Ships & Modules

+1
But at least post it in the right forum.

To be completely honest the entire Drone UI needs some work. It's very weak as it stands.

Why can't i control my Drones without my mouse, for example? Drones are an integral part of many ships, yet the UI used to issue orders to them is both slow and clunky.

An easy example of the type of thing I'd like so see is if CCP took that Drones-In-Space Drop down we currently have, and allowed me to issue a Return to Drone Bay order by Shift-Clicking the Drone, a button i could press to have my Drones change targets without having to use the dedicated Drone UI, things like that. It would make fly Drone Boats much more about fighting Spaceships instead of Fighting the UI.

Escape -> Shortcuts -> Drones already provides multiple command bindings for the keyboard, but if you want more than that, at least for the moment, you'll need to look outside the proverbial box. For example you can download, install, and use a program called AutoHotkey which will allow you to write some fairly powerful scripts for your computer. It's probable that, at least with some work, practice, and intuition, you could create a script to do much of what you want.

Please just bear in mind that while the usage of AutoHotkey in and of itself and for "simple" scripting like this won't cause adverse reactions by staff members of the game using it to whole-hog automate your client (in effect to use it to make a "macro-miner" script) would violate the ToS/EULA and, if detected and confirmed, result in your account being banned. I provide this warning not to scare you off from using it, I've been using it for years for low-level input manipulation in many MMOs including EVE, but to make sure you understand that not all uses of it are "okay" by the staff.

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Having said that though I'll say that this, the topic at hand, is something that needs to be brought back into the game. This functionality was removed from the game roughly around the same time fleet mechanics started getting overhauled, IIRC, and at around that time I believe it was stated that some people at CCP were working on restoring it. That was, however, several years ago. Frankly I want to say around 4 years, but I don't honestly know for sure.

Other things that drones need work with are:
#1 : Drone AI still loses focus and ignores focus fire settings resulting in having 2, sometimes 3, different "groups" of drones attacking multiple targets even when they should be attacking a single target.

#2 : Drone attack priorities should be at least minimally controllable by players. We shouldn't have to rely on personal observations, guesswork, and what "a friend of a friend of some guy who played the game for 8 years who knew a girl who played it left-handed using her cat for a mouse" said to determine how our drones will prioritize incoming targets in the event that we can't, or in the case of AFK mission runners won't, give them orders. Being able to dictate just two criteria of chosing the next target, size and distance from us, would be a major help.

#3 : This one is really a minor tweak, but it needs to be done. "Drone control range" as a concept needs to be removed from the game because it's an utter crock of crap. Rename it to "object interaction range" and I'd be happy, but "drone control range" is taken as-is a lie perpetrated by CCP and generally accepted by the community. Here is why I say that.

Example 1 : Drones generally automatically start attacking things that attack you, but if the target is outside of your "control range" they won't attack it. You aren't controlling the drones, their built-in AI (or what passes for it at least) does and logically if a battleship is attacking you from 100km a drone should go out on it's uncontrolled, automatic merry way and attack that target even though your control range should only let you manually dictate targets out to Xkm. This in and of itself is a minor example, but it illustrates just where the concepts of player control and in-universe mechanics break down a bit. I'm not arguing against the mechanical constraints that prevent players' drones from attacking targets outside of their "control range," just that by drones not being able to operate independantly outside of that range, in effect outside of your control, it creates a scenario that doesn't make sense.

Example 2 : Sentry drones have both unlimited (except by practical constraints inherent to all ships in EVE) and limited "control" ranges. A normal combat drone can only be sent out to attack targets so far away from your ship, and if that target is outside of your "control range" they are inviolate. As far as that goes that's not necessarily a bad thing. However sentry drones break down a bit here.

A sentry drone can sit just 1.5km off of your ship, well within the control range, with a 120km optimal attack range, but if your target isn't inside of your "control range" they won't attack it. Your drones are clearly within your control range and you should logically be able to control them, but because your target isn't inside that range you can't actually tell them to attack it. This is one of the more frustrating "lies" about DCR currently in the game.

On a lighter note it does allow for more comedic effects too. If you were to, for example, have a fleet camping a gate and you were to all drop sentry drones out 80km off of the gate while all your ships were clustered up on the gate you could, without fitting control range mods or rigs, have your drones attack any target that jumps into the system that you can lock. Since whether or not your sentry drones attack the target is determined by the distance from your ship, not the drone, you can have practical applications like this or impractical ones where you have sentry drones 200km+ from your ship attacking targets you dictate that are 20km from your ship. The sentry drones are clearly outside of your "control range," but since the targets are within your "control range" it's all fine.

/shrugs. Not having to deploy drones to see determine damaged and the drone AI manipulation ideas are more important than "DCR."