Am I the only one thinking the new Rogue Drone hybrids are horribly broken.
EWAR drones used to involve an obvious tradeoff in that you gave up combat-drone DPS to get webs, neuts etc. I get that there may have been issues with their viability but these basically remove that tradeoff entirely. You get a large amount of normal drone DPS while also getting an EWAR effect that can be comparable to a module. In some cases it is arguably better than a module in important ways. Neut drones, for example, can project cap pressure at range without using your own capacitor. And now there is a dedicated Hybrid Drone skill adding 3% damage per level, or another 15% at level V. So the already-small DPS sacrifice for taking EWAR is about to get even smaller. When these things cost only a few million ISK each, that starts looking less like an interesting choice and more like something everyone should obviously use.
The other thing I dislike is what this does to ship and player identity. I like racial drones. I like choosing Valkyries, Hammerheads, Infiltrators, etc. because they fit the ship, the faction, or just the way I want to play. If Rogue hybrids are simply much better, then those choices become mostly cosmetic self-handicapping. Everyone with a drone bay starts fielding the same creepy Rogue Drone things because not doing so means giving up nearly free EWAR. That is more variety in the item database, but less actual variety in play.
At minimum, I think there should be some kind of response to this technology. Maybe the empires eventually develop augmented versions of their own drones, so racial drones remain competitive. Or better yet, give Rogue technology an actual downside: some module or system that can interfere with them, hack them, make them lose control, or even occasionally turn on their owner. Make them powerful, but make that power come with some kind of risk or counterplay. As they are now, they just feel like the usual live-service-game problem of introducing something new by making it better than what came before.
And fittings will change to quickly get rid of these then very expensive drones.
Both will find a new balance equillibrium at some point.
Then do so. And in many circumstances, you already “handicap” yourself when using the “faction drones” fitting to your ship. Because often they are not the perfect choice for the ship.
Oh I’ve already done some of that. Though I do worry it won’t actually pay off once they are nerfed. Still, I expect a price bump when the new skill rolls out.
Anyway, my point isn’t that I can’t make isk off this. My point is that it’s bad design/balance.
so, i have wanted to try out the hybrid drones myself, maybe put them in consortium issue pioneers or in mackinaws or orcas or something, i don’t mind it, they can be expensive enough and need enough skills that it takes a while before you can use them if i remember correctly. that should work, they are basically T3 drones.
And empires already have ‘augmented’ and ‘integrated’ drones if you were to look.
They’re not actually particularly overpowered, their individual effects are quite weak, and are aggressively stacking penalised. The old EWAR drones were utterly useless, the new ones are still generally weaker than standard tech 2 drones because the effects remain tiny, and the DPS is fairly low.
“And empires already have ‘augmented’ and ‘integrated’ drones if you were to look.”
Try to exercise a little interpretive charity in your thinking. I am in specifically talking about hybrid drones that combine ewar with damage. I used the term augmented because these are the drones that supposedly combine rogue drone technology. I am suggesting a version that combines ewar.
so based on your first post i am under the impression that you think there should be a rule like you have to have safety red or cannot be used in highsec kind of thing
I think that’s wrong, and I suppose to be more constructive, I’ll make the case with an actual (rough) numbers comparison. I think what is being missed is the fact that a new skill is dropping on Sep 22 that’s adding 15% to the damage of these things. So, comparing med drone IIs we have (assuming relevant skill lvl Vs just for comparison):
5× Hammerhead II: aprox 158 DPS.
5× Mosquito EV-600-I: 121 DPS + 56% of a Medium Neut II.
The Mosquito flight therefore gives up about 23% of the Hammerhead DPS in exchange for more than half a Medium Neut II, requiring no high slot, fitting resources, or ship capacitor. It is also faster and has better tracking than a Hammerhead II.
Its MWD is faster, but its actual orbit speed is just 400m/s. It also has considerably less EHP than the Hammerhead. With a 50m signature, 400m/s isn’t actually all that much, And because of how drones work, if the ship they’re attacking moves faster than 400m/s, uptime on the neut effect will be rather flaky, because drones turn off their attacks when they get out of range and need to MWD back in range. I expect most ships to be able to defang a ship using mosquitoes relatively easily. The neut also isn’t bonused, so on ships like the Ashimmu or an appropriately subsystemed Legion, the drone becomes rather pathetic compared to the module.
Suffice to say I don’t consider adding a bit of DPS to an ewar drone isn’t a huge issue, ewar drones were already very weak.
I’ve played with them as they are now, and found I generally did better just using tech 2 (and faction drones when I need the extra EHP). I suspect the buff from the skill will make them about equal, or maybe just a little bit better, than tech 2. If that’s the case, yeah, maybe a small nerf will be justified, but I don’t expect it will be game breaking.
I can never tell in EVE if anti-nerf pushback means:
A) You are wrong, overreacting, etc
or
B) Dude shut up. don’t call attention to this.
Then again I’ve already admitted to wanting to flip these so maybe I am just trying to get you to buy them…
But seriously they are broken. Especially on some ships which might have already been tempted to use ewar drones (e.g. Taranis). For a ship like that over 90% of its overall DPS comes from it’s own guns. getting (say) 35 extra DPS from T2 drones vs 32 DPS from hybrids is virtually irrelevant.
All while being better in every way at ALSO being a dedicated ewar drone. It’s a hornet EC-300 equivalent jam with higher speed, better orbit speed, better ehp…