Missions & Complexes

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Send a t1 light drone drone against a far away target, when the NPC frigates attack it, deploy four sentries and kill the NPC frigates that now have minimal transversal relative to the sentries?

Or go with Plan B and get a Vargur/Mach and kill the frigates early with the 800 ACs.

When i heard CCP was messing with the NPC AI i figured drone grinder and i was right.

I can use alot of ships to run lvl 4s so ill find one that works, but i sure do love my drone boats, figures CCP makes a great drone mod then pisses all over drones a month later.

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Give me a way to repair drones in the bay. Gimme a way to carry a lot of spares. Gimme a way to launch/recall/change their configuration fast. And then i wont mind AI change.
For the love of god make them normal weapon system first and **** them up after, not the other way around.

Everyone seems only to be concerned about the effect on AFK drone boats.. what about those who venture into 10/10 plex's.. they going to have to do some careful planning to do them now..

allegedly this fix was introduced to "fix" DED farming, it has !@#*)@ to do with highsec lvl4s, you cant "farm" lvl4s since NPCs do not respawn. unless you are botting, in which case botters never use drone ships, they use drakes.

On some DED plexes NPCs do respawn, so people would park drone boats and go to work, sleep, or jack off. and the sentries would play the game for them, with no need to "bot". just using the built in drone agro mechanics. now that's "AFK missioning" .

and by afk i mean " AWAY from keyboard" as in watching tv in the next room, or making dinner. that's NOT the same as dropping sentries after getting aggro, by any stretch of the imagination.

people need to understand that AFK strictly means AWAY FROM KEYBOARD, as in NOT PLAYING.

if you bother to consider completion time, missioning on a domi while you read the newspaper is the exact same as blitzing on nightmare... and for the love of god don't try to claim that clicking red crosses and hitting F1, F2, F3 requires your attention or i will slap you.




now, how does this affect drone support? it doesn't at all. a machariel can still clear room in under 2 minutes with 10+ sentries assigned. a sniping gila/ishtar can still do anything on pve short of sleeper sites. and a ndomi can still volley battleships... sooo.... who gets screwed by this changes?

the noob highsec corp who goes with a fleet to try a lvl 4 with a noobfitted execuror as logi + a megathron as tank and a bunch of cruisers. yeah, those guys, you might laugh at them for getting exited after clearing a lvl4, but guess what, WE NEED THEM.

those are the only guys affected, and those guys CCP is screwing over. and it is only because this change negatively impacts THEIR game experience why this change is mind-numbingly stupid.

why CCP is going forward with this change is beyond me... do NPCs feel "stupid" yeah, thy do... would it be awesome if NPC flew Actual Ships, with fittings, and had some basic ai and present a real challenge to players? yeah ofc that would be awesome, and pretty much any player will agree with that idea, but this is stupid. the ONLY people affected by this change are the noobs who this game desperately needs to keep playing!

Its not the new npc ai that is the issue, its the drone mechanics itself, seeing that the have tweaked blasters and (now incoming) missiles now, i hope time has come for drones. And it would be much smarter to realease a new npc ai before new drone mechanics to see just how bad drone control truly is.

Also, hope the new ai uses defender missiles more :)

It wasn't a long time since I was completely new to EVE, with new assets and teaming up with a bunch of guys just like me. Guess what, I didn't cared that much for ISK those mission ops net me (new player come for spaceships, not ISK grind, and they stay for the game that has more to offer), it was a new and somewhat challenging (unless assisted by vets) thing to do. We usually had more experienced pilot to go and tank the room and in the end it feels like you are a leech. Now with "noobified" T1 logi cruisers people can do some L4s with a BC+cruiser gangs with such logis and I assure you, they'll be able to pull it off, get some ISK and, most importantly, have fun. Organizing fleets, communicate, get some practice with some gang roles (including FC and logi), and do that before you have assets to run incursions (quite honestly, by that time player psychology changes, becoming grindy, and such endevaour isn't that enjoyable anymore; while people who are interested in PvP are gone to their stuff by then, so this part of content is lost on them too). One little problem, without slightly more "brilliant" AI such fleets would be as dumb as they are now.

So I'd say that cooperative newbs will be winners in this kind of situation, while content will be providing a hint that soloing in EVE may seem more efficient, but only cooperation can net enjoyment and s*** getting actually done.

Personally, I don't see a huge problem with this change. It happened to my drones to get FRA due to me sucking, but how many of them I lost? Like 3-4 hobs since Inferno launch? Also, quick glance to WH section netted me some coments from local (or should I say "no-local"?) folks who run sleeper sites with Rattlesnake+logi (no, logi is there not to rep drones, so calm your beard) pair instead of ever-present tengus and are perfecty fine with it?

That said, would be nice to have a bit better drone interface.

I have a question (maybe stupid, I have not tried this patch on the test server) - how this targeting change will affect L4 missions or 0.0 sec anomalies/plexes. I do not have such epic skills or faction fitted ships but lets say I am in battleship. I do not have problems with other npc BS/BC's but cruisers and especialy frigates are problem because I can not destroy (even hit) them with my guns/missiles. So I use drones to kill them, first of all those who scramble.

How it will be different now? Do my drones kill those small targets or they die trying this? I can imagine a situation where my ship will be scrambled by a small npc ships which I could not hit with my guns/missiles and all my drones died so .. :/