Feedback about drone update

[SpritHunter]

Hello,
I have a couple of questions about the drone update:

The current pumpkin drone heavily buffs the ships with rockets, however what about the Aim Scrambler item being used against a ship with Aim Computers? Or even, considering how "good" ( its very bad ) the aim scrambler is currently, the buffs to pumpkin drone will make it even worse, was this considered?

The assassin drone heavily pushes ships with an aim pc ahead as you can use a gold aim pc and get more damage, while ships that do not have it, again are left behind, not to mention usually aim pc is paired with rockets.

I thought about these issues and I managed to come up with some solutions, as I have previously worked in game design:

1. Remove the cryo drone and make it a passive cryo booster for everyone that has it. There are a lot of drones in the game which puts pressure on the drones. Why should you give up a drone for a thing that is as little as 10% more cryonite? It somewhat made sense when there were 5 drones but now not really.
2. Change the fan drone nerf to just a 10% - 10% as it is now. Nerfing it weakens ships that have average armor and average damage without an aim pc, if you wish to buff individual drones, do so by increasing the Armor and damage drones to 17.5%. It pushes out ships like Hunter, Hornfels or support ships.
3. If you wish to increase the Pumpkin drone to such a high amount, and keep the assassin drone as the same, please buff the Aim Scrambler to be a good item, right now it barely works. Imagine a ship that relies on Aim Scrambler to survive ( VQ, Pitchstone ) having to fight a anything with an aim PC and rockets, constantly hitting critical rockets through the item that is supposed to counter it all along.
4. Why not buff the RDX CD drone from 7.5% to 15%? This is a great opportunity to also buff ships that do not rely on rockets or critical hits ( Hunter, VQ etc ) and also settle the Speed Actuator vs R99 armor issue as any Speed Actuator ship could safely upgrade to the R99 armor while using the CD drone and having peak CD reduction as the R95 armor and a passive bonus.

Please, do consider these solutions and do not change what is not broken as lately these changes make more issues as you are making some items weaker ( tank items : scrambler ) and making Aim PCs and Rockets, even stronger. You do not need to please everyone but do not make completely overpowered ships and item combinations while others are crying in a corner.

 

[NosferatuZodd]

I really liked the update. This change in drones will bring much greater variety in how to fight, alternating drones for specific situations, as well for different play styles.
Furthermore, it's good to see that the developers are paying attention to making really significant changes to items and not just little imperceptible balances. I hope you devs are too thinking about significant changes to the various useless components in the future

 

[SpritHunter]

I really liked the update. This change in drones will bring much greater variety in how to fight, alternating drones for specific situations, as well for different play styles.
Furthermore, it's good to see that the developers are paying attention to making really significant changes to items and not just little imperceptible balances. I hope you devs are too thinking about significant changes to the various useless components in the future

There's no variety, they literally just made any ship with Aim PC and / or Rockets very strong. Aim Scrambler does not work well at all, the strong one is the only one that somewhat worked, but now it has to face 24% more hit chance, usually combined with an aim PC.
How do you think damage dealing scales for a ship like Hunter or Hornfels works with a 15% damage, armor and speed vs a Parag or Obsi using 30% critical hit, 24% accuracy and 15% damage?
You literally get critically hit consistently and there's nothing you can do about it on ships like Hornfels, VQ, Hunter, CC, Black Opal, BG, Pitchstone, Emperor, Poenari, Marlstone. You just scale so much worse compared to Thunderbird, Parag, Parsec, Lava, Scorpion, Obsidian. What drones are you supposed to pick on Hunter to stay competitive against an Obisidian or Lava? Armor to increase your weak HP by 15%? Pumpkin drone to have your blaster hit more often? Assassin drone to have your blaster and SB sometimes hit a critical? Very useful compared to Obisidian's arsenal.

 

[NosferatuZodd]

There's no variety, they literally just made any ship with Aim PC and / or Rockets very strong. Aim Scrambler does not work well at all, the strong one is the only one that somewhat worked, but now it has to face 24% more hit chance, usually combined with an aim PC.
How do you think damage dealing scales for a ship like Hunter or Hornfels works with a 15% damage, armor and speed vs a Parag or Obsi using 30% critical hit, 24% accuracy and 15% damage?
You literally get critically hit consistently and there's nothing you can do about it on ships like Hornfels, VQ, Hunter, CC, Black Opal, BG, Pitchstone, Emperor, Poenari, Marlstone. You just scale so much worse compared to Thunderbird, Parag, Parsec, Lava, Scorpion, Obsidian. What drones are you supposed to pick on Hunter to stay competitive against an Obisidian or Lava? Armor to increase your weak HP by 15%? Pumpkin drone to have your blaster hit more often? Assassin drone to have your blaster and SB sometimes hit a critical? Very useful compared to Obisidian's arsenal.

Okay let's talk about this.
First, if you're talking about PVE I don't have much to comment on, so I'll talk about PVP. The aim scrambler works very well and is one of the best defensive items that exist if used well, which is why many ships with aim scrambler are used in conquests such as poenari, veiled, pitchstone, as aim scrambler allows it to withstand an enemy focus very well unlike other defensive ones, in addition to being extremely strong when combined with an allied or own protector.
You said that the aim/missile is OP, but in what context? Hunter has always been a deadly ship in duels if used correctly, and in conquests 10x10 25x25 , orbital combos are often prioritized over aim/missiles. Parsec for example is rarely used in conquest10x10 as the priority is veiled, obsidian equally as it has little armor and has no other defensive item than repair, and the lava competes with ships with orbitals in terms of orbital/aim-missile/hybrid formations.
In what context do you say that a aim/missile is op?
You said that : what drones must be chosen to remain competitive. As previously sayed, it will depend on the situation. No one competitive player uses actually just 3 drones, most use more than that and switch between them depending on the moment of the fight.
Regarding variety. It is basically affected by what are commented in the previous paragraph, alternating drones is a practice of competitive players with movements fast enough to do it efficiently during a fight. In conquests for example, with this change it may be possible, for significantly skilled players, to can use previously little-used ships, using this mechanic to extract the ship's maximum potential in a fight.

 

[SpritHunter]

Okay let's talk about this.
First, if you're talking about PVE I don't have much to comment on, so I'll talk about PVP. The aim scrambler works very well and is one of the best defensive items that exist if used well, which is why many ships with aim scrambler are used in conquests such as poenari, veiled, pitchstone, as senal allows it to withstand an enemy focus very well unlike other defensive ones, in addition to being extremely strong when combined with an allied or own protector.
You said that the aim/missile is OP, but in what context? Hunter has always been a deadly ship in duels if used correctly, and in conquests 10x10 25x25 , orbital combos are often prioritized over aim/missiles. Parsec for example is rarely used in conquest10x10 as the priority is veiled, obsidian equally as it has little armor and has no other defensive item than repair, and the lava competes with ships with orbitals in terms of orbital/aim-missile/hybrid formations.
In what context do you say that a aim/missile is op?
You said that : what drones must be chosen to remain competitive. As previously sayed, it will depend on the situation. No one competitive player uses actually just 3 drones, most use more than that and switch between them depending on the moment of the fight.
Regarding variety. It is basically affected by what are commented in the previous paragraph, alternating drones is a practice of competitive players with movements fast enough to do it efficiently during a fight. In conquests for example, with this change it may be possible, for significantly skilled players, to can use previously little-used ships, using this mechanic to extract the ship's maximum potential in a fight.

Funnily enough I was talking about PvP mostly. I hope you will enjoy Paragneiss spam along with Obisidians. Scrambler is useless in PvP as most ships use Orbitals or an Aim PC. Good luck using anything but strong aim scrambler in PvP and even that now has to face the 24% pumpkin drone. I think you have no clue what you are talking about. VQ is barely used in CQs, most people use Lava/ Hornfels / Parag / CC. Hunter is rarely used. You have no clue what you are talking about, look at Askone's OTBs to see what people use for real.
The long scrambler will literally be countered completely by using a pumpkin drone which most ships with rockets will use.
Balanced one will become the old long and the strong the old balanced.
What is a Hunter supposed to do vs a Parag? Poke it with SBs when the Parag can do the same but with an aim PC on, and actually crit half the HP of a Hunter? Oh and the Parag has a turret too.

Also good luck switching drones when they lag the game.

 

[NosferatuZodd]

' You have no clue what you are talking about '. bro i have been playing conquest for 4 years without breaks, since the old system(25x25), until the 5x5 then 10x10 fleet conquests in gaia, and finally OTBs when releasead and 10x10 fleet conquests weekly. With more than 400 cqs played i think i should have at least a small clue about what i'm saying no? OTB isnt all that exists and i dont believe that obsidians will be spammed as hornfels exists to counter their combo

 

[Vesperion]

You have no clue what you are talking about, look at Askone's OTBs to see what people use for real.

I think i can fairly say if anything is about PvP i have way less clue about stuff in case of PvP but regardles of that you can not really try to force a player to compare the Servers to each other.

What counts for Askone in case of ship usage during CQ/OTB must not count for other Servers and so the focus may be a different one as players on another server may have other tastes so that the 100% chance items like OS; Mine or Bomb are not that much present in CQ/OTB as in Askone for whatever reason.

In the end what i see is that Split did for whatever reason tweak the effects of the drones again hence no one has asked for it at any point. Long story short is simply that it doesn´t really matter if a ship has an Aim Scram or not cus no matter how powerfull the Scram would be made in the moment OS; Mine or Bombs are involved the Scram has 0% chance to avoid such an attack at all.

So even if Split would implent an "Mirage drone" to increase the chance to avoid an attack it would still not protect you against those items and so only would help eventually against the other weapons.

 

[SpritHunter]

' You have no clue what you are talking about '. bro i have been playing conquest for 4 years without breaks, since the old system(25x25), until the 5x5 then 10x10 fleet conquests in gaia, and finally OTBs when releasead and 10x10 fleet conquests weekly. With more than 400 cqs played i think i should have at least a small clue about what i'm saying no? OTB isnt all that exists and i dont believe that obsidians will be spammed as hornfels exists to counter their combo

I didn't mean to say you don't know what you are talking about right now, but I am pretty sure the game will just shift towards taking advantage of the assassin drone and pumpkin combos. Hornfels can counter Obisidian , but cant do much against Parags, especially more than 1. Tell me what you can do against a team full of Parags and Herons please, other than using the same ships.

 

[NosferatuZodd]

I didn't mean to say you don't know what you are talking about right now, but I am pretty sure the game will just shift towards taking advantage of the assassin drone and pumpkin combos. Hornfels can counter Obisidian , but cant do much against Parags, especially more than 1. Tell me what you can do against a team full of Parags and Herons please, other than using the same ships.

This is a topic that is a little outside the context of the update, but here we go. It doesn't matter if they changed the drones or not, parageneiss in OTB is broken and that's it. It's because what? Because the repair turret is broken. I myself have already sent tickets talking about this to the developers to make some changes to the repair turret ... Luckily, in Gaia, at least in most of the conquests I've been to, they often don't use the parageneis cancer spam except in tau ceti. However, as said, this is another problem and it is independent of drones, it is something that should be reviewed by the developers at some point.

 

[hektor.barbossa]

Fan drone 10/10 nerf to 7.5/7.5 is bad.
Rest buff really good
More,more that good updates ^ ^

I have more important question :
When be alloy buff ?
Is only pve so shall no one cry that is too op XD

 

[KingSub]

Hello,
I have a couple of questions about the drone update:

The current pumpkin drone heavily buffs the ships with rockets, however what about the Aim Scrambler item being used against a ship with Aim Computers? Or even, considering how "good" ( its very bad ) the aim scrambler is currently, the buffs to pumpkin drone will make it even worse, was this considered?

The assassin drone heavily pushes ships with an aim pc ahead as you can use a gold aim pc and get more damage, while ships that do not have it, again are left behind, not to mention usually aim pc is paired with rockets.

I thought about these issues and I managed to come up with some solutions, as I have previously worked in game design:

1. Remove the cryo drone and make it a passive cryo booster for everyone that has it. There are a lot of drones in the game which puts pressure on the drones. Why should you give up a drone for a thing that is as little as 10% more cryonite? It somewhat made sense when there were 5 drones but now not really.
2. Change the fan drone nerf to just a 10% - 10% as it is now. Nerfing it weakens ships that have average armor and average damage without an aim pc, if you wish to buff individual drones, do so by increasing the Armor and damage drones to 17.5%. It pushes out ships like Hunter, Hornfels or support ships.
3. If you wish to increase the Pumpkin drone to such a high amount, and keep the assassin drone as the same, please buff the Aim Scrambler to be a good item, right now it barely works. Imagine a ship that relies on Aim Scrambler to survive ( VQ, Pitchstone ) having to fight a anything with an aim PC and rockets, constantly hitting critical rockets through the item that is supposed to counter it all along.
4. Why not buff the RDX CD drone from 7.5% to 15%? This is a great opportunity to also buff ships that do not rely on rockets or critical hits ( Hunter, VQ etc ) and also settle the Speed Actuator vs R99 armor issue as any Speed Actuator ship could safely upgrade to the R99 armor while using the CD drone and having peak CD reduction as the R95 armor and a passive bonus.

Please, do consider these solutions and do not change what is not broken as lately these changes make more issues as you are making some items weaker ( tank items : scrambler ) and making Aim PCs and Rockets, even stronger. You do not need to please everyone but do not make completely overpowered ships and item combinations while others are crying in a corner.

Sooner or later there will be changes one way or another. But I think it's good that 'we' can talk about it as a server, even in public chat. In korell, unfortunately, people only complain about it in the style of "don't change a running system". I am open to change and improvements. Maybe some players will manage to finish tc4 now so that the dev team can release a new devshack

 

[hektor.barbossa]

If You look on time kill npc [ no i am not pvp player XD ] then reduction Fan drone is not so big deal if You can now have more critical what give faster kills.
But if You look that ppl pay for fan drone as best double stat drone,then is not so right see now nerf it ...

 

[ben1982]

i think u r all bad and these drone updates are actually verygud
i mightve huffed a bit too much copium ...might have

 

[Hecatte]

Well hello there kind lovely pirate galaxy enjoyer friends.
It's so amazing to have witnessed this update but there are some things that I disagree with and I am going to say my humble opinion in the following:
Spaceball Fan Drone:
Despite given buffs and nerfs on most of the drones, Spaceball Fan Drone received one of the biggest nerfs. It's just wrong logic after almost 8 years at most where this drone had both armor and damage on max level 10%. Now after this update fan drone is totally useless because the 'singular drones as you call them' received an immense buff, which forces you to totally ignore spaceball and focus more on armor and damage ones. Again, is just wrong logic in this scenario because most of players did either buy OR do that spaceball event in order to get the maximum level for it and have the right use of it just in the end bringing this 'nerf' to them, forcing to change everything by night. On the other hand, the 'singular' drones should have remained the same way they are instead buffing them more, almost making them close to a lower armor or damage buff. So in the end, my only request would be to revert the buffs and nerfs on spaceball fan and singular drones, making them the same way they were before.
Assassin Drone:
Well this drone mostly was only 5% before 2020 after there was introduced the Spaceball 2k20 one (10% crit and speed but I am not going to talk about it). After 2020 it received a slight buff to 10% being the same way as 2k20 one but still wasn't used at most because 2k20 was just better in every way. Now after todays update, 30% for a single drone especially such as a crit one is just way too much because it can actually cause imbalances for aim computer ships (most of people do use strong aim computer for higher crit chance) + ones that do have orbitals or aggrobombs... I guess I don't need to explain what will happen from now.
Alien Pumpkin Drone:
Well similar way to assassin drone, pumpkin drone at first was 5% until 2021 (it got buffed to 7.5%) where there was introduced Pirate fan drone (at first it had 5% hit chance and 5% cooldown). Well like it was mentioned above by Sprit Hunter.. aim scrabmler ships are going to be negleted entirely now considering the fact that now Pumpkin Drone received alone 24% buff and Pirate Drone 12% hit chance (5% cooldown still because why not btw), causing aim scrambler to be totally worthless against aim computer ships that are using one of these 2 drones yet to not forget that aim scrambler wasn't very effective since 2017 but that is another topic to be discussed in a different thread.

This is everything I had to say about these changes and I would love to be taken in consideration.
P.S: I am quite sure Hgus is going to disagree with what I said in here like he has done in past months but never bring an argument about why. Don't dislike this post aswell my friend (I know you will ).

Kind Regards,
Podatte

 

[Aslesa]

I'll just say that i strongly dislike the nerf on the fan drones. As a maniac that has completed the fotball event 100% once it just feels wasted at this point. Let "premium" event/gold drones stay the same. Dont reduce their value after people have either put in much effort or spent real money to get them to max level.

Assassin drone seems a bit too powerfull, specially in cq/otb whit loads of strong rockets and os. Combine Assassin and Pumpkin and you have a permanent (but weak) aim computer. It will ruin many peoples day, specially thoose who love aim scramblers.

Also i agree on some other post earlier like just make "Pirate Galaxy PLUS Members" get a fixed 10% cryonite boost whit this new drone setup. Its now up to a point where there is more viable drones and you need more of them on the ship to make use of all the singular stat drones.

 

[Gadget2k10]

Fuming about the fan drone recdution, that 2.5% nerf make a adifference, why would you change something thats wasn't broke?

Yet again SS not listening to their customers or suggestions but instead making it more pay to win, you;re oinly hurting your own pockets becuase you are losing players. typical behavour, when something good it gets nerfed, when soemthing rubbish or not popular it gets buffed.

if you want us to use single drones rather than them collecting dust in the hanmger, then why not open up more dron slots? we have capacity for 6 but can only use 3 at a time? what's all that about ??

 

[SpritHunter]

In the end what i see is that Split did for whatever reason tweak the effects of the drones again hence no one has asked for it at any point. Long story short is simply that it doesn´t really matter if a ship has an Aim Scram or not cus no matter how powerfull the Scram would be made in the moment OS; Mine or Bombs are involved the Scram has 0% chance to avoid such an attack at all.

So even if Split would implent an "Mirage drone" to increase the chance to avoid an attack it would still not protect you against those items and so only would help eventually against the other weapons.

Thats what I am saying: scrambler helps ships against blasters, rockets, sniper blasters and stickybombs. Not against Orbitals, Mines, Bombs. Now you can enjoy any ship with an Aim PC hitting through your scrambler because you got a drone giving you 24% more accuracy. Most Aim PC ships have rockets, so you cannot say those didnt get much stronger against Scramblers. Like 24% stronger. Assassin drone is a huge damage buff to ships with Aim PC as well. I am talking purely PvP here, if it wasnt obvious.

Here's a solution:
- increase Aim Scrambler cooldown by 20 seconds.
- Increase duration by 5 seconds for all variants.
- Increase Strong scrambler strength by 60%, Balanced by 30% and Long by 15%.
- Add Evasion drone giving 3% evasion per level.

I tested some things out and fired 100 balanced blaster shoots at a sirius VQ using sirius balanced scrambler with pumpkin drone ( max lvl) and balanced sirius aim pc.
Out of the 100 shoots, all during the scrambler 82 hit and the rest missed. I wonder how nice the VQ's enormous HP will feel that when I also put assassin drone.
I will repeat this tomorrow, but why is an item designed to stop some items not stopping them? It wouldnt be overpowered as Thermos, Bombs, Orbitals, Chains etc can still kill you easily, and even if it was close to 100% chance to miss on strong variants, you can still die or get stunned.

If you do not believe me, go to Erebos LZ using TC gold aim pc and pumpkin drone and fight the Grifters, their aim scrambler works better than strong of lower systems. ( you will see it doesnt work anymore)

 

[HGus]

Smart people learn and adapt to changes.

It seems some people want to continue exploiting the flaws of the old system.

 

[Vesperion]

If you do not believe me, go to Erebos LZ using TC gold aim pc and pumpkin drone and fight the Grifters, their aim scrambler works better than strong of lower systems. ( you will see it doesnt work anymore)

Tbf it is known that since several years the Scram for players is broken and needs way more love then any other item. I don´t know when exactly the Scram was nerfed into the ground by Split but there is a reason why (at least on the Askone Server) not many players use a ship that has an Scram in the loadout as during the run time it maybe helps to avoid 2-3 attacks and so not makes any real difference if RNGesus is in a bad mood.

All i remember is the times when Scram was actually doing its job and did make a ship nearly impossible to be hit if no PC was active as it was the actuall counter to the Scram.

What i mean here is that even the Sniper Blaster with active PC and drone (if we take Para who has such a combo) can miss a Mantis/Ancient/Pirate unit that has an active Scram while for players it seem not to count at all as in the times was flying in OTBs at least i never have seen that a Sniper Blaster misses a player who uses an active Scram.

 

[Hecatte]

Smart people learn and adapt to changes.

It seems some people want to continue exploiting the flaws of the old system.

Is this why you never reached sirius in askone and mostly erebos in whatever server you play ?