Topic: Devs: Why are drainers not considered Ewar?

If you look at the description of a drainer, it sounds like the quintessential description of an Ewar module (you hack in and steal the energy).  Yet drainers and neuts don't benefit from the long-range Ewar skill.

Taking light Ewar bots as an example, the Chameleon and Intakt have bonuses that both benefit from the long range skill, and yet Troiar pilots who spec drain do not get the benefits of this skill.

You might argue that you can use drains through a shield, but shield-specced Troiar (for example) have tremendous disadvantages.  Their material cost is very high.  You cannot farm high tier shield gear (as far as I know - someone tell me if I am wrong).  Most of all... if you are targetted by more than one individual your shield goes down pretty quickly (I'm using the Troiar/small shield example - not enough EP to test Icthus yet) and you usually don't have the slot for a backup armor repair.  The slow speed of the Troiar is already a pretty big negative.

As far as my experience goes, drainers are not very OP in any sense.  It would help a lot to balance the ewar bots if Troiar pilots could benefit from the longe range ewar skill.  Give Troiar some love.

Re: Devs: Why are drainers not considered Ewar?

Doesn't the Ictus get a range bonus to neuts and drains?  I would think that would suffice, as if they got both bonuses they would be super ranged on a well skilled Ictus.

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Re: Devs: Why are drainers not considered Ewar?

Neoxx wrote:

Doesn't the Ictus get a range bonus to neuts and drains?  I would think that would suffice, as if they got both bonuses they would be super ranged on a well skilled Ictus.

You're right looks like they do.  Easy way to fix that is to pull down the base range of medium drainers.  That way Ictus and Troiar could both benefit from the Ewar skill without having the super range issue with the Ictus you refer to.

4 (edited by Blorturmur 2010-12-29 00:08:17)

Re: Devs: Why are drainers not considered Ewar?

actually it looks like both bots (trojar and ictus) have a bonus to neut and drainer range.  I am surprised to see that they are not considered ewar though.  another thing is the trojar seems pretty gimped compared to the other light ewar bots in terms of number of available slots and and the intakt has bonuses to damage resists as well.  ill be in a trojar pretty soon so i guess ill see how good or bad they are.

Re: Devs: Why are drainers not considered Ewar?

Electronic vs energy warfare... semantics really.

I am Perpetuum's Most Dangerous Agent and an equal opportunity troll.
-> You just lost The Game <-
"Perpetuum sounds like a something I would stick up my *** for enjoyement." -Kaito Kurusaki

Re: Devs: Why are drainers not considered Ewar?

Ewar is the use of signals which jam, break or otherwise interfere with a targets ability to be effective. This includes hacking SAPs. Energy draining is a function of engineering and requires a physical connection (LOS) to the target where as Ewar (ECM, Suppression, Scanning) does not.

Draining and neutralizing are mechanical effects which interface with your target and draw energy not electroncs/signal effects. It makes perfect sense.

7 (edited by Kaito Kurusaki 2010-12-29 10:34:23)

Re: Devs: Why are drainers not considered Ewar?

Adding drains/neuts into the ewar category would actually be a big nerf. They would then be affected by the sensor strength (Which sounds wrong to begin with).

Honestly I think they need to rethink how ewar is balanced.