Dead drake walkin' : A fuck drakes thread.

[flowerpot]

CCP really hates new blood and wants higher SP to have as huge an advantage as possible

Yeah, like, that sounds like a reasonable position for any company to take and CCP recently has in no way seemed like interested in attracting new customers over pleasing the established crowd. Oh wait...

[fat libertarian [banned]]

Yeah, like, that sounds like a reasonable position for any company to take

It's not. However, CCP is run by niggers

lolling at anyone that thinks that this game is anything but moronically skewed towards people with high SP and ccp doesn't do a piss poor job of newbie retention. Nerfing drakes would be another step that skews the balance even more

[CCP Nozh]

CCP doesn't hate new blood but CCP needs to reduce lag. Apparently missiles overload their systems so they are trying nerf missiles to discourage the use of drakes. without drakes new alliances cannot fight against elite pvp alliances that can field 80 zealots and 20 guardian to a fight. Lets look at NC and evoke and ncdot, evoke and ncdot will destroy most of the nc fleets based equal numbers because evoke and co bring specialized ships + logistics but nc will bring rag tag ships that don't even compliment each other. In most cases NC alliances cannot win 1v1 fights if they bring random ships but their chance goes very high if they bring 80 drakes + 20 logi to fight that evoke gang.

This is what CCP can do
Reduce HML range
increase CPU so we cannot fit tank and gank
mess with missiles

in every case NC alliances will demand their players only bring drakes because right now we have majority drake but ppl still bring other BCs and below. It won't help to reduce lag in the long run. CCP need to look at their code and spend few months working to fix the issues that giving new expansions.

Drakes are very noob friendly ship so nerfing them in any will screw the new empire players. when i first started i didn't know anything about the game, eve is first and only mmo. I basically ran missions on my T1 fiitted drake without any rigs or drones. If CCP screws that then they will loose more ppl from the game (they won't keep many new players). This could be a scare tactic to force the alliances to find non-missile alternatives for ahacs.

[DurrHurrDurr]

Looks like the penny finally dropped at CCP HQ and realising that drakes dominate the scene in any large scale fight in eve online.

Shitty official forum link





If they do nerf it this is a good thing as drakes have been overpowered since i started playing this game(i started after they were put in). As god knows i get tired of seeing my max skilled apoc and geddon sitting in station under a pile of dust and cheeto packets. Although this is largely due to the titan dd change and ccp having the foresight of a dead duck.

It also means only high SP pvpers in AHAC fleets will have the "ultimate facerape" status that both drake fleets and ahac fleets have now. And hopefully it means ccp might do something to actually get battleships back on the pvp field outside of comedy empire pubbies and random low sec pirate(and some really retarded null sec) corps and alliances that no one gives a flying fuck about.

Also i really do get tired of flying nothing but a drake and a basilisk even if they do own hard.

[Arrador]

Please don't give them any ideas.

The only place I ever was at that thought cruise Ravens were good fleet ships was IRC. You can't be suggesting they were ahead of the curve?

Think of it as a bigger drake with more range

[Malcanis]

Please don't give them any ideas.

The only place I ever was at that thought cruise Ravens were good fleet ships was IRC. You can't be suggesting they were ahead of the curve?

When/If Cruise ever get fixed to be worthwhile, then Ravens will immediately be very pro indeed.

My god, I can see it now: 170 ravens + 30 basilisks + 50 support. The fleet of doom, right out to 200Km.

[Thirsty McDrinkerston]

It's not. However, CCP is run by niggers

lolling at anyone that thinks that this game is anything but moronically skewed towards people with high SP and ccp doesn't do a piss poor job of newbie retention. Nerfing drakes would be another step that skews the balance even more

Well I have to say that CCP doesn't always try to gear everything towards higher SP characters, but I will agree that they gear PVP towards higher SP characters. All the changes that have benefited newer players seem to be PVE geared and not PVP.

[Hratli Smirks]

Nerfing drakes would be the dumbest fucking thing CCP can do and would literally usher in AHAC Online so I am convinced that this is what will happen.

[Malcanis]

Also, buff tier 1 BC's for fucks sake. Give them a role apart from being the thing clueless month old players buy because they don't know any better.

Well the Ferox is a great gas miner.

[flowerpot]

lolling at anyone that thinks that this game is anything but moronically skewed towards people with high SP and ccp doesn't do a piss poor job of newbie retention. Nerfing drakes would be another step that skews the balance even more

hm... let's see. skills are trained over time. That's a pretty well known game mechanic. The argument made in connection with this is that it takes more that skill to be successfull which is why a lot of players (both involved and completely unaffected by the current conflicts involving TEST) seem to think that noobs can still do allright. If ccp decided to nerf the drake to bring it in line with other bcs it is only a matter of time until the newer alliances make the argument that supercap blobs are overpowered and that this game isn't anything but moronically skewed towards people with high SP.

[Quesa]

CCP doesn't hate new blood but CCP needs to reduce lag. Apparently missiles overload their systems so they are trying nerf missiles to discourage the use of drakes. without drakes new alliances cannot fight against elite pvp alliances that can field 80 zealots and 20 guardian to a fight. Lets look at NC and evoke and ncdot, evoke and ncdot will destroy most of the nc fleets based equal numbers because evoke and co bring specialized ships + logistics but nc will bring rag tag ships that don't even compliment each other. In most cases NC alliances cannot win 1v1 fights if they bring random ships but their chance goes very high if they bring 80 drakes + 20 logi to fight that evoke gang.

They aren't trying to nerf missiles to discourage the use of drakes. It sounds more like they want a greater disparity between gank and tank fits.

Really gonna sound bad but I kinda like the disparity between high SP pilots bringing specialized ships to counter larger, more disorganized and lower SP pilots. I liked when PL rolled around in their specializes sHac fleets, even though they usually killed us, because they took the time to train up for specializes ships and standardized fits.

in every case NC alliances will demand their players only bring drakes because right now we have majority drake but ppl still bring other BCs and below. It won't help to reduce lag in the long run. CCP need to look at their code and spend few months working to fix the issues that giving new expansions.

I think they've already proved that missiles create additional load on the servers, which is the reason behind the compact cit torp change for sCars.

Drakes are very noob friendly ship so nerfing them in any will screw the new empire players. when i first started i didn't know anything about the game, eve is first and only mmo. I basically ran missions on my T1 fiitted drake without any rigs or drones. If CCP screws that then they will loose more ppl from the game (they won't keep many new players). This could be a scare tactic to force the alliances to find non-missile alternatives for ahacs.

[Arkady Sadik]

If you actually read Chronotis' posts, you will notice that he said repeatedly that he thinks Drakes are fine in smaller fleets and solo, but that they get too strong in large fleets. With that, I'm not sure if it's sensible to be afraid of Drakes getting nerfed in small fleet/solo situations outside of tinfoilhattery.

Drakes have low dps but pretty high alpha (2.6k alpha at 75km, compared to an arti-cane's 4k alpha at 15+22), which gets more and more relevant the larger the fleet is. This is one thing they might want to work on - higher RoF, lower alpha for HMLs. (There was a pretty good post by a PL member somewhere about how Drake and missiles just work really nicely together in lag, too)

The other thing I think needs a general look at are the resist bonuses, and actually for all ships that get them. That's basically a fully-skilled Invul II/EANM II with no stacking penalty, which, in combination with the incredibly strong logistics, is just a tremendous advantage. This is why the Abaddon and especially the Archon and the Aeon are so incredibly strong: Because RR is so much stronger on them. Again, a bonus that scales very strongly with fleet size increase. No other ship bonus is really comparable to this.

Hence I'd suggest looking at reducing this bonus. Maybe to +3%/level instead (+15% resists instead of +25% at lvl5), and replacing the lost EHP due to resists with a boost to the basic shield/armor amount to keep the same EHP, but at lower resists (adjust shield recharge accordingly, of course). This will keep the Drake (and the other ships) as strong as it is right now in small engagements, but make it scale less well in larger engagements.

[Hratli Smirks]

CCP is showcasing faction supercapitals as this expansion's front page attraction. Tell me more about how they aren't catering to the high-SP crowd because it isn't like there is a huge crying need for more fucking supercapitals in this game

[Thirsty McDrinkerston]

hm... let's see. skills are trained over time. That's a pretty well known game mechanic. The argument made in connection with this is that it takes more that skill to be successfull which is why a lot of players (both involved and completely unaffected by the current conflicts involving TEST) seem to think that noobs can still do allright. If ccp decided to nerf the drake to bring it in line with other bcs it is only a matter of time until the newer alliances make the argument that supercap blobs are overpowered and that this game is anything but moronically skewed towards people with high SP.

Higher SP character right here. I think SCs are way overpowered, but don't nerf them just yet. Mine is still in the cooker.

[Hratli Smirks]

here's a hint, guys: the problem is logistics

[Hratli Smirks]

This is what Al Gore has termed an "inconvenient truth"

[Thirsty McDrinkerston]

I got the answer for CCP; JUST FUCKING FIX LAG AND WORRY ABOUT TWEAKING EVERYTHING LATER

I would rather have a shitty fucked up lopsided fight than not be able to fight

[Arkady Sadik]

This is what Al Gore has termed an "inconvenient truth"

Dunno. I think the biggest issue with talking about why logis are a problem is that no one really knows how to fix them. They used to be mostly unused, now they're overused. Difficult to find a balance there.

Of course, just nerfing the Guardian and maybe the Scimitar to Oneiros/Basilisk level would probably be a start. ("Nerfing them to X level" doesn't mean "make them equivalent to...", just that they shouldn't be so clearly preferable. Not sure if this applies to the scimi, as the basilisk is so underused because heavy shield gangs are so rare. That's another issue entirely.)

[Scroobius Pip]

Just drop one of the low slots, decrease the cpu accordingly, remove the drone bay (it's a tanking missile boat anyway?) and let CCP do the pretend missile thing - seems pretty simple?

[flowerpot]

here's a hint, guys: the problem is logistics

That is an interesting point to make but it is only partially true. The real problem are thresholds. You can have x amount of logistics and then your adversary needs to bring y amount of apha to render them useless. Or you can have x amount of supercaps and your adversary has to bring y amount of, well, supercaps of his own but they all need to be tackled in order to die so you need a support fleet which is bigger that the other one's support fleet. And then you get to lag and node crashes, which by a lot are considered a part of the game mechanic all by themselves which at the end of the day is just retarded. Point is, Eve really scales like shit. If it didn't, you could make the point that a skilled bomber fleet can render a huge amount of high sp chars in specialized ships useless by killing them all at the jump in. And then we would have the same argument in a very different context. The basic question is does ccp really want numbers > all or do they favour well thought out fleet composition > all? Since all is a pretty wide range, which are the thresholds they have in mind? I hope we will find out after they fix the lag and those fucking drake blobs.

[riverini [banned]]

[Thirsty McDrinkerston]

... If it didn't, you could make the point that a skilled bomber fleet can render a huge amount of high sp chars in specialized ships useless by killing them all at the jump in...

Vee

[Krutoj]

Although this is largely due to the titan dd change and ccp having the foresight of a dead duck.

/signed

fyi, I dont fc drake fleets.

[Rat Salat]

The funniest thing is it's clearly obvious the drake is an excellent PVP ship, yet some FC's refuse to fly them due to "drake sucks" elitism.

Drakes work so well with the scimitars, lachesis, proby tengu and such backing them up. They engage well from 0-50km and tank like beasts. That doesn't mean there still isn't room for skill-based comps like sniper hac.

Oh and please don't give me any crap about armorhac being player-skill based. Sitting in a battleship-gobbling ball orbiting a Damnation is hardly the pinnacle of player improvisation.

[Wusti]

Fuck CCP. Everyone here knows for a fact that every major alliance has been shitting on Drakes ever since they appeared in the game. The ship itslef didn't change - the envirnment in which they operate did (and some people saw the light - FINALLY). Now they are big bad monsters.

The REAL culprits are you FotM Faggots for putting my Ducklings on CCPs radar. Fuck you all.

I'm switching to a Cruise Raven now - see you all there in 2 years :P

[Publius]

Caldari finally has a useful pvp ship, first time since the ECM nerf. Let's nerf it.

[deviance]

Drakes are OP.
Why? Solo every other BC without breaking a sweat thanks to godly tank and acceptable DPS; yes 450-500 DPS is OK, especially when you survive so much longer than everything fucking else which may do 700 dps but dies to a stiff breeze.

I'd seriously like to see a drake take down a proper myrmidon 1v1. That aside I'm going to join the people saying that the proliferation of drakes in fleet fights is not because the drake is overpowered. It is the current situation of fleet fights that caused it.

[Nimshar]

I'd seriously like to see a drake take down a proper myrmidon 1v1. That aside I'm going to join the people saying that the proliferation of drakes in fleet fights is not because the drake is overpowered. It is the current situation of fleet fights that caused it.

Is a proper myrmidon a shield-tanked one (negating the +ArmorRep bonus from Battlecruisers skill) with off-race T2 weapons (Projectile)?

[Kireiina]

Maybe it would be more productive if they worked out why all the other BC's and all battleships are so rarely seen in PvP? If anything the other BC's need a boost so that a group of 100 of them is actually mildly threatening to an AHAC fleet like drakes are. Here's a hint, nerf the ridiculous AHAC sig radius bonus stacking that makes all the projectile BC and all BS pointless.

I believe PL has already been proving that drakes, versus battleships fitted to fight them, are far from overpowered.

[Aurora148]

fleet battlecruiser tempest, is best battlecruiser

[Tempest, sharks itf]
Damage Control II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Invulnerability Field II
Invulnerability Field II
Invulnerability Field II
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution
100MN Afterburner II

800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
Heavy Energy Neutralizer II
Heavy Energy Neutralizer II

Large Auxiliary Thrusters I
Large Auxiliary Thrusters I
Large Low Friction Nozzle Joints I

[Quesa]

I believe the problems are:

• How lag effects general combat
• How missiles still track with the same efficiency no matter your transversal to the target, unlike LR turret ships which would have alot more of a problem tracking while going 800m/s orbiting a hostile gang at 30k.
• The different teirs of weapon groups not being utilized with greater efficiency. (id. Focused Pulses better for cruiser/frig tracking and Heavy Pulses for BC/BS killing).
• HML's not being treated as a long range weapon variant rather a homogenized platform which performs similar at any effective range.

I'm sure there are some other issues but these are far from a Drake design problem, more a core game design.

[NAP]

I'd seriously like to see a drake take down a proper myrmidon 1v1. That aside I'm going to join the people saying that the proliferation of drakes in fleet fights is not because the drake is overpowered. It is the current situation of fleet fights that caused it.

The only solo ship my Myrm has ever lost to was a Drake. I fly a 1600 dual rep with small guns. You can call it a proper fit or not, but it's the most versatile fit (for soloing) IMO and I've used them all from shield, med guns, buffer.. ect..ect.. He beat me because it was a stalemate on the tank vs damage. I couldn't break his tank but did come very close and he only broke mine after I ran out of boosters.

I've solo'd a hell of a lot of ships and even taken on small gangs in my Myrm, but that was the only ship I couldn't beat in a straight up 1v1 fight. I've beat many other Drakes and I'm sure a triple rep dual cap injected med A/C Myrm would have beat him (which I assume is what you mean by "proper fit"), but that fit isn't ideal for solo roams where you will often run into mini frig blobs.

..as a side note, it was that fight that made me finally train for a fucking Drake to add to my ship collection.

[TheTall]

Instead of nerfing drakes, why not buff the other BCs? Give them all a 3-5% bonus/lvl to resists. Imagine a drake vs a Harbi fight

Another idea, give turret BCs a mild tracking bonus so that they can hit aHACs. My understanding of the paradigm of the BattleCruiser class battling ship class is that it should be a cruiser-killer. A BC should be close to on a par with a HAC (since HACs are ubered up cruisers, maybe HACs should have a bit of advantage since they do take much more SP to fly well). The tracking bonus and resist buff would make Canes and Harbi's equal to drakes in effectiveness. Not sure about the myrm since I don't fly done-boats. Also, fix railguns! Give hybrid boats effectiveness at range!

Maybe also make HACs a BIT less uber, maybe by not letting them get away wish such a low sigradius as someone mentioned above.

[Krutoj]

yet some FC's refuse to fly them due to "drake sucks" elitism.

maybe some do, I feel however that gunnery wins over missiles, I much more prefer burning targets rather than waiting on missiles to hit them if you know what I mean. I do however think drake fleet is good against carriers/dreads/structures.
I dont think CCP needs to nerf them, perhaps once people arent counting isk and learn to use hacs, maybe then their perception will change. Or maybe people who petition to nerf drakes will realise that player's skill matters more than the ship.
Am sad to see drakes being made as escape-goats or any other ship for that matter.

[Madrak]

Battlecruisers in general have that "more bang for your buck" effect than any other ship class, so they are popular, and have low SP starting skillsets. It just so happens that out of the 8 available BCs, the Drake is most coveted for fleetwork (decent blend of alpha, buffer, and util but doesn't min/max these). The Drake's PVE presence goes a long way to insure many people can fly one.

Nerf the Drake, and the 'next best' bang for your buck ship will be all over the place. Maybe arty armor plated myrms? Whatever, I'm sure someone can think of a better one - thought that up in like, 2 seconds.

As mentioned before, logistics is a very powerful mechanic which makes large quantities of closely timed alpha very important to downing ships in a fight. As long as logi remains king, the blob will still love the alpha.

[NAP]

Instead of nerfing drakes, why not buff the other BCs? Give them all a 3-5% bonus/lvl to resists. Imagine a drake vs a Harbi fight

Another idea, give turret BCs a mild tracking bonus so that they can hit aHACs. My understanding of the paradigm of the BattleCruiser class battling ship class is that it should be a cruiser-killer. A BC should be close to on a par with a HAC (since HACs are ubered up cruisers, maybe HACs should have a bit of advantage since they do take much more SP to fly well). The tracking bonus and resist buff would make Canes and Harbi's equal to drakes in effectiveness. Not sure about the myrm since I don't fly done-boats. Also, fix railguns! Give hybrid boats effectiveness at range!

Maybe also make HACs a BIT less uber, maybe by not letting them get away wish such a low sigradius as someone mentioned above.

BC's can already rape aHacs in solo/small gang fights.. it's the logistics that creates a problem in the larger scale fights when dealing with the T2 resists. Hence the reason the Drake is likely being used so much.

[Hratli Smirks]

I believe the problems are:

• How lag effects general combat
• How missiles still track with the same efficiency no matter your transversal to the target, unlike LR turret ships which would have alot more of a problem tracking while going 800m/s orbiting a hostile gang at 30k.
• The different teirs of weapon groups not being utilized with greater efficiency. (id. Focused Pulses better for cruiser/frig tracking and Heavy Pulses for BC/BS killing).
• HML's not being treated as a long range weapon variant rather a homogenized platform which performs similar at any effective range.

I'm sure there are some other issues but these are far from a Drake design problem, more a core game design.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the drake's design at all, heavy missiles or not. I think the problem is what is compelling alliances to use the drake as their default fleet ship. Nerfing the drake isn't going to bring back battleships.

[pinoyzzz]

Nerfing the drake isn't going to bring back battleships.

You are so wrong about this :3

[Hratli Smirks]

You are so wrong about this :3

We literally stopped using battleships and switched to the drake due to AHACs, which the drake is reasonably effective against and battleships are not hth

[Hratli Smirks]

I mean we may finally start using those AHACs we were told to train months ago if the drake gets nerfed but I can't see even our leadership being so dumb as to go back to battleships while ahacs still rule the roost

[Wusti]

LOL at the idiots that start spouting 1 v 1 crap in this thread. Do you guys even get it at all?

and Quesa - the original trade-off for the fairly static DPS curve, and no tracking of HMLs was always flight time + lower potential DPS - that hasn't changed.

This whole game attitude of "oh my too many people are now flying this ship, IT MUST BE NERFED!" gets my goolies. The whole conversation is stupid.

[Kireiina]

Nerf drakes hard and you won't see a BC replacement because projectiles are even worse than missiles against AHAC's. You'll just reduce the viable sub-cap fleets to AHACs only. And with no drakes on the field there's even less things BS's can actually deliver meaningful damage to.

At the moment there's almost a BS -> drakes (sort of counter) -> AHAC -> BS which almost has potential to be interesting, so no wonder CCP plans to break it.

[Aurora148]

fleet battlecruiser tempest, is best battlecruiser

[Tempest, sharks itf]
Damage Control II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Invulnerability Field II
Invulnerability Field II
Invulnerability Field II
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution
100MN Afterburner II

800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
Heavy Energy Neutralizer II
Heavy Energy Neutralizer II

Large Auxiliary Thrusters I
Large Auxiliary Thrusters I
Large Low Friction Nozzle Joints I

seriously quesa i think we should run these fleets

PL can have HELLCAT abbadons and NC. can have SHARK tempests.

fuck yea i like naming stuff

[Deniera]

This shit hurts me eyes tbh. Isnt this why theres a CSM??

[Elmo]

God at last they even think about changing it.
nano roam gang ? get drakes guys.
LR HAS ? get drakes guys.
AHACS ? get drakes guys.
Want to roam ? get drakes guys.

Seriously, drake gangs are an insult. It's like saying "Hey, come fight, we have a ship that can just own any HAC you throw at us, but we invest 5 times less money in PvP than you, and we just don't give a shit about ~~fun~~ because we can just spam missiles LOL"

[Quesa]

Quesa - the original trade-off for the fairly static DPS curve, and no tracking of HMLs was always flight time + lower potential DPS - that hasn't changed.

I also believe it was done around the same time they changed missiles so they couldn't miss.

[TheTall]

... fitting ...

I wonder (and don't have access to EFT ATM), can one fit enough tracking on battleships so that the smallest battle-ship long-range turret can hit AB aHACs?

[Arrador]

You are so wrong about this :3

Considering Medium range Battleships are the counter to drake fleets... Its really easy to say that you're the one wrong about this. PL seems to be getting all the glory for their Pulse Abaddons, but the NC has been flying them and medium range BS's to counter Drake gangs from Evoke, Tri, and even PL when they had their short stay in Gem.

BS fleets have gone way of the dodo due to Bombers and AHACS. You want BS fleets to rule the grid? Give em more range and damage

[Hratli Smirks]

God at last they even think about changing it.
nano roam gang ? get drakes guys.
LR HAS ? get drakes guys.
AHACS ? get drakes guys.
Want to roam ? get drakes guys.

Seriously, drake gangs are an insult. It's like saying "Hey, come fight, we have a ship that can just own any HAC you throw at us, but we invest 5 times less money in PvP than you, and we just don't give a shit about ~~fun~~ because we can just spam missiles LOL"

you heard it here first, no ~~fun~~ allowed without 25m skillpoints

[Mr Coloredshirt]

That tempest fit (that can't keep range from drakes) is going the get alphad the fuck out, try again Aurora.