Player Features and Ideas Discussion

When I started playing Eve a little more than a year ago, I fell into the same trap many newbies fall into when they first start out: not realizing you don't have to stick with your faction's ship. Unfortunately, I chose Gallente because green is my favorite color. A few months into playing, I realize how ****** Gall can be compared to other factions, and mainly because of how bad the current drone system is (I'm assuming hybrids have been fixed as much as they're going to be for the foreseeable future, so I'll leave them alone). So I've made a list of ideas that will make drones a more useful weapon system.

1) Increase the allowed number of drones in space (sub caps) from 5 to 10 or 15 and decrease the bandwidth usage of each drone and scale down the effectiveness of each drone appropriately. This would allow use to avoid situations like we have with the Myrmidon, where 75 bandwidth is more than we need for a flight of 5 medium drones, but not enough for 5 Heavy drones.

2) Small and medium sentry drones. Because few ships can get away with using sentries well due to their bandwidth requirement.

3) Our repertoire of combat drones is lacking variety. It would be nice to see different types of combat drones, like a drone type that boosts shield or armor strength, or a type that is more of a wing-man, flying slowly next to the mother-ship and doing more damage, but are easier to hit, or a type that fires missiles instead of guns (like small fighter-bombers). I really don't have enough creativity to come up with better ideas, but you get the idea. This would give us more options to explore with different fits, much like how we can explore different fits with missiles and guns.

4) Treat drones more like ammo. Let us "reload" drones from the cargo bay to the drone bay, like reloading a gun. Also like guns, this could take time. I would think 20 seconds would be appropriate, but that's what play testing is for.

5) Training for T2 Heavy and sentry drones is a huge waste of time, so decrease training times. Drones are rarely a primary source of damage, so why make them take almost as long as T2 large guns to train for?

My main idea is that drones should be very versatile, like the swiss army knife of weapon systems at the cost of having the enemy able to shoot them. If anyone else has any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

I like the idea of reloading drones and firing them. And yeah the training is quite ... errrrm tiresome to have unless you are dead concentrated to gallented ships.
+1

To the OP, your point 5 is completely wrong - in my Domi Navy Issue mission boat, I have one large gun to shoot rats to get aggro, and the rest of my dps then comes from a variety of T2 drones - sentries, heavies, mediums and lights all carried at the same time.

Sentries do act as your wingman anyway - get agrgo, drop sentries and orbit while making sure they don't take too much damage.

What I would like to see is the ability to change the damage a drone does - imagine they have a weapon bay themselves in which you can fit lasers, missiles, guns or whatever.

You could do this pre-Trinity (that's the big one I remember -- when the bandwidth was introduced.) 5x drones at a time are fine. If you want "more" drones on the field, train your skills and fly the drone boats.

Drone Interfacing --> +20% damage/level (hey look, your 5 drones on the field now hit as hard as 10)
Dominix --> +10% drone damage / level (hey look, your 5 drones on the field now hit as hard as 7.5)

Both stacked --> 5 * 1.5 * 2 = 15 (yes, this is simplified. Deal with it)

If having "15" drones on the field isn't enough for you ... well, then you've got to train into capital ships. Them's the ropes.



Working as intended. Sentries are large, stationary guns.



Shield/Armour drones --> see Logistics Drones. Sure, they don't work "on you" ... but you are fitting a tank anyway, right?
"Wingman" drones --> see Sentries.
"Missile Drones" --> no.

The "different fits" with missiles and guns are honestly as simple as "do I fit the HAMs, or the HMLs?" or "do I use the bigger*, slower-tracking guns and hit harder, but less often ... or the smaller* faster tracking ones and hit less hard, but more often?" This is akin to "do I bring 5 heavies, or 12 meds, or 25 lights?"

*Note that "bigger" and "smaller" are in reference to the "apparent" size of the turret --> e.g. 125mm railgun vs 150mm railgun.


No. Drone bays are limited in size for a reason.



Don't "waste" your time in training them then. Just don't cry when someone who has spent the time to train them comes to the party. And, honestly, a few months of training isn't that long overall -- I'm currently in the place where the skills I want to train are 30+ days each...

I would like to see all drones do omni-damage. It is time to de-nerf Acolytes and Hornets.

Also, there are far too many other ships with drone bays. Not every ******* BC needs to be able to field a flight of drones. I'm LOOKING AT YOU HURRICANE

1: Buff the myrmidon instead? I see absolutely no point with this change.

2: Who would ever use small or medium sentry drones? Both scout and medium drones are fast enough, not mentioning the ****** range these new sentries would have.

3: If you want a wingman find a friend to fly with. But more variety sure. Your ideas are not very good except making caldari drones fire missiles.

4: How about restricting your drones to your drone bay's size. It's called balance. Drone boats have more so they can utilize that to their advantage.

5: Everything you've said before point five is invalidated because you obviously know nothing about drones. I've never been a fan of T2 heavies but sentries are worth every second of training. Cross train to caldari so you don't have to you never can use a full flight of sentries, you don't deserve them.

Not sure if troll or serious, but you fail regardless. Combat drones are only used in missions (not counting fighters), and five isn't enough to get through most L4's in a reasonable time, if at all - drones die quick, recall/relaunch takes time, etc - you DO know this, right? All drone boats except non-Gal carriers are armor tanked too, which means you have to choose between tank and drone dmg boost. That's a massive handicap.



I don't have a problem with non-Gallante having drones *IF* dedicated drone boats were as capable as everything else. Other than a Myrm flown by a pretty decent SP char, drone boats stink for missions are useless in one-on-one PvP. Oh, and hybrids suck..cant never leave that out.

Light and medium drones get back in a hurry; sentries in an instant if you are near them. I am currently planning on using sentries in my CNR. I've been very happy with them in my Navy Domi in missions.


In a mission, you have to get familiar with spawns or call drones back quick. Drone buttons will be added in the future to make this easier. I set mine to a hot key: [R] is return to bay, [F] is fire on target, and [D] is drone reconnect. Note that [F] is notched and [R] is right above it, making them easy to find.

If your sentry drones are dieing too fast, consider navy drones. They cost more for less damage, but can tank a NPC BS. They also require less skills than T2 sentries.

Heavy drones are short range weapons; consistent with Gallente war philosophy. You get in blaster range, web, fire, and unleash the drones. You can then call them back quickly. This is more for PvP than PvE, really.


As for the Myrmidon, it's a nerf/buff. It is losing a turret and gaining a drone. The idea is to make it a stepping stone to the Dominix. Right now, a Vexor about matches it in damage, which should not be. It should have more tank and damage. This should also put it more in line with other BCs. I've long thought the Myrmidon should get back a 4th drone ever since they took it and the 5th away.

On the whole drones are excellent. It's just the dedicated drone ships that are a bit sad. Since more drones increases lag and lag is an abomination in the eyes of our spacelords, lets try and think of simpler solutions

I propose an experiment- instead of giving drone ships a bonus to drone hitpoints, how about giving them one for drone speed and signature radius? Those extra hitpoints never do much anyway, and a focus on evasion might make their combat abilities much more dynamic and situational which is always the heart of good fights.

what did i just hear? drones are never used in pvp? 5 are not enough to finish a l4 mission? drone boats are no good?
damn guy. do you even play the game?
oh here he is


shield ishtar, myrm and gila checking in, there is some flexibility in here. also why are domis so prevalent in missions? oh yeah "reasonable time" i bet you've never fit 350s to your domi, 450 drone dps + 350 or so from the rails. total cost of ship is less then your faction repper. i doubt your carebear cred!
and neut domis are never used for pvp. never, in fact they are so rare that i bet you've never heard of them. blaster domis with the 1k dps?
or the triple rep myrm? ac fit and 5 mediums that thing owns pretty much every other bc out there 1v1.

seriously though that was a very dumb post. you should be ashamed.
also fewer non gallente ships should have drones

oh and they are never used in the alliance tournaments or in gate/station camps