Missions & Complexes

no but I was primarily thinking of level 4s and higher end ships, scooping sentries only requires paying a little attention. also with a mjd and wardens you can semi afk pretty well, have to watch the frigs a bit though as they tend to get under the guns pretty easily. That said it probably sucks for people trying to run missions in vexors/arbitrators/myrmidons, but I cba to go and run some level 2/3 missions to see how bad.





Mediums have been broken for ages, although they had to break them to get people to use light drones. Heavies are slow very slow, they have always been inefficient. I only use them on angel missions because bouncers don't hit ships orbiting under 10km very well, and so far I haven't had an issue.

at 30km sentries should be able to deal with it, and if it spawns 15km away it will be sub 10k rather shortly you should be able to safely use light drones then.

>it only hurts afk drone boats
Untrue, the devs even said the worst case to afk domis was no change, probably even easier.

>just recall drones
Great, until they fix that acknowledged bug

>Use sentries
They're kind of an advanced platform - that's a bit like saying use a T3, not a viable answer imo.


This has eliminated drones as anything beyond a 5-10km platform (except sentries). Again, this hasn't caused me a problem as such but I can confirm it's added absolutely zero to my playing experience beyond making certain missions where drones were a specific counter (ewar heavy) a hassle.

I've just stopped using them, they don't bring enough to the party to merit the 500k gamble every time they stray beyond the shortest ditance possible. The slowdown in mission completion time isn't noticeable, but not replacing drones is.

For goodness sakes get a sense of perspective.

There is more to life than level 4s. Sentry drones have a pretty lengthy training time to get into the decent ones.
I don't fly drone boats but I'm kinda glad I didnt - perhaps I was more "skilled" in not picking a drone ship?

It's eliminated a decent counter to massive EWAR, beyond that it's eliminated some fun, added a bunch of hassle which I personally have simply replaced with prescision weapons/T3 comedy train.

"Skill" (trained or otherwise) has absolutely nothing to do with it, if your drones are more than about 10km out, they're dead already on a target switch. That's not "skill", that's an arbitrary distance beyond which anything not a sentry is useless. Sure, I can use "skill" and just not bother, but again. what did that add to the game?

It doesnt affect me at all, a 30 second per pocket speed bump if that, but I can understand dedicated drone boats problems and the people not rolling over level 4s at high skilll levels. That it doesnt affect me significantly does not mean that I can't understand and empathise with other peoples issues.

I just don't see what benefit this added, except to expose to horror of current drone UI/mechanics/interface.


Edit: As I sit, with my feet up and a cat on my lap draining a beer whilst I watch my ship obliterate the mission contents, all but immortal, I find the concept of "skill" all the more hilarious. I press more keys mining.

If they are light and you are really paying attention... they got a chance. So to reiterate, again, this change very clearly illustrates that medium and heavy drones are completely obsolesced (its a word, but I cant spell it) by the changes. Sentry drones are just fine, and light drones have a margin of usefulness.


So lets take a look just to Illustrate back one of our cases, not for drone ships but for missions (all types, so counting explorations etc...even though you wouldnt do them with this example ship just stay with me fellas, dont flame) and for this example I am going to use a Raven.

The raven's main weapon compliment is cruise missiles, "good" for battleships, "fair" for battlecruisers, middling to poor on cruisers sans target painter. Borderline worthless on frigates.

Raven's drone compliment: 75 m3/ 75m3
Everyone has always used light drones to take out frigates.... so we can say you keep one flight of light drones.
75-25= 50 remaining bandwidth.
Since the anti-cruiser assistance you desperately need should be facilitated by medium drones it would be logical to carry 5 of them to fill that remaining bandwidth AND what I believe it was initially designed to fit in that area.

T2 mediums would just be fodder for cruisers to blow up so your light drones now have to do double duty.

so do you just get 2 more flights of light drones to replace ones lost in the course of the mission? Counterproductive, you start losing drones and you are cutting into your income. Secondarily if you load 2 sentries it will give you a bit more umph but that just goes in to point out the idocracy we find ourselves in. This is not a drone boat but it has little options.

Effectively as it stands now you could make it just have 25 m3 bandwidth and give it 75m3 storage if you want it to only launch lights now and for that matter the person will probably be better off in a heavy missile drake. Way to force people back toward a drake, since at least it will be able to bring more firepower to bear on cruisers, frigates, and battlecruisers.

Thanks to Morrigan LeSante for helping me make this point.


Found this in "A drone pilot wishlist" thread in suggestions thought it was hilarious:

I really don't know why you want to do this. Have you any clue, just one iota of how hard pvp is when compared to missions?The average 'bear will lose ships on a daily basis when faced with this. Remember when incursions came out? Great pve content, don't get me wrong, but pvp like in nature and one of the main rules you'd hear was don't try unless you have pvp experience. Now throw your average 'bear into that, see what happens.

What is the medium or heavy drones positive side?

Or are you from the camp that you don't rely on drones and so others shouldn't need to either. (Btw I don't use drones on my Tengu either.)

Don't want to step on toes but here goes,
1. Drones do not need ammo, they are ammo, so as ammo they should deplete.
2. The only other ammo in the game that does not deplete are T1 crystals, but they cost capacitor, so a drawback still exists.
3. Drones have all damage types covered, so once again better than lasers and comparable to all other ammo but do not deplete.
4. Drones skills are not genus based (they apply to all races)

I don't want to go on for fear of sounding like a lunatic, but these 4 reasons should be more than enough to nerf them in some way. But essentially ammo is the cost of earning ISK, winning fights, or holding ground, with drones there is little to no cost for unlimited earnings.

I came back to eve after a 1 year to 1,5 year pause. And even though the new AI sucks at various points (tracking disrupters anyone ?), my good old Navy Dominix is still the ship of choice.

The new Drone dmg mods, which had not been around last time i played increase my t2 sentry DPS to 640 - 800 (depending on type). The new AI doesn't full stage aggro and sometimes even shoots drones with battleships, thus i could decrease my tank from dual rep with 4 hardeners to 1 rep with 2 hardeners.

My drones shoot up to 100 km with ease and i cannot afk a blockade anymore BUT it is still easy to tear through missions thanks to my newfound DPS boost.

HOWEVER that beeing said everything besides sentry drones is a pain in the ass and next to useless.
So yes coming to drones for PVE you just limited the viable options to sentries ... heck i even fit small guns in the highslots for frigs..because light drones die way to fast to any random enemy frig.

From a different post :




So, every changes on the missions system require "a lot of thought, planning and most importantly - communication with the player".
And what about the last change you have done?
You changed the mechanics of every mission, without any thought, planning or communcation with the base player.

Reading about , "yeah yeah we know that the drone boat now sucks, but don't worry in a couple of years we will revamp all the mission systems and you will use again no sentry drones!" or something like "Eve is a sandbox, but every aspect of this game will be like PvP" is hardly acceptable by a professional game designer.

You wanna add some new missions mechanics? Cool, add it, but like a new feature.
And, for god sake, add it AFTER you complete all the design/test/balance of it, just to avoid come idea of poor job by the dev team.

it was a massive thread. But hey, did CCP listen any of out thoughts?

Don't kid ourself. CCP will never make things just because we, players, want them. If they see that proposed thing fits into their agenda, then they will put it in the game.

They will simply force ideas on us, sisi doesn't exists any more. Yeah i know there is server called Singularity, but its purpose is carried onto Live server. We are testing for CCP and pays them huge pile of money while doing so. Great game!