Ok so…for the drone boat lovers like myself, I really don’t enjoy running guns. Would it be too overpowered to make a high slot item that increased the bandwidth available for ships so we can increase the amount of drones we can use at the same time? My thought process on it is that with guns, you’re adding an extra 1k dps to the pool for a well fitted battleship, so why not just make that extra 1k into drones so we don’t need to feel pressured into playing with guns?
Edit:
I guess my two thoughts on it would either be:
a high slot item that gave 2-5 bandwidth each
Or
A ship with 2 high slots, 9 low slots, 5 mid slots, and 2 rig slots
There’s a hard limit to how many guns you can fit on a hull, it has a limited amount of turret or missile hard points.
There’s also a hard limit to how many drones you can use in a hull, it has a limited amount of drone bandwidth.
If any ship with spare high slots could add more bandwidth, what is the point of paying 250 million for an Ishtar with 125 Mbit/sec, when I can fit extra bandwidth on my 14 million Vexor to get 5 heavy drones for much much cheaper?
Bandwidth, like turret hard slots, are a hard limit on the amount of firepower a certain hull can bring. You can increase the effectiveness of the power by using higher tier drones or guns, or by adding drone or weapon damage modules, but you cannot increase the base amount of guns or drone bandwidth for good reason.
Ok we’re saying it’s op, but comparing to the nightmare, which can have upwards of 1k dps on guns and an additional 400 in drones, would it really hurt that badly to allow drone dps to go above 1k?
Yes. Don’t compare turrets and drones by mere dps numbers. Drones have advantages and disadvantages that turrets don’t.
It’s better to look at player behaviour or choices because we will naturally gravitate towards the most effective tools. And in that regard it’s pretty clear that there is nothing wrong with the strength of drones or drone ships since they are very popular.
That’s an appeal to popularity.
Just because many people use the drone boats, does not mean they are actually better. The thing is, the gila is better (and the rattle), but that’s for several reasons.
need few skills to be effective (compared to other ships)
good application
very good tank.
Basically, the usual issues with drone boats (delayed damage, need to get close to reduce that delayed damage, can be defanged, type locked) are ignored and instead the ships are boosted in terms of DPS.
Gilas are still very bad compared to other cruisers, I guess in abyss they are better though.
rattler can go 1.4k DPS.
edit : IIRC, long time I did not use one.
edit : OMFG 1800 DPS with rage torps.
and 2060 with faction mods and aug ogres.
2100with dread guristas torps.
Yes it is an appeal to popularity but that doesn’t make what i said about it being better than looking at raw damage numbers untrue and is exactly how CCP have looked at weapon balance in the past.
