Sentry and Heavy Guard drone Tweak

Suggestions Balance
1

Since so many people are angered by the presence of drone-pooping Tacklers, I figured I’d see if I could come up with a nice solution for everyone.

 

Suggestion:

 

Sentry and Guard drones will only shoot at a target that is locked by the Tackler, meaning it is possible to disrupt their attacks by jamming the Tackler’s radar.

 

Outcome:

 

Turret Drones will no-longer automatically attack enemies in their area. Tacklers with drones must stick around to target the ships they want the turret drones to attack.

 

Thus, Tacklers can no longer simply drop off two drones at a beacon and have them automatically shoot all the guard drones. Nor can Tacklers drop drones off behind enemy lines and then fly out of radar range to let the drones harass the enemy lines.

 

It also makes the drones unable to independently guard objectives.

2

Since so many people are angered by the presence of drone-pooping Tacklers, I figured I’d see if I could come up with a nice solution for everyone.

 

Suggestion:

 

Sentry and Guard drones will only shoot at a target that is locked by the Tackler, meaning it is possible to disrupt their attacks by jamming the Tackler’s radar.

 

Outcome:

 

Turret Drones will no-longer automatically attack enemies in their area. Tacklers with drones must stick around to target the ships they want the turret drones to attack.

 

Thus, Tacklers can no longer simply drop off two drones at a beacon and have them automatically shoot all the guard drones. Nor can Tacklers drop drones off behind enemy lines and then fly out of radar range to let the drones harass the enemy lines.

 

It also makes the drones unable to independently guard objectives.

  • cooldown period should start, when both types of drones gets destroyed, not immediately after they are being deployed.

+1

3

Nice idea. This would definitely require a much more active role.

4

That will make drones useless. It took a lot of time until the drone was buffed enough to be useful. If you want to remove something, remove cruise engine. Tackler drones are fine.

5

I like to see some actual numbers behind the supposed OP-ness of the Tackler’s Drones from someone that isn’t primarily an interceptor pilot.

Does anyone actually get killed by these drone poopers? Do you just sit and take the shots from am unmoving and relatively fragile drone? I mean, micro-locators seem to have more HP than a sentry drone.

Where are the objective numbers? What percentage of Tacklers have drones? What % of damage/kills do they contribute compared to other options? How about the average efficiency score of regular drone poopers? If they’re so OP why not just run it yourself since it’s apparently so effective?

What about tactics? Why not when the mob of these supposed drone poopers are off being cloaked between drone cooldowns you focus on the rest of the team that is clearly outnumbered because half of the team are these drone poopers? Because if it’s just one, you eat the 1 drone shot and destroy the drones. Bam. Problem solved. Or catch the Tackler between cloaks and bam. Drones go poof with the Tackler.

Drone damage is fine, if you get killed by one, it’s because you let it take 5 potshots at you or you’re an inty and the drone is doing it’s job as advertised. And nobody actually gets hit by the Heavy Drone so that’s on you if you do.

6

I like to see some actual numbers behind the supposed OP-ness of the Tackler’s Drones from someone that isn’t primarily an interceptor pilot.

 

Honestly, Drone-poopers really aren’t a threat unless you get 2+ of them on the same team.

 

I’m writing this suggestion from the perspective of a Tackler pilot who uses cruise engines in combination with a sentry drone.

 

Now, I don’t fly the way most ‘drone poopers’ do. My Sentry is a backup/finisher. I come out of cloak, paint my target, attack head-on with missiles and guns, and launch the drone. Most of the time, the target painter/drone combo is enough to finish off an interceptor that has gone full ‘wiggle evasive’ because his health is flashing.

 

It’s just a suggestion to make them a bit more tactical, without making them completely ineffective.

 

And yes… I get a lot of kills this way.

7

I like to see some actual numbers behind the supposed OP-ness of the Tackler’s Drones from someone that isn’t primarily an interceptor pilot.

Does anyone actually get killed by these drone poopers? Do you just sit and take the shots from am unmoving and relatively fragile drone? I mean, micro-locators seem to have more HP than a sentry drone.

Where are the objective numbers? What percentage of Tacklers have drones? What % of damage/kills do they contribute compared to other options? How about the average efficiency score of regular drone poopers? If they’re so OP why not just run it yourself since it’s apparently so effective?

What about tactics? Why not when the mob of these supposed drone poopers are off being cloaked between drone cooldowns you focus on the rest of the team that is clearly outnumbered because half of the team are these drone poopers? Because if it’s just one, you eat the 1 drone shot and destroy the drones. Bam. Problem solved. Or catch the Tackler between cloaks and bam. Drones go poof with the Tackler.

Drone damage is fine, if you get killed by one, it’s because you let it take 5 potshots at you or you’re an inty and the drone is doing it’s job as advertised. And nobody actually gets hit by the Heavy Drone so that’s on you if you do.

Drones kill inty in 3 shots. And that’s without the tackler slowing you down and shooting at you at the same time. I don’t run one now, but I tried. It’s not my kind of fun, I love the dogfight and fastpaced action. Hell, I even brawl with guard and lrf under cloak…

The only tactics that works is to stay away from the drone, waiting for a 2km + range weapon to take them away. That’s why I fly my “long range” plasma gun ecm, and it’s not the new ecm module that will change this… It will just push pilots further away form recon, wich is a shame coz I love flying this ship. Drones don’t have less HP than microlocator, it’s just that they are larger, then easier to hit. But it take around 5 sec to take one down, and you need to evade its overly precise fire. That’s a whole time you are not a threat to the enemy team and exposed to their fire.

 

The point is : drones ingineer + tackler drones make flying recon and cov ops a pain in the xxxx. when you add pulsar and drestructor from guard, you just remove 2 ships class from the game. Yes you still could chase lone enemy pilot, but have a good time with it on a frigball. And why bother when a tackler can do the job better than you? Higher range of fire, higher speed, autoaim, reducing enemy speed.

 

That will make drones useless. It took a lot of time until the drone was buffed enough to be useful. If you want to remove something, remove cruise engine. Tackler drones are fine.

I have to agree… I HATE tackler drones with a passion… Only match by guard’s destructor on objectives map. But, this targetting suggestion doesn’t seem good and will make them useless.

 

On the other hand, NO, tackler’s drones are not fine as they are now. And it’s even worse when paired with crafted attack drones. Maybe just increasing the spread of weapons or reducing the damage or rate of fire by a bit (something like 20 % at max) will make them balanced. Heck, even if you need to increase durability, I don’t mind, just reduce the absurb damage they deal.

 

Energy autonomy is another way to balance it : increase the energy cost to maintain drones or make the chameleon module drain a small amount of ernergy in order to limit the combined used of module. At least it would encourage engy to use energy module for teamplay or reduce the overall effectivness of tackler, making them more dependant on energy regen passive modules.

 

Or even, don’t touch the drones, but reduce the effectivness of cruise engine / limit attack drones to frigate only (so usable by lrf / guard only). And btw, as I talk about limitation, limit doomsday missile to figthers and frigates only. Then, maybe, will start to avoid OP combos that ruins the fun. Drone, by itself, is not a real threat. It’s the absurb combination with all the other tools of the tacklers that make them deadly.

 

Everyone focus on the drone, but the cruise engine is really a huge part of the problem. It’s way too powerfull in it’s current iteration. By giving this huge mobility boost to fighter, you remove a specificity of interceptors, and even more favor fighters, coz interceptors can’t even run away from them now.

8

The heavy drone is for frigates, so you sort of need to drop it at 300m near them. 

 

Given the drones are called “Sentry” and “Guard” drones, they should be able to attack targets without lock. Perhaps they would need the target within sensor range but requiring lock is too much.

 

The cruise engine was kind of meant more for invasion. Perhaps the malus/effectiveness could be reduced a little but I like having a variety of modules. Generally people don’t like certain things because it is the one thing that is a danger to their coverall build XD

9

Given the drones are called “Sentry” and “Guard” drones, they should be able to attack targets without lock.

Yup. Having an autonomous turret is kinda fun and I think a good addition to the game. It’s just a bit OP by now.

 

The cruise engine was kind of meant more for invasion. Perhaps the malus/effectiveness could be reduced a little but I like having a variety of modules.

That’s exactly my point. Something that was good for the game overall get out of hand and became a nightmare. It ruins the mobility usefullness of interceptors.

Tacklers are already the most effective counter against recon / cov ops. But those have tools to defend against them (locator / plasma web / spy drones). It’s a match that favor the tackler, but you can deal something with luck / skill / teamates. Sentry drones totally screw this balance.

 

Generally people don’t like certain things because it is the one thing that is a danger to their coverall build XD

That’s true. But I can only speak for me here, but if someone think a recon can be a coverall build, they should speak now! It’s not because it’s a danger for me that I think they are too powerfull. It’s because I can’t do anything and it make me think I chose the wrong class when I decided to fly only ceptors because it was what suits my playstyle more. I even go down the path of OP thing by flying ecm now. YOU SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO, YOU DRONES POOPERS? *sob* I’m less than a human now!

10

+1 I like the idea

11

I would change this instead: make the sentry drone (thermal damage) capable of firing only if the player locked someone as their target. The guard drone (EM damage) should stay the same.

What I see broken on dronepoopers: EM drone isn’t bad at all I feel like it is balanced. the thermal drone is broken. It has too bigmovement speed. I think that this would fix it

12

Here’s the thing, Sentry drones are not 100% accurate.

 

I had a fight with an interceptor pilot from SCORP one time where he was mashing the alternate movement keys and wiggling so hard that the drone missed 3 consecutive shots.

 

In fact, one of the reasons I have given up using anything but lasers on my tacklers is because of wiggle-ceptors that are just impossible to shoot with projectiles. So the projectile speed of the Sentry isn’t the problem.

 

Now, I can understand nerfing the range of the Sentry so it’s AOE is much smaller. I can understand making them only shoot at locked targets. I could even understand if their time between shots was increased. But if their projectile speed was nerfed, they would become yet another useless module (like the Warp Gate) that is just too impractical to justify wasting a slot.

 

 

Now, about the Cruise Engine. Is it a bit strange that fighters can travel faster than most interceptors? Yes.

 

BUT, unless you have more than 1 Engine slot, you cannot counteract the immense hit on rotation and strafe speed that comes with the module. Which means in order to turn, you must stop Afterburning. Which means if the ship has Adaptive Shields, he will be much more vulnerable. It also means you can kill them relatively easily if you simply disrupt their speed long enough to deactivate their Adaptive Shields.

 

Another thing: I have yet to see anything other than a Tackler in PvP with a Cruise Engine. I have not seen Gunships or Command fighters being able to make use of this module effectively, and I have a theory as to why. Because they can’t cloak.

 

The cruise module locks the ship into a linear flight path, such that a ship is extremely limited in it’s firing arc (hence why drones are used) and easy to track and lead with weapons (hence the cloak). The only thing that the Cruise Engine has actually done to this game is make the Tackler a true Ambush Fighter.

 

That being said, if the devs nerfed fighter speed to a 600m/s cap, I wouldn’t mind so much.

 

Heck, why not cap frigates at 500m/s and leave interceptors at the 700m/s cap and release the cruise engine module for EVERYONE!

 

Then we can actually take more ships into Invasion than just Recons and Tacklers.

13

Try gauss with speed ammo and 6-3 implant. Perfect for killing interceptors, even full strafe ones.

14

I use cruise engine on my Aura. Tons of energy cap + regen, almost invincible diffusion shield, it works out well. You just need to be wary of when your shield runs out as these builds generally rely solely on their command mods for resistances.

 

On the topic of drones, they shoot at targets behind objects. Not sure whether this should be kept as an added “something is coming” warning or not ;p

 

With drones, you either need to find cover or shoot the drones (or kill the tackler before enough damage is taken).

15

BUT, unless you have more than 1 Engine slot, you cannot counteract the immense hit on rotation and strafe speed that comes with the module. Which means in order to turn, you must stop Afterburning. Which means if the ship has Adaptive Shields, he will be much more vulnerable. It also means you can kill them relatively easily if you simply disrupt their speed long enough to deactivate their Adaptive Shields.

 

Another thing: I have yet to see anything other than a Tackler in PvP with a Cruise Engine. I have not seen Gunships or Command fighters being able to make use of this module effectively, and I have a theory as to why. Because they can’t cloak.

 

The cruise module locks the ship into a linear flight path, such that a ship is extremely limited in it’s firing arc (hence why drones are used) and easy to track and lead with weapons (hence the cloak). The only thing that the Cruise Engine has actually done to this game is make the Tackler a true Ambush Fighter.

Gunship already have an active mobility module. They don’t need it that much. And on command it works wonder to escape / go to objectives, plus they are not evolutive shield tankers anyway… The penalty is close to nothing when you learn how it works . The fact that the rotation rate get back to normal instantly once you shut afterburners down make it non existant. I’d like to see it persists at least 2 or 3 sec after releasing after burning. It won’t change it’s invasion role, but might push players to think twice before using it.

16

I use cruise engine on my Aura. Tons of energy cap + regen, almost invincible diffusion shield, it works out well. You just need to be wary of when your shield runs out as these builds generally rely solely on their command mods for resistances.

 

On the topic of drones, they shoot at targets behind objects. Not sure whether this should be kept as an added “something is coming” warning or not ;p

 

With drones, you either need to find cover or shoot the drones (or kill the tackler before enough damage is taken).

The sentry/guard drones don’t openly chase people unlike the manufactured attack drones (which are actually quite OP compared to the Vanguard Octo Drones (the super hull ones with like 3,600 hull) due to their damage and durability)