Hmmm interesting... I had not bothered to read this whole thread yet but this is quite fascinating.
As Cirrus stated already, the way MA designed this encounter gives Motherships all the leverage, they just haven't learned how to use it yet it seems.
MindArk can make all the plans and projections they want to but the reality is they can't predict exactly how things will actually pan out once released. I'd say they wanted to make sure that Motherships had the leverage on this encounter, but they wanted to avoid loads of players complaining that the Motherships were taking all the loot because they were way too powerful. So this is what they came up with. It's very interesting.
So there's 4 spawns of Repair Drones. If you had 2 gunners on each one, how fast would you be able to kill them off? What if you had 3 gunners on each one? Or 4 even? I heard you have like 18 Gunner seats on these Motherships, you could have 4-5 Gunners on each repair drone, how long would it take to kill them off?
Organization, coordination, teamwork... That is what you need. I bet you could kill those repair drones so fast you could probably deal the most damage on the Boss still. Pretty sure all MA wanted to do is make sure that Quads didn't feel completely left out of this. I mean imagine if they hadn't done it this way, imagine you had 2 or 3 Motherships there and the whole bit about the Repair Drones and the Burn damage shields didn't exist, how much damage would the Quads be able to get in on the Boss if it had 20-30 Gunners shooting at it? If I was in a Quad, seeing this, I'd be completely discouraged and I'd say this is an encounter designed for Motherships only... I'd probably only do it once or twice and leave, maybe come here and complain about it.
Motherships still have all the leverage though, they just have to learn how to use it. Case in point:
Privateers were given guns with 3 different damage types with the update.
The boss has a burn damage sheild that does not allow Mothership guns to damage the boss, while Privateers can bypass the shield with the different damage types, allowing them to damage the boss from start to finish.
If Motherships are restricted from shooting the boss, then what is the point?
If we just bring privateers to the event, then quads won’t be able to do the event either.
As it stands now, the other Mothership owners don’t want to do the event if they can’t damage the boss and get a fair share of the boss loot.
Currently, the only reason the majority of the Quads out there are able to do the event is because I have stationed Victory out there and am allowing all of them access to MS if requested.
But if MA does not give motherships the ability to have a fair chance at the boss, then I will just park Victory at Caly SS and use my Privateer to do the event with soc members.
So do it!! Leave your MS at Caly SS!! Let's see what happens then!
There is no point in motherships being there. So they wont go. Means the quad fighters there at the moment have no where to spawn on. Makes the event very soon privateer only.
Good!! Leave!! Don't bring your Mothership there!!
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And some will say what will happen is it will become a Privateer encounter. Ok fine, that's possible, but I don't think that's what MA intends so they will probably scramble to address it then.
I would offer a couple solutions to this:
A) Make the Repair Drone spawn dynamic, i.e. if there's only 1 Mothership on-grid, then only spawn 2 Repair Drones instead of 4, and only spawn them twice instead of 4 times.
And/or
B) Create a new type of Repair Drone which gives the boss shields against Electric damage. Make the Repair Drones alternate, i.e. 1 spawn of 4x Burn damage Repair Drones, then 1 spawn of 2x Electric damage Repair Drones and so on, let the players police themselves (i.e. if you don't help with killing the drones that prevent
us from shooting the boss then we won't help you kill the drones that prevent
you from shooting the boss either).
And/or
C) Motherships should also give buffs to anyone on their guest list when they are out in space fighting, that would give Motherships even more leverage (more control).
And/or
D) Let's have more spawns of this encounter so that if someone doesn't like the way this encounter is being run by the Motherships there they can go to a different one. EVE Online has dozens of Incursions running at the same time so I don't really understand why there has to be only 1 spawn for this.
I think C) and D) are a must no matter what. A) or B) may prove necessary at some point but I think more time is needed to see how this evolves, I think it's likely a balance will be found one way or another eventually.
Legends