VNI changes?

You just had to prove me right, don’t you?

That is a lie.

If you live in the US or UK and can’t afford a sub…

Sending more ships to the scrap heap of uselessness. Say hello to all of the Caldari ECM boats for us.

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Those ships are fit with options in mind. Those options cease to exist with the proposed changes in place. If that’s what they want to do, great it’s their game, but if the goal is as stated to address botting why dont they ■■■■■■■ address botting instead of just one of several ships that are capable of exploiting this stupid mechanic.

Because there will inevitably be some other situation people will find to exploit the hulls current bonuses. Can’t exploit it if the entire system is redesigned though. I’ve always found it odd how the VNI had the same drone layout as the ishtar/dominix. Now it’s designed to brawl just like N.domi, now if only the N.domi had a rep bonus too. OooO lawd.

Also the only people genuinely upset about this change are the ones no-lifing out in Nullsec with their VNI. To the rest of civilization this would be considered a buff.

2 Likes

It’s a ■■■■ sandwich served on the finest bread. You can’t see the turd, but it’s there.

How do you like that?

Gila changes:

Gallente cruiser bonuses (per skill level):
100% bonus to Medium combat drone damage

Caldari cruiser bonusus (per skill level):
4% bonus to all shield resistances

Role bonus:
35% bonus to Drone velocity and tracking speed
250% bonus to Medium Combat Drone hitpoints

Problems with your suggestion were outlined (and addressed) in the topic linked below.

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I think the VNI Changes are almost necessary. Maybe increase it from 75mb to 100mb and reduce drone bay by 25m3 or keep it at 200m3.

(Maybe even 95mb) - 3 heavies 2 medium.

To people complaining about the “Legacy Missions and Anoms”.

Until they can find a good balance to the new PVE content they’re working with and find a decent way to integrate it all in. They have to keep the Content as is, it’s not as easy as plugging something in. Since it’s all Spaghetti Legacy Code.

What they could do is write new anomalies and write out old ones, but they’d have to consider the balance between new and old content as far as ISK/hr Generation and Risk vs Reward values.

Say they add in new anomalies with the new code and add in a Web Tower that has a 100km Range that can burst web everything. Where as it pulses a web burst and everything slows down. Someone comes into the site to kill a VNI that’s been webbed down like this. Their drones are also webbed down, how will that affect the pvp aspect. If a Web tower only focuses 1 target, will it focus only the ship or will it target drones. Thus the PVE aspect defangs the PVE ship from any PVP option.

They could add something like this but it would still have to go through phases and I think they should focus on the New PVE content they’re working with, especially this nullsec stuff and see how well they can shake things up. Then once they’ve got a solid base for new content, replace the old content with newer updated content that still plays mostly the same with a few tweaks.

Thus you’re given a new life into old missions and anomalies, with maybe some “Procedurally Generated” content in missions that deviate from the standard, go out shoot this same target every time and come back to us. Whereas new content could be Go out hunt down this target, kill it, report back, or talk with the target and let them give you a better reward. Etc.

Though the VNI might be over-performing in the same field of work compared to others. In both PVP and PVE situations. Hence why they need to find a good balance. This affects multiple situations and can change the meta and dynamic. I don’t know many people who actually fly VNI’s in pvp blobs simply because drone blob pvp isn’t much use in the current metas that have been going around. At least from what I can remember. Aug Navy’s were the better choice for many reasons.

Sentry/350mm rail Domi does significantly more DPS than a VNI.

Specially since you just park and start spraying, no drone travel time.

…of course they are a LOT harder to move, take longer to skill into and are much easier to catch on grid.

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Tell me how you catch a Dominix that warps to Anomalies at 75km - 100km away and manage to burn that distance before it MJDs and warps away given that Sentry scooping is instant and even at baseline, you have 12 seconds before it warps off.

Keeping in mind that attentive players (and bots) can pull drones and initiate a warp/MJD while you have 12 seconds to load system, dscan, find the right anomaly, enter warp, travel, come out of warp, and then burn the ~70km with an overheated faction point.

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MJD’s don’t absolve you of align times. A Domi takes around 11 seconds to achieve warp vice 5 for VNI.

Ten seconds lets an inty cross a fair distance, and unlike a VNI you can’t burn off of a scram with an overheated oversized afterburner…which was one of my favorite passtimes. I see them pulse the AB off align and then overheat…yeah the ceptor catches me…then they get to chose keep me tackled or die to warriors.

You’re making the assumption that you’re already on grid with the Domi.

When you enter a system, you’ll appear in Local (at least now, until the changes) and an attentive player will initiate warp as soon as a neutral appears. So you have 10 seconds to find which anomaly that Dominix is ratting in, warp to it, land, then burn the distance to warp disrupt him.

It’s very clear that you haven’t actually tried to hunt Sentry ratting Dominixes. Your claim of “easier to catch on grid” isn’t actually true.

Its not that hard.

Your probe window is open right?

  1. Check for Sanctum yes/no?
    if no proceed to 2) if yes WARP WARP WARP
  2. Check for Haven(s) yes/no
    in no…well ■■■■…sift through the forlorn trash…if yes WARP
  3. Next system

They are still easier to catch than a VNI they aren’t close to as mobile…and people caught VNIs all the time. There is literally no chance that a Domi is already moving 1300m/s on grid.

Exact same armchair theorycrafting I see by everyone who has never actually tried to hunt Sentry ratting Dominixes, yawn.

Give it a try and see how easy it is. You’ll learn in an hour or so. Or you can just keep sitting in your armchair theorycrafting about how it’s so easy.

You may want to want to check over my killboard and then make that statement.

I have both hunted and BEEN hunted in all of the above…and Ishtar for that matter.

I can see this working if the Ishtar picks up the slack. If…

But if you want dank kill mails people need to be able to fly shiny ships.

Sometimes shiny gets a bit too shiny and needs to be dulled a bit.

I, for one disagree with CCP’s decision to nerf this ship. As one of the only, if not the single cruiser sized ship which has bandwidth of 125, it completely changes up the meta of the ability to run 2 geckos, 2 medium drones and a light drone. With that being said, I am quite familiar that newbros and botters would not be placing 100m/isk+ drones on a vni, and overall will completely remove the ability to do so in a cruiser class ship. Yes, agreed, Geckos are few and far between, but as a long-time omega pilot w/ plenty of SP, I still don’t have T2 Heavy drones, and the Gecko works perfectly as a heavy dmg drone, which fit in as as a replacement for those T2 drone options. Although I do not fly this fit all too often (for obvious reasons - trolls :stuck_out_tongue: ) It fits in as a perfect anomaly ratting ship (especially as a wormholer) and agreed with others — this will not fix the real problem of the botting networks. They will change ships, meta’s on ships will evolve and going back to the real issue of stopping-afk ratting. With advances in player scripts, you don’t even need to rely on drone damage application. The same abilities afk ratters have will be turned into f1 spamming based on some trigger or event that can’t be helped.

The VNI was always meant to be a faction cruiser based on drone skills with enough bandwidth to make all possible options available to these players. If you remove the bandwidth from this ship, a Dominix will be used instead and will completely destroy the anomalies meta I have come to enjoy. NOT TO MENTION - ever try bringing battleships between multiple links in a wormhole? – It completely destroys the ability to even go for a sandwich or take a break after hitting a couple anomalies in a VNI cruiser.

CCP – do not nerf this ship. As many others, it is, and always has been a drone primary boat first. OR — bring out some decent drone boat alternatives because for the life of me, there is no cruiser class ship that has 125 bandwidth. **BUT THEN… ** back to the same argument you folks have on this issue. — WHICH AGAIN! Will not fix the problem at hand, as player scripts can at times be very complex and simply require a little extra changing to completely accomplish the same thing.