who are saying "sounds great", wait till they nerf your ability to operate solo in the game. This is a crappy nerf. And I agree, there is no reason to reduce the size of the drone bay.
res0nance on 08 November 2005
Dominixes and Ishtars just got oh-so-much-better :/
Toros Revoke on 09 November 2005
I begin to wonder why I pay for this at all, in your mad effort to make all equal and fair you have once again swung the nerf bat too hard. how about showing some restraint CCP, or even do some "Market Research" to find out what the subscibers want.
Wuhu on 09 November 2005
Quit changing things! Just when I get done training something you nerf it. Stop it! Bad CCP! It's OK to leave well enough alone. If you guys get bored try taking up a hobby; go curling or whatever the hell else there is to do in Iceland.
Racional on 09 November 2005
Humm...let me see.
You guys are all crying because the smarbomb users will kill your drones,
but in the end you are not seing that it will take then the double of the time to kill the 1st, 2nd and 3rd wave of drones.
Plus the enormus amount of cap that they will have to spend to use the damm smartbombs to kill your drones.
So in the end, if you guys are atacking them with the drones and with your guns (i suppose you are using the guns hehehe) at the same time,
they will have less cap to tank them selfs.
Now it's my time to start crying because i'll be killed in no time since i use the smartbombs,
and i'll not have enoght cap to tank and to use the smartbombs at the same time :'(
So yes, drones changes sucks big time :P
The Novis on 09 November 2005
Overall should be ok, but i think its not a nurf for therm drones, for the other drones it is ( includinf mining drones )
Lord WarATron on 09 November 2005
Well... It means Mining Drones will be able to survive better...
Ethan Mars on 09 November 2005
Hey! I trained interfacing to have a horde of drones! What the hell... in math yes it could be the same, but the feeling... otherwise i would train something else, maybe... but i paid for the game until train those skills damnit! So i paid something much different?!
Chenlab Beta on 09 November 2005
Has it been stated anywhere from the devs that the current drone bugs will be fixed before the overhaul because the crap your flogging about extra firepower and armour aint gonna mean shit if these problems are not sorted out, just saying!
Any chance of a picture of the invoice you recieved when purchasing the new server hardware?
Ethidium Bromide on 09 November 2005
changes are really good imho
kiril on 09 November 2005
The only point is : why reducing the defense ? In some case, depending of the ship people will lose resistance. I must agree with the need for optimisation, which will already impact the visual aspect of the game, but please at least try to maintain the stats.
Ky Vatta on 09 November 2005
What is the point of the Dominix having 3 waves of drones, when it can only use 5 at any given time??? (It seems like more muddled Dev thinking)
Why can`t you leave things as they are, instead of constantly meddling (under the auspice of 'improvement')?
Klingz on 09 November 2005
I haven't read all of the above, but I dont see why reducing the drones to a max 5 per ship would reduce lag. If there is a gate camp and there are like 60 ships, and 40 of them got 5 drones each, it will still be 200 drones out and create a lot of lag, and load on servers...
I think I've read somewhere that these "lag-fests" are considered an exploit, and that there are an articel in EULA that use of such "exploits" may result for in player banning. So why not use it??? Give the player(s) one week ban first, no worning, and make an example for all othes... Ban like 10-20 accounts for like a week. If there are others who use drones only for the reason to lag(-fest), ban them as well, but this time permanently. No questions asked or answered...
I this case, CCP dont have to think about reducing the numbers of drones, or increasing something else.
I recon some will "No no no no", but who will that be??? Yes, those who has the intention or the will to use this "exploit".
I mean that drones should be allowed as a weapon if they are ment for using them to what they are designed for.
Zzazzt on 10 November 2005
I'm happy that the position has changed/been clarified from the original blog, but i still think that droneships will be a thing of the past on TQ after this change.
I think leaving the droneship bonuses as they are (meaning that those specific ships could deploy 10) and going ahead with the rest of the changes as stated would be the optimal solution.
Reason being, that whilst the changes make drones more useful & accessible overall, having only the same number of drones deployed as non-droneships will nerf them into oblivion, unless they carry truly unbalanced bonuses to make them proper ubah.
Fleet battles demonstrate that tanking a BS does nothing to improve your survivability. To my mind, boosting drone hp will be equally as effective. Particularly when facing multiple opponents.
i.e. not effective at all.
Reducing the droneships' maximum to 10 and the non-droneships' to 5 still achieves your goal of reducing the number of drones being tracked by the servers/clients, whilst at the same time preserving the unique role these ships currently perform.
Maorio on 10 November 2005
zzazzt that would be very nice if they change it like you said I woulsd for sure get a drone ship, hmm how does an indestructanix sound? as the changes are right now the drone ships will loose alot of the fun part of piloting them, the hoard of drones you can toss out.
Zzazzt on 10 November 2005
Why would a dom become indestructible? I assume your saying that deploying 10 repair drones would do that.
Well, even if it did become indestructable (which it wouldn't be, especially against multiple opponents), it wouldn't be doing an awful lot of damage without any combat drones now, would it?
Also - it's still balanced. You can shoot a repair drone as easliy as you can shoot a combat drone, i'll warrant...
Ronan McByrne on 10 November 2005
A gankageddon has the same number of drones as Nos Domi. lol......... that's a good one. Sell your Domi BPo's now and buy Geddon BPo's
Having drone boats provided diversity to the game. One could actually create a "gunless" ship and not only do well, but be feared in certain circumstances. EVE will move towards 2 types of fighters. Snipers and Tanks....yawn.......evolution has killed the drone boat.
I also do not understand why you are implementing 2 changes to drones at the same time. Instead of trying one, fixing the prerequisite bugs and then introducing the second change. Adding 2 changes to the drone system at the same time gives you 4x the chance of screwing something up............not looking forward to another messed up holiday season when I have actual time to play Eve. I hope you will at least allow this to have some life on the test server to see if lag is really reduced and the changes really do not nerf drones as a legitimate PVP option.
Finally, if you still insist on making these changes,which it looks like we really have no say or choice in the matter, drones need to be a helluva lot harder to kill. Reduce sig radius, increase resistances, faster, greater firing range (stay away from nasty SB's), etc. Allow option for drones to orbit a target at different ranges. Allow us to add drone modes that increase damage/decrease range and visa versa and be able to change those modes while in drone bay. or universally increase drone bay to hold more drones/ waves of drones so that groups of drones can be used in different situations.. Increasing a Berserker from 240hp to 480hp doesn't mean much when a T2 med gun can hit for over 300 consistently. Only means it takes two dedicated guns vs. one to kill a drone and I have a lot less drones to target.
Kamorion on 11 November 2005
Find it quite funny, the dominix got reduced to ashes.
The fun with a dominix was to have tons of drones, and poof its down to 5 "like any other battleship" But oooh you can send out drones 3 times if the other dies!
Uh so? The dominix will be totaly worthless to people who do missions and sutch, and it will be nothing special at all with them, just get a geddon and have 5 drones like the domni + tons of gunpower
Schmitt on 11 November 2005
I for one do not like this as I am paying a monthly fee so you can upgrade your networks to reduce lag, not nerf the game.
Goot Thera on 11 November 2005
I always thought that the defenses of my retriever were to strong. Five light or two medium drones are more than enough to defend the ship and i can even take a few mining drones too.
Truespin on 11 November 2005
[quote]Ships that give 1 drone per ship skill level has been changed to 10% drone damage and in some cases 10% damage (all damage types) and mining yield per level. They also get a bonus to drone hitpoints[/quote]
I just heared tht the bonus was heat damage which is totally not cool. What I have quoted is better tbh. I personally never use heat drones.
sattracer2 on 12 November 2005
It's the same old song and dance as every other game in the world... Reduce costs by gradually retracting benefits from paying customers. "We've got so many customers, we don't care if we lose some, they don't matter..."
mutley04 on 12 November 2005
Well i thik its suck that ishtar / Domi only can controle 5 drones in space.. Where is the fun i that?
Like u say Geddon can controle the same amount of drones and still use its Large Fire Power agenst a domi who´s totaly defense less with out its drones due to its Power Grid
Think u shoud think this one over ones more..
and yes the droens do more dmg.. but still wen u see 14-15 heavies come right a ye u get a kick.. i think if i was up agenst a domi and it only had 5 drones in space i woud say LoL!!
Filuren on 12 November 2005
This Sucks big time.
I Rely heavily on my drones to fight NPC rats while mining, I have all my high power slots used for mining lasers. This is defenatly a Nerf for me.
I spent time and money and you change the game play style for me, forcing me to change. I use 2 accounts now, and it has worked fine to have 1 having drones and mining lasers and the other a Hauler, this will not be possible with these changes.
Quilyan on 12 November 2005
hei people is better than before isnt it?
:)
The Relic on 13 November 2005
CCP...u are nuts. Lag has been in this game since beta and no one used drones then or even in the early days after EVE went gold. You have an inherent architecture problem. Your netcode ECC protocols are worse than any other MMOG I have played. Even worse than Microsofts, and that is saying a lot.
I bring this up because you are about to take something away from the players. And no matter how much you sugar coat it, you are taking something away. Fix the architecture problem......don't mess with game play. That is Product Development 101. Don't destroy Game Play. Snipe and Tank game play has been done. That is why all the other MMOGs always fail.
I can imagine what happened. A bunch of devs sat in a conference room with the task to fix game lag.
Dev 1: "Every time the big PVP blobs come together they all crash"
Dev 2: "Yaeh, I hear it is because of the drones. At least that is what the 2 PVP corps complained about"
Old timer Dev 3: "This happened all the time in the big Curse battle a couple of years ago as well, but they didn't use drones. So it must be something else"
Dev 1: "You are to old to know what you are talking about. It is definitely the drones"
Dev 2: " Yeah, we need to remove the number of drones from the game. We can play with the drones stats and the noobs will acept the changes. They will whine, but they will stay. They always do."
Rever Gallion on 13 November 2005
Ok you have done math for a BIG ships but what about small ones? Small ships was able to go on with 2 scout drones OR one medium now they will be able to go on with only ONE small drone!!!
Small ship have 10 m3 of drone space now ... and can hold 2 small drones and 1 medium drone! after this change he will be able to hold ONLY 1 small drone!!!!
Smaller drone bays limit versability and reliability of gall ships in hard way and your math is missing to show this!
Capt Cali on 14 November 2005
If the issue is lag,and you think this will solve it fine, but why reduce drone bay sizes? if we are to be limited to 5 drones flying at any one time why reduce the ability to replace the dead ones. It makes no difference at all to the lag issue and just annoys the people who have put time and trouble into training drone interfacing. I suggest you link drone interfacing to drone bay size, so that people can carry extra spares if they already trained this skill. drone interfacing would then give 20% damage bonus and +5m3 drone bay size per level for frigs, +10 for cruisers and +25 for BS... this is a good idea.
xlop on 14 November 2005
What if they change all this and it doesn't fix the lag?
Dont sell domi bpo and buy geddon bpo, as the geddon will be somewhat dead after they nerf damage mods.
Earthan on 14 November 2005
great sweet.No more large smartbomb= death for ishtar
Turin on 14 November 2005
Must you guys CONTINUALLY nerf the Raven? Is it your goal to destroy the Caldari ships and pilots?
Cyberus on 14 November 2005
YEAH i want more drone bay in RAVEN. defenetly with all this new drones tipes. so i can carry not only a combat drones but also shild and armor repaire drones HOW ABOUT that? You guys add more drones in game but give at same time less aportunity to use them.
Captain Nephi on 15 November 2005
I feel sorry for all Caldari pilots. I heard about the whole missle nerf in the past, and boost to Minmitarr. Now Drones are being nerfed. Will get to the point, that if you aren't 100% into gunnery, and not flying a Minmitarr or Amarr ship (or a Megathron), your just wasting your time.
Same thing with tanking, the most uber shield booster can boost 720 HPs for 400 energy cost, while the most uber armor booster can boost over 1200 HPs for the same 400 energy cost.
That means armor boosting ships will always boost faster. Also, when it comes to resistance, armor resitance is easy to upgrade, while shield resistance levels are always lower for same skill levels and numbers of mods.
Point is, time to give up on all Caldari ships, shield boosting ships, missle boats, and now drone ships too.
Stick to artillary guns or laser guns. They get instant damage, have the best range, the most damage per hit, and havent got nerfd.
SweatySack on 15 November 2005
You know...I really like this change. After hearing about it on TS my response was "This is some BS, I am gona quit if this s*** happens. BAH!"
However, after reading it, very good change. Go through with it, screw the critics.
Captain Nephi on 15 November 2005
BTW, last comment was to prove a point.
You get the point?
Hmmmm, is this game becoming more & more unbalanced?
The Morrighan on 15 November 2005
This is just a case of CCP giving us the "Bush/911" treatment:
Threat: terrorism/lag
Guilty: muslims/drones
M.O.:
The Morrighan on 15 November 2005
-> continues
M.O.: GET RID OF THE DRONES TO REDUCE LAG WHEN THE LAG IS JUST ABOUT MORE ACTIVE PLAYER BRINGING MORE MONEY TO THE CCP'S BOTTOMLESS "KYONOKE PIT" I.E. WALLET.
I for 1 feel scammed into learning skills that took a hell of a long time to train in order to get A SWARM OF DRONES, and now they nerf the drones but still pocket my REAL MONEY saying: "oh but you'll get bonuses to your 5 drones". If this is not a case of anal rape I don't know what is.
Raggib on 15 November 2005
Please, please, please do not do this.
I do a lot of solo mining and halving the drone bays on the barges will effectively remove this option for me. I will have to join the macro miners in 0.9. If you ignore all the protest of this nerf, at least leave the drone bays alone on the barges, this will not create massive amounts of lag and will still allow for solo mining.
The nerf will also destroy the Gallente race, it would have been nice when I made my initial race choice to know that I will invest training time in a character that will be useless 4 months down the line. Will you refund the players skill points so that they may change to a different race without spending all the time to train the same skills _again_ just because you made the race useless?
Raggib on 15 November 2005
What is really scary is that the drone bays sizes have already been changed in the items database on the web site.
Do you all feel ignored?
Corison Azura on 15 November 2005
You have to wonder... Since a lot of the Missile ships now only give bonsus to "Heavy" or "Torp"s when these Drone changes will be updated to be "Light Drones Only" or "Heavy Drones Only" ;)
Capt Cali on 15 November 2005
CCP, if you take your player base seriously you HAVE TO RETHINK THIS. True some people support this change, but they do not fly Caldari or Gallente, or do solo mining.
The problem in a nutshell seems to be this. EVE is a very popular game, you get lots of players so you get lag issues. But the players pay for the game, and the vets have made their choices about skills because of the way the game used to work. By making an unpopular change you are pissing off the people that have been your faithful CUSTOMERS for years.
More playersmeans more money for you. Use that cash to make the game playable AS IT IS.
Whatever the math, a drone swarm is FUN! we want to have fun. That's what we pay you for.
The Relic on 15 November 2005
"What is really scary is that the drone bays sizes have already been changed in the items database on the web site.
Do you all feel ignored?"
Yes.
Papa's getting a new game for Christmas
Cyberus on 15 November 2005
Yeah sure it will take a bit lag away BUT the problem still will be not solved. + at what cost? i think a lot of ppl think better then have bit more lag then dont have a fun anymore. This is not worth it to change because lag will be stay its always do. Last my combat was very laggy and i can insure you i did not see any drone in space but some players took 15 minets to jump from 1 system to the other. So Devs do it. Take the fun out and find out later that its not realy helped with the lag.
Cyberus on 15 November 2005
There is something more what i want to say. First you give us this ->>
---------------------------------------------
these are not the drones.... haven't we done this title already?
reported by 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.<<-
---------------------------------------------
I dont see that as flexible. I will tell what i think flexible is. Cont.....
Cyberus on 15 November 2005
I will try to keep short.
1. Dont half dronesbay but make it bigger. You ask why?
2.To give aportunity to use this FLEXIBLE drones at the FLEXIBLE way. You ask how?
3.Give aportunity to choise out 3 difrent tipes drones to load in your dronebay (from all tipes. choise is on pilot) you ask what for is that?
4.So we can use each group at the time (not more then it will be) but then depence from situation for exeple: first tank shild to escape destruction of ship and after that launch combat drones to take care of small ships and finely after combat even meaby to repaire armor if it took some damage.
5. Its do not matter what tipes we gonna use give the choise to pilots. But give them flexebility to use that drones too. Change the ships dronebays and make it imposeble to load whole bay full with 1 tipe drones(so 3x3 difrent tipes or 2x3 or 1x3). That how you can make flexible this drones. But flying ship with dronebay for 3 drones and think about what drones should i take is not flexible at all.
Kalixa Hihro on 15 November 2005
I have been lagged out in a remote system with no players (let alone drones) within 5 jumps of me, out in the middle of 0.0. Severe lag...
I think a lot of players may be confusing connection induced lag with drone lag in some cases. Things are simply laggy everywhere, sometimes. It doesn't matter where you are. It's a limitation of the internet infrastructure.
People forget that there may be 20+ routers between you and that server, across the internet, each adding 5+ms of latency, depending on how busy it is. I've seen some routers get overloaded and have 100ms of latency, none at CCP's datacenter.
Of course not knowing anything about the architecture of the system, and how nodes balance the load, I am at a severe disadvantage to even speculate about what percentage of this lag is actually being caused on the network, servers, or clients.
I bet it's less than you think... I'd have to play eve in the data center to see what the difference is.
Krait on 15 November 2005
Any chance of getting a toggle on/off for drone autoattack?
With the increased speed of the T2 drones, it is getting harder to deep them from dragging aggro down on you and they are expensive to replace.
cRaNbErRy MuFfInMaN on 16 November 2005
well this is screwing over the pirate world and people who use moros dreadnaughts. When someone uses a dominix at gates to pirate either way 1 shot kills a drone from sentrys so even if drones are 2 times as strong 1 shot from sentrys they dead so its better to have 2 times as much. Also the whole purpose in a moros is massive drones. and its the only dread that atm cant be killed by 10 frigs. Seriously a 2bill isk ship getting ganked by 10 frigs in nonsense and atm haveing 35 drones at 1 time is its only good defence for that. But pasteing here doesnt matter anyways as CCP says if they loose people to things like this oh well they say in most cases
Amicus on 16 November 2005
Tuxford said, “Drone hitpoint increase. With fewer drones it makes sense that they should be tougher. 50% increase in drone armor hitpoints, shield capacity and hull hitpoints.”
Tuxford, why is the hitpoint increase only 50%? You are halving the number of drones a player can launch. Should you not be doubling the hit points of drones to maintain the same number of hit points per flight group? As you state above, a 5-drone flight group under the new system will have the hp of 7.5 drones currently, not the hp of the 10 drones that it is replacing. Many above have noted, fewer drones are easier to kill. Should not those fewer drones have at least the same number of hit points per flight group as the current flight groups?
Likewise, for the Dominix you are cutting its maximum number of drones per flight group by 2/3. In order to maintain something close to its current power under the new system, should not the hp per drone be 3x the current levels. The proposed 10% hp per level increase for the Dominix, will still leaves the Dominix with 25% fewer hp per flight group (as you note above instead of 15 drones the hp of the new Dominix max flight group will equal 11.25 drones).
icomeinpiece on 16 November 2005
ok, we're good
Deor on 16 November 2005
This sounds a lot better to me.
To those bitching about lag/server stuff, why do you say they are not fixing the problem causing lag? Drones cause client side lag, everyone knows that. Your PC can only deal with so many 'things' on the screen and keep its framerate up.
They are bound to lag the server, they are really just more ships it has to keep track of after all. There is only so much hardware you can throw at things you know. Would you rather they throw loads of money at doubling the nodes and halving the load of them, or build some more content. Software changes are always easier than hardware upgrades.
Optimasing the code and the systems around the drones is fixing the problem of lag caused by them. what more do you want. :)
Hmm, we could always reduce the rate of fire on missiles by half, that way there would be a lot less of them in the air for the servers to keep track of! :P
bona bona on 16 November 2005
I am not sure if it has been mentioned or not but wondered how the changes would affect the megatron?
jbert on 16 November 2005
First, I'll all for reducing lag, and am optimistic this change will help. But I have some concerns about the way this is implemented. All the math showing that this won't have a big effect is based on the poor assumption that everyone has drone interfacing 5.
I've been playing eve for a few months now. It would take me 50 days to train all the way to drone interfacing 5. Lets look at my Caracal as an example of what this does to newer players:
I currently can use and carry 2 medium drones. I use them to defend myself against small, fast things. After these changes, I can carry just one. He can't do the same damage as the two he replaces until I spend 50 days to get drone interfacing 5 to get the 100% damage bonus. And the hp increase doesn't help much, because the things my drones are shooting at are shooting me. And now they can shoot me twice as long before the drone can kill it.
Bottom line, it takes me 50 days of dedicated training on a skill that isn't important to a caldari pilot to get back to something I could do after playing for less than a month. The changes may not hurt advanced drone flyers of other races, but it seriously impacts anyone who doesn't need to or can't carry 5 drones after the modification. All small ships, and Caldari Raven are examples.
I'm all for reducing lag, but please take a careful look at what this does to newer players as well as those who can fly 15 from a dominix. Those younger players just lost a 50% of a serious weapon.
Cynon Demarr on 16 November 2005
Thanks for the great explanation, Tuxford! Now I am happy about the changes!
Duskadantor on 17 November 2005
==============================================
Could someone mention the smaller drone ships
such as Barges and BC's is Prophecy - can hold
a nice fleet of smalls and meds. I don't know
how to work it out for these ships, Cheers!
==============================================
Duskadantor on 17 November 2005
Oh Yeah surely now fellas we can start to talk about Drone Tanking, now even the lil blighters are gonna be so much tougher.
Kaian on 17 November 2005
ishtar have a drone capacity
of 125 m3.
and I dont like the hole Idea.
Strom Kryos on 17 November 2005
I've heard the sig was increased on drones on the test server? I'm hopeing that isn't so nor to be implemented.. I do understand the reasoning.. as much as I like to see an army of drones out in front of my :) I can appreciate less lag, Something that may or may not be a factor... when I check my scanner I see pockets of drones all over.. so many that they have to be just sitting in space not being used so someone can grab them from their safe spot when they run low. Maybe there should be a 24 hour time limit before they dissappear? That in itself may help with the lag enough to be noticeable.
Allanah on 18 November 2005
Soo, as i read last 2 lines it looks like CCP is doing this more for itself then for US players, reducing lag by half, but nerfing game by 100000% Not good idea at all. This is a bad bad idea
Tatana on 18 November 2005
Why the HELL do you nerf the drone space, I want to be able to AT LEAST carry 5 drones in my Raven! Not 3!!! This is starting to piss me off to the EXTREME! Stop the shrinking!
Nemsiah on 18 November 2005
i don`t get it why all the caldari pilots are whining about their damage mods on their ships. i just checked the eve database and the only caldari ship in cruiser/BS class taht got a dmg mod for kin missiles is the caracal. all other ships got modifier not connected to damagetype.
for the changes. i am a droneuser too and i spend months training up my skills just to see that drones are nerferd now. i think there are a lot more issues to fix befor you adress the lag, which is a problem for the PvPer only it seems, but the other 80% of the player are not affected by it (not saying that there are only 20% PvPer, but i think that a max of only 20% are connected to big scale battles where lag that is produced from drones "might" effect their gameplay). lag like you can face it in oursulert is not created by drones, so you will not reduce it that way.
all in all a bad thing. i still suggest that you keep at least the ship bonus for more drones and that you keep the dronespace for this ships as it is (where is the sense to use EW drones when i don`t have drones to attack/defend anymore?)
Nemsiah on 18 November 2005
and where are the long promissed salvage drones?
i don`t care for all the new stuff you get into game when you fail to fullfill promisses you made a long time ago.
Critta on 18 November 2005
I gave up on reading these comments as it is obvious that a lot of people haven't bothered to read or understand the blog they are commenting on.
Loving these changes - they still do the same damage, more resistant to smartbombs and LESS LAG...
I think the last point is the most important, if this cuts your resource usage by half, maybe we'll be able to have fleet battles again :D
Miklos Atreides on 19 November 2005
I like the changes and I agree that people bashing them aren't paying attention.
Drone boosts ftw! see, before it was the number of drones you were facing that was the threat but now the threat is hidden until you see how hard the drones hit!
cRaNbErRy MuFfInMaN on 19 November 2005
why not do away with drones? and give all ships small turrent hardpoints that can only put on small guns that do the same damage as a drone :D
im uber genious this would cut out like 9999% lag
cRaNbErRy MuFfInMaN on 19 November 2005
Oh ya and why not make this
Control Tower Empty huge empty shell like NPC station but smaller about the size of with a 30km shield around it. about the size of 12 obelisks bunched into a square and it lets you dock in it.
Then just like the factory a drop down bar that lets you drag and drop arrays into slots that affect the whole pos. like corp hanger array adds to the whole pos's m3 capacity. and give it the same options of a conqerable station.
This would reduce the lag of like 900bill objects in space in eve. :)
cRaNbErRy MuFfInMaN on 19 November 2005
okay so no factory, or lab, or escrow, or repair, or trash item, or any other abilities other then the arrays that would affect the whole thing like adding 3 ship mainenance arrays would affect the amount of m3 in ships can dock at it.
But all guns,dampeners,jammers,scramblers go outside the pos in the sields. Like guns etc dont plug in
cRaNbErRy MuFfInMaN on 19 November 2005
Also dont forget if you changed the drones to small turrent slots that do the same thing a drone would everyone in eve would be happy they dont have to worry about mining with a harvestors in .0. But i doubt youd make the changes to pos's cause it would make peoples lives much more happy and we cant have that now can we! we cant listen to the people who play the game that would be nonsense :D
Angueran on 19 November 2005
Well, i'm mining in DOMINIX with 13 drones, and with the new rules i'll mine with 5 drones powered like only 9 ones... losst of 4 mining drones power.
Angueran on 19 November 2005
It's a good idea to reduce the number of drones because of technical problems they cause by teir number, but i hoppe it will not reduce their mining efficiencie like in the exemple of the dominix... ok a BS isn't a mining barge but for alone mining it's good.
Liliane Woodhead on 20 November 2005
I payed my subscribtion for months to use drone swarms. Why ? They make me happy in cold winter nights.
Oh and i wouldn't be happy if my goverment says: Sorry, but we changed your driving-licence for your car. You only can ride a bicycle now.
Bad example, but i am so sad at the moment ... i am crying for my drones
Feuergeist1 on 20 November 2005
Yet another nerf on caldari desguised as something else. *sigh*
BaJaiah on 21 November 2005
If you want to reduce lag treat each group of drones as one entity. Make that entity targetable for a simultanious number of times equal to group size. Drop 1 targetlock of group for each 1/groupsize damage dealt to entity (full group hitpoints of course dependent on types of drones in group).
Probably need to restrict groups to be the same specific type of drones, and remove collision detections from drones (drone entities).
Voila !
Lag issues solved - 1 server entity per group/wave (and no collisions)
Done intelligence somewhat improved - group will attack same target, will be scoopable as a group etc
No tweaking to ships needed
Instead of changing the content you could actually change the code and probably end up with a much better result.
Feuergeist1 on 21 November 2005
That is essentially what is being done :\
BaJaiah on 21 November 2005
Well - my point is that you could still have the coolness factor - as there is no need to change the graphical representation of each individual drone... nm - just an idea that would make evrybody but the programmers happy O.o
Kaynine on 22 November 2005
Please ensure that the ships that get +1 per level to drones also see the extra benifit when using mining drones.
Horry on 23 November 2005
couldnt be bothered to read all but how about the moros?
Sivlar Sylvannathas on 23 November 2005
"as far as im concerned as a REAL drone user.
this change is a nerf as long as you don't have the same total hp as 15drone from 5 and the same possible damg output accross all drone types.
you can say it's not a nerf all you want but any idiot can see that drones will die faster.
and frankly i could't give 2 hoot's about how long they will last vs smartbombs now.
as even if it's twice as long thats still going to leave the ship droneless before the target dies.
on paper you may convince some but frankly this is still a very bad idea."
I am with you on this one. The drone changes are absolute crap. 2x the hp on drones? Better make it 4x or 5x if you are nerfing the amount of drones we lauch. They already die hella fast, even with a 100% hp boost it is not going to make a difference. Also wtf is up with CCP's hard-on's over thermal damage and gallente. Thermal sucks, stop giving this lame ass bonus to gallente drones and ships. A little more variety please?
Why is it CCP cannot leave things that work well enough alone?
They just totally screw a skill line by adding a bunch more crap you need to train to only end up 50% as effective as you were pre-nerf, um I mean patch.
TanSpectra on 26 November 2005
Ships with a odd sized drone bay seem to be more affected by the drone bay reduction.
For instance the Ferox with 50m3 can carry 5 mediums but with the reduction will be reduced to 2 + 1 small.
Perhaps the rounding up should to the next 10m3, which would allow 3 mediums to be carried.
This would allow the BS's to carry 8 mediums allowing 3 spare.
Swaffer on 28 November 2005
So will this make the drones on a Moros indestructable. it has an extra 5 drones per skill lvl. Also if you have a frigate fleet attacking you, with loads of drones you can split them up to attack multi targets, which is very useful. However from the lag aspect, i'm not completely against it.
Zachios Primos on 28 November 2005
you suck...
rgreat on 28 November 2005
Please find other ways of reducing the lag.
Ways that DO NOT harm playing expirience.
Or if you cannot find these, make sure you do not hurt players in progress of applying "drones lag patch".
E.g. ways without nerfing.
At least give SAME amount of value as it was before, not just "almost the same with all skills trained".
I dont mind added features (like non fighting drones).
rgreat on 28 November 2005
For now drones will die very fast.
In fact, drone live as long as it is not targeted by anyone. after it, it's only few seconds before it go down.
Drones can't repair themself.
And it is hard to target 10-15 drones.
Much easier to target and kill 5 drones.
50% HP increase will not change anything in that.
At least make it 200% increase to counter the problem.
And you say you make smart bombs less effective with 50% increase of drone HP?
Heh, noone use smartbombs anyway.
P.S. I still prefer you to keep drones current way. 10-15 drones swarms are so eye candy...
THORS THUNDER on 30 November 2005
if its not broke ... dont fix it !
Mindlles on 30 November 2005
man some ppl talk without thinking.. ^^^
Not sure this patch will be all good, but as always its just to adapt, and i tihnk it will turn out to the better, drones will prolly not be so good to take care off frig for example, as they will so easly be killed, tho they will do alot better against a bigger ship with a sb as defend.
The rest is just similar, exept the fact i lub to see my ishtar realise 14 t2 heavy drones, its just so luvley when they go to crush the bs i got locked down.. but then again thats just grapichs.. :=) They still be able to doit, and prolly better then before =) Exept it wont be locking as impressive annylonger
Geoff C on 08 December 2005
Id like to know why you guys are thinking of fixing stuff thats not broken, when there are things in this game long well broken that never get fixed because you adding new things and not fixing things youve already released that are messed up.
Jaana Lyyra on 10 December 2005
alright - I appreciate that the drones got boosted in survivabilty and firepower BUT that was supposed to be so or else drone would totally suck and not be worth the training time at all.
Now for the number: I fly, amongst other ships, a Dominix - a BS which is supposed to be a nice drone carrier - now it has only 5 drones max - this sucks - this crushes the whole FEELING a dominix had - I mean 5 mere drones compared to 15 looks just poor - that's like flying around with a BS and use small turrets !
I love the introduction of NEW DRONE TYPES, BUT who would use them - if u can only use so few numbers then u have to decide which ONE to use, instead to be able to make a nice little combo - this makes the introduction effetively useless. E.G. when I had my usual Dominix I could use 2 or 3 EW-drones, a scrambler drone and a webber drone and at the same time still had enough drone firepower to overcome big ships (up to BC) - with the changes in RMR I will not use the new drones (although I'd love to) because for the use of an alternative dronetype I will loose a vast fraction of dronefirepower which e.g. a Dominix with only 6 highslots can't afford !
Another thing is that, now the gallente's race feature is now somewhat lame. Imo this takes quite a bit of the atmosphere :(
Last Point: of course Server lags are a problem but they always will be as player numbers grows. Imo reducing drone number is a very shortsighted, foul and cheap way to gain performance as it downgrades the games gameplay & atmosphere.
Rhoemer on 12 December 2005
I had an idea about the Ravens drones, why not let it carry 5 heavy drones and give the Raven -100% to effectivenes of Drone Interfacing skill? Apply that to other ships with similar drone loss or would that create a problem im not seeing?
Lavi Head on 12 December 2005
I will see how the changes work but I dont see the neeed to change. At least 1/2 of the Gallente firepower is due to med and heavy drones. The Drone Swarm is very effective but not invulnerable. Why can' you leave the drones as they are? Also the Gallente Battleships are the best solo miners in low space, will this ability be NERFED? Will the Gallente be nerfed by these changes? I hope not.
Koum Lesaintier on 14 December 2005
About the drones.. the only way not to nerf them ( and by nerfing i mean making it easier for the oponent to kill 5 drones instead of 15) is to make the drones more difficult to kill NOT judging in terms of hitpoints but in terms of TIE needed to kill them. Specifically it should take you roughly 2 or 3 times the time to kill a drone.
You could achieve that by making them more difficult to hit as the owners drone related skills go up.
This wway :
he will have the same damage as before
AND the same staying power.
Raven Black on 14 December 2005
Hey CCP you are are bright!....you make the drone so no one will be using them (in other words USELESS) there are player out there that depend on the drones for the little extra damage they do , although some get crazy with them but all in all you are just making it so players will give up on them and they'll become only good for one thing*
*REPROC
Azphreal on 15 December 2005
Ok this might be a bit stupid but with the cut down on drones and the boosting does that mean that the "rogue drone" mission have you with less drones against the same amount of uber drones?You scr*wed the raven for missile damage (a cruise explosion moves faster than a torp lol) so i will not even be able to use 5 heavy drones as it does not hold 10 heavy at the moment.Please stop letting us train up skills for months and then make it worthless (trained cruise to lvl 5 b4 the missile nerf and have never used them since).
Kara Ardala on 15 December 2005
There is no point in repeating more than one word from previous posts as all of my thoughts have been covered......so......here is the one word:.......
NERF
Kara Ardala on 15 December 2005
p.s.
I bought my first Dominix two days ago....sooooooooo wish I hadn't! :(
Sco Ra'sco on 15 December 2005
I'm sure I'm not the only player that was busy training skills so I could use the Dom as a Protoss Carrier :) Swarms of drones were really appealing!
Still, not too bad except the lock time on 5 drones is much faster (in total) than the lock time on 15 drones. Basically 1/3 of the time to lock the entire drone swarm from. Even with waves coming in, those extra waves aren't doing damage while the lock is happening - they have to be launched and fly at the target again, which means the target gets a nice breather. Previously, even if the target wiped out 5 of your drones, the other 10 were still doing damage while he locked another 5 etc.
I think to counter this there should be a "drone swarm confusion" modifier that is based on the number of drones in a swarm - the more drones in a swarm (or group), the smaller the sigrad per drone which would hopefully increase locking time and chance to be hit by turrets. This could simulate the idea of a target's sensors being "confused" by the swarm, which is pretty much what happens by default now with 15 drones flying around - takes quite a while for an enemy to target and lock them all in succession.
Sco Ra'sco on 15 December 2005
Oh, also wanted to add a note on what Cyberus was saying in his comments above. I agree that rather than reducing the drone bay, go the other way and *increase* it so we can take advantage of all the nice new drone types. I mean, we have "drone groups" in the drone bay, let's use them for a change, rather than just having one group in there.
This might also help make ships a bit more self-sufficient. There is a lot of whinging about pilots hanging out in high-sec space (noob systems etc). Well I for one would love to go roving out of those areas for extended periods of time but if I can only take one type of drone with me for a specific purpose, then have to come back to re-arm for the next purpose, that's just extra wasted traffic and *boring time* flying from mission-to-base. It's bad enough having to carry ammo in the cargo bay (i.e. no dedicated "ammo bay"), but reducing the drone bay will make trips back to a station even more frequent.
Sco Ra'sco on 15 December 2005
Looks like it's my night for comments lol...
After reading some of the other posts above about the "fun factor" I completely agree. For me, Eve is about having fun and pretending I'm an uber-pilot in a great sci-fi universe. If I wanted it all to come down to who has the best calculator for figuring out all the maths in the game, it'd really start to suck... might as well go and play D&D with some dice or something.
This patch is obviously going through, but maybe for future work try to think of the majority of players that are still happy doing lone-wolf or small-corp play, rather than thinking of fixing things for the really small amount of players who are engaged in fleet battles on a regular basis. I mean, just look at the star map if you want to see where the vast majority of people are spending their time - it certainly ain't in systems that have fleet battles :)
welsh wizard on 16 December 2005
Perhaps the single most important point that many are ignoring. The majority of Gallente ships were overpowered before RMR, now theres some balance. Perhaps now other cruisers will actually be able to challenge that ridiculous Thorax.
Keldon Raven on 17 December 2005
The thought occurs that miners in the ORE Barges are gonna be the worst off by this change (I mine solo in a barge a lot) and I know that even with 4 heavys in a large barge this is hard enough to take on multiple targets its gonna be even worse after the RMR patch making solo mining almost imposable please consider the solo players out there CCP remember not everyone is in an alliance nor do we all wish to be
I dont take part in large fleet battles and I certainly would not do so in a mining barge please consider the barges!
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