Today we take a look at a thorough investigation made by IrishWebster. It’s not just us, content creators, fighting for the livelihood of our game. You guys and gals have a lot to say about the state of the game as well. And this time we talk about why drones and shield field modules are pretty bad, how they are so interconnected and why the game client and server feel the full blunt force trauma of their aftermath. Don’t worry, we also have solutions, but will the Devs listen?
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He forgot a detail, something insignificant, but it worth to have a mention in all of this mess of drones, and that is the NANOCORES!
Making the gap between drones and any other weapon even worses, drones are most of the times 2/3 of the total dps output, and guess what? Yeah nanocores gives the same bonuses to turrets/misiles and drones, meaning that turrets and misiles get a 18% dmg boost of 100% of the dmg, while ships with drones nanocores get 18% ON DRONES ONLY, meaning that only a 2/3 of the dmg is getting boosted.
This creates the situation where a normal BS hit 4500dps with 3 dmg booster, while the rattlesnake can't go beyond 3500dps even with 5 dmg computers active, making drone boat the worst PVE ships for endgame content in the game(drone BS are supposed to be the strongest at long range, but the apoc striker outclass even the best drone BS in the game at long range)
I started with drone because a long time ago I was an industrialist a used to sell miners ships to everyone, because in the beginning of the game the miners were the ships that got destroyed everyday.
I make plenty of billions selling procurers and covertor 2, this lead me to skill up drones because miner barges can use drones as dmg dealer against frigs, I even beat some ceptor with the nereus combat going after me and I can say with pride that my covertor 2 have never been killed before.
I don't have plex for remove the drone skills S 555 555, M 554 554, L 554 554, D 555, and I promise to myself to never buy plex with real money. This lead me to a situation where I'm about to disuse my main account and move on with a new account qith laser it's T9 already, So my main account will die with drones and misiles while my alt is training Lasers, once my alt reach T10 I will probably disuse my main drone account, also I'm never doing industry again.
We learned drones acted like ships early on in the game since before the black screen issues. I'd hardly call that "recently learned". Drone code should have been rewritten to operate more like a detached cannon than an AI pilot a long time ago. Perhaps a coder in the community could send them a low-resource version of drones. It's easier to adjust an existing thing than creating it outright, maybe we can cater to the natural human tendancy to do what's easiest.
good talk
Armor link draged up to sheald bubble is insane but i understand what if you can't go inside armor link drone ships are useless but sheald bubble are still way too strong in my opinion.
My sugestion to get ride off drones or make sheald fealds lik armor link to 1 per sqad not all inside. Next sugestion proper add big alfa demage weapon it could be buffed decompresors.
Last one it's good they dont released drone smart bombs becouse it will add more lag and black screans to huge battles.
P.S. this is may opinion to get things get easy blown up and this will be healthy to economy XD and i know lose ship suks but if noone lose or just one side lose ships is bad. in big cta all sides must get ships kills XD
Nice video. I dont agree that Armour link is "crap" my friends and I have been running Armour pvp fleets with great success. Also isn't drone damage alot more consistent than turrets and missiles?
I would defiantly appreciate improvements in both areas.
I love my drones but in doing so I sacrifice clear times.
I defiantly agree in that yes I can swap drones to change size or damage type but the time it takes for that to happen in a anom, even at brawl range the large drone would have already killed that frig rat and we have moved on.
I’d also like to see armour link buffed as well or at least modified based on some of those suggestions. Saying armour link G is blasphemy around my parts.
Added resists would be great also.
Thanks for being a voice for these matters.
I have been discussing this issue since the VNI became mass use, I reiterated the issue when geddons and domi became weapon of choice.
1) (temporary) Remove the drone model to reduce server load allowing icons only. This will allow you to time to rework drones without pissing off the player base. Might not be a great fix but that's 5 "ship" modules the server doesn't have to render.
2) Do Not Add Smartbombs. Just 4 BS pulsing 4 smartbombs each was enough to blackscreen 6 of 10 battleships we had on grid (14ppl in systen). Now, we could chalk that up to PTR instability but I can promise their will be more smartbombs in use during live server battles +group caps +shield field+ command bursts+ interdiction bubbles all going off at the same time.
3) Either make armor links transfer 100% damage to the Guardian or remove shield fields and armor links from the game. If going with option 2 then rebalance the guardians as the ewar ships that were removed from the game. This makes already owned ships useful while alleviating the guardian module issue. EO has survived 18/19 years w/o guardians, so can EE.
The player base has been aware of the drone issues since beta, and the disparity between shield and armor guardians is even worse. BS bandaids like smartbombs will cause more server instability. We need fixes not half assed solutions so NE doesn't have to fix something.
As for the drone dmg disparity. Drones/fighter are the only weapon system that has almost 100% optimal dmg application ignoring ceptors, they bypass shield fields, and they're the only EE weapon type with swappable monotype dmg. In exchange drones can be blown up and have an application delay do to travel time.
And I still say more: the capacity of changing drones in mid battle don't work with faster ships! If you try to recall a drone while flying in a great speed like a Worm or a destroyer, the jus keep following you until you reduce the speed of sending him to another target ahead of you path and then calling they back!
The only effective way to change a drone in combat is when one is destroyed. Otherwise, it's Impossible to faster ships.
I’m so happy for got around to cover this one after the issue we did get when we first recorded it. I think this went a lot more to the point this way anyway haha. We tend to talk a lot around the topics 😂. Well done GicForta
Its kind of dumb that drones are configured as ships, I am not a programmer but I imagine you could do something similar to fighters. You could just have 1 'entity' as your drone swarm and then depending on the number and type of drones you increase the dps, agility, HP etc. Im not sure how EO works drones but I prefer the idea of being able to have more small drones on a BS to counter interceptors and if it was just 1 entity created for the drone swarm it would reduce the load on the server vs currently where each BS has at least 2 drones often 5, creating a blob of stuff the server cant cope with.
I agree that SFM are OP or is it that armour links are just so bad? And I fly a NM and Phantasm!
Sir nice podcast! I love these solutions but please, removing drones would not solve the problem. The Gallente Federation will lose its most powerful weapon that ships like tristan, algos, Vexor, Myrmidon and Dominix use. Drones should get a dps buff through their skill bonuses. I don't know much about the guardian modules but all i know is that coding drones not as ships but as detachable modules that could be destroyed is better, a separate entity that is differently coded as a ship. Take inspiration from warship games. Some ships that are not aircraft carriers in such games still carry a plane or two (a catapult fighter) that is accurate as of history. They aren't coded as ships. They are coded as planes. So they should code the drones as analogous to planes in the warship games. I have studied python in my school textbook hence im saying this, otherwise i don't know the advanced stuff 😂.
The intro music is just so terrible but the videos are good.
Love your vids Gica, but as someone who has also programmed in object based applications, I'm not sure that they could use inheritance to cut down on the server load, unless their programming is SUPER inefficient (and maybe it is). This response is sort of a thinking out loud, work it out as I go, apologies, I know I know, TLDR.
In order for combat to work at a base level, all objects (drones and ships), need the following properties: Location, Vector, Velocity, Shield, Armor, Hull, Resistances for each, Capacitor, Capacitor Recharge Rate, Weapon Range, Fire Rate, Damage, Drone Control Range (I'm probably missing some). They then also need to perform calculations on all (or most depending on fit) of those properties every server tick, especially when fleet bonuses are present.
If drones have more properties than this, then, yes, they should cut those out. Unfortunately, this is still a large amount of data when we're talking 200 man fights, with 1000 drones. Given the above, that's a minimum of 18,000 calculations and variable updates per tick just for this single theoretic engagement. In terms of information relayed to the client, of course each client does not need ALL of that, but still needs the Location and Vector of 1200 units on grid as well as HP related values for up to 14 objects (8 Locked Targets, 1 Self, 5 Drones), and all other stats related to the player's own ship and modules.
All of that said, I do think there is room for improvement, but that would likely mean a change in the way drones work and feel. For example, if we look at carriers and fighters, a similar method could be used when a drone pilot has their drones stacked. It's really one group, but the group's effectiveness is reduced when so much HP is lost. Similarly, if drones only had HP and not separate shield/armor/hull, that would cut out (6-1)*1000=5000 calculations and variable updates each tick, but would also cause issues with logistics and probably spark player push back, etc.
Maybe I'm wrong, and there is a whole ton of additional information that drones are carrying around with them unnecessarily. I know that my impression of this response from the developers was that "drones are ships" was simply a quick way of saying that each one needs the above math to feel like a real thing. Not necessarily that each one had individual modules or potential SKINs or other extraneous things that a player ship has.
Anyways, I'd love for someone to refute me in more detail! Thanks!
Another comment, because my first was so long… I absolutely agree that the Armor link system needs to be stronger. Yes there are fleets out there using them, and a well coordinated fleet can certainly do some damage with them, but the effort input is drastically higher than a shield field. Here's a random thought, what if an armor link actually hampered non fleet ships within its range? Made them slower, or drained cap? That would certainly be incentive to use them… Might also cause other problems…
I'm an armor guardian, I didn't see this problem as bad as you do. Armor does need a little help but it sounds like the whole motivation of this video is to make it OP so it replaces shield to fix the drone meta in turn to fix server problems. Armor and shield are two different play styles. On don't like the idea of making things alike just to make balance, this is doubled when the reason for buffs is to fix other problems.
My suggestion, increase speed of the armor tanks, make armor link range much higher like 100km, and last give the tank ship more dmg like 70% of an attack ship. This keeps the uniqueness and gives armor link more of a role.
I’m super interested to know what you think the holes in my arguments are. I was really looking forward to the podcast with you and Sheev, but since that got corrupted, could you detail some of that here? I think an open discussion about it could do a lot for airing out ideas about all this and get the community involved.
I disagree that armor ships need armor modules to have resistance. The armor guardins come with a 20% armor resistance bonus as part of the ship lol. They are essentially the same resistance as a shield guardian (but just a little bit more). Now if we are comparing a shield fleet vs an armor fleet, there are pros and cons towards both:
Shield Field Pros:
– A single guardian can protect an entire fleet
– Logistic ships has an easier time responding to repair commands
– The resistance of shield guardians are slighty higher than armor guardians
– Forces the opponent to brawl you at 0km to negate the effects of the shield guardian
Shield Field Cons:
– The effects of the bubble causes the guardian to be much slower than any other fleet type – thus forcing the fleet to lower their speed of the shield guardian
– The protective effects only apply if the opponent is shooting from outside the bubble and not inside the bubble
– A single guardian can easily become focused and die from another enemy fleet (There is always more than one shield guardian)
– Logistic ships has to stay at range in order to support the shield guardians, thus needs ships to protect them from enemy tackle
Armor Link Pros:
– They can transfer 68% of damage to the guardian making alpha shots damn near impossible
– They are faster than a fleet using shield guardians. They can just simply approach a shield fleet very easily and play into their own strengths
– The logistic ships can either stay at range or stay with the main anchor of the fleet (they require less capacitor to repair so you can afford to make them tanky)
Armor Link Cons:
– They typically need more guardians & logistic ships to be effective
– Logisitic ships have a harder time repairing people (since more than 1 ship is taking incoming fire)
– Can take incoming damage from a sniper fleet
– typically has less tackling capablities since they have to use more group modules to support themselves
Because of this patch, armor fleets ARE BETTER than shield fleets hands down without question. The only real issue with armor fleets is that they need better pilots filling more important roles than just DPS. It is harder to have an armor fleet operational than a shield fleet, however if a 50 vs 50 occur between the two, I will always pick the armor fleet any day of the week. There is no way a shield fleet is better than an armor fleet anymore. It used to be, but not anymore.
Excellent discussion and quite a revealing insight beyond the cookie cutter, knee jerk bromides about the drone problem. 👌🏿
Two questions arising if I may…
1. What are the 'utility' qualities you mention that drones are possessed of, that other weapons aren't?
2. Are in fact drones an inadvertent ISK sink? (Obviously not a sufficient one, but interesting point to consider, as it might point one way towards a solution of that problem (need for an ISK sink))
Cheers
Completely agree. Moreover it seems to be universal among players (except maybe benzie). What I don’t get is why the devs refuse to make changes like these or correct drones. They seem to just ignore the issue (just like insurance and industry) and go for whatever takes the least effort.
How could you program drones differently than ships and still have them function the way they do though? If drones are able to be shot down, and fly around, then they each need to account for flight velocity, sig radius, direction, location on grid, dps, activation time, range, orbit, optimal/falloff, etc.
How about instead of only addressing armor links, address both shield fields and armor links. How about adjusting shield fields to absorb 80% of incoming damage at full health, and then gradually let more damage through as the field degrades. Whereas armor link would be constant 50%, but with added resists as long as the guardian has armor.
I don’t think the problem is due to representing drones as ships. This is just speculation but I think the problem is to do with event notifications. The server has to essentially play the game and our devices just get told the current state of play so they can render it and we see what is going on. With so many drones on field, the server has to keep every client device notified about what every ship and drone is doing. This creates a massive surge in event notifications when large drone battles happen. I think the same problem might happen if thousands of players battled without drones in the same system. Which is why they have system player caps. But apparently that doesn’t apply to drones and problems are the result. Just my theory…