I know the T3Cs just got rebalanced, and as I am getting around to finally flying them. I would like to discuss the balance of the ship if we replaced the drone bonuses so they only effected light and medium drones and also gave it +1 drone control per lvl.
This would allow it to field 10 medium drones at max level. The server has been updated a lot since the last ship that was given out that could field more than 5 drones, so it shouldn’t be to much of a server issue.
I am just wondering if this would be a fun balance change, and see what else would need to be changed, up or down to keep it inline with the other ships. The character I am flying it on has max drone skills but only lvl 4 on the T3C subsystems so the 4 t2 praetors only do about 500 dos with my current fit. So I’m wondering how a swarm of mediums would change up game play for this ship!
I’d even be interested it if was say limited to light drones but a full flight of 10, but still able to pump out nearly say 500 DPS with max skills and 3 T2 DDAs.
My brother uses this fit for Level 4 missions. It’s a bit expensive and CPU is tight unless you have good skills, but it’s very effective:
[Proteus, Proteus fit Drone]
Damage Control II
Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Reactive Armor Hardener
Corelum B-Type Medium Armor Repairer
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Gistum C-Type 10MN Afterburner
Federation Navy Drone Navigation Computer
AML Compact Omnidirectional Tracking Link, Tracking Speed Script
Republic Fleet Medium Cap Battery
Drone Link Augmentor I
200mm Railgun II, Spike M
200mm Railgun II, Spike M
200mm Railgun II, Spike M
200mm Railgun II, Spike M
200mm Railgun II, Spike M
Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I
Medium Drone Durability Enhancer I
Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump II
I am trying to see if we could get a more unique bonus per level for the ship than the standard stuff.
Right now the max limit if drones if the bay and width allows is 5. I would like discuss the idea of saying the drone subsystem bonuses were locked to medium/light drones and also had a bonus to allow the control of one more drone. So at max skills you would have 10 lights/mediums.
How would this effect game play? Balance? Would it provide a source of fun or would it be micro management hell?
There’s no need for any ship to be able to field 10 bonused medium drones, and drones are still a pretty decent load on the server and client.
This basically seems like “my ship is not a special enough snowflake/is not the type of snowflake I want” rather than an actual balance concern. The Proteus is a true hybrid weapons platform that needs to use both Hybrid weapons and Drones to get the most out of it. That’s its unique niche.
Also 10 Hammerheads would do the same DPS as 5 Ogres but with better speed, tracking, signature resolution, and speed tank. You’d basically end up with something that is straight up better than a 5-heavies Ishtar if this idea were implemented.
Yes, and you want to add 1 drone per level, which is 10 Medium drones or 100mbits of bandwidth. The whole point of the Proteus is that it has to mix guns and drones to get the most out of the hull as opposed to the Vexor, VNI, Ishtar, and Domi which are more “pure drone boats” in where their bonuses and slot layout sit.
Letting the Proteus field 10 Mediums would bump its drone DPS up to the same level as the Isthar but with Medium Drone tracking and speed, which would be utterly ridiculous. Plus it still gets 7.5 effective turrets on top of that.
Your options for a Medium Drone boat are either anemic DPS compared to other Cruiser and BC sized drone boats or the Drone equivalent of RLMLs on steroids, since Medium drones have fantastic application for a medium weapon system. That’s why the closest thing we have to a dedicated Medium Drone boat is the Gila and it still gets half its DPS from launchers.
I am sort of thinking of like the Gila. But instead of two super drones you have 10 okay drones. And then balance what needs to be balanced to make it balanced.
What’s needed to make it balanced is “don’t give it ten medium drones”. The Gila’s drone damage is equivalent to 10 mediums but then it gets zero other bonuses on top of that, and it only gets three low slots which massively limits what it can fit in terms of damage mods. In comparison the Proteus gets a 10% per level damage bonus to its drones and can bet between 5 and 7 low slots depending on subsystems.
Also, again, there’s a reason CCP still isn’t letting ships have more than 5 drones. It’s better for the pilot in every way to have 5 drones dealing double the damage, and it’s better for the servers too.
But again, the Proteus doesn’t need that and shouldn’t get it, because it’s not meant to be dealing as much damage with drones as a ship that’s completely drone focused.
And I never once said to remove the Hybrid bonus from the Proteus Drone Synthesis Projector did I. I feel that you assumed it as you kept bringing that up in your comments.
Nope, I was assuming exactly the opposite, that’s part of why I objected so strongly to your suggestion to give the thing 10 drones, because that would make it stupidly overpowered in ways the Gila isn’t because of its slot layout and bonuses.
To make the Proteus roughly equivalent to the Gila in terms of power with a similar drone base bonus you would need to completely remove the Drone damage per level bonus from it and probably heavily restrict its low slots as well. Since neither of those have a mad chance in Baator of happening this whole idea is kinda dead in the water, and that’s without considering that more than 5 drones is still a bad idea for server performance reasons.
