EVE General Discussion

So today I decided to some missions in a drone boat, just to see how things were working.

I dropped Gardes, I dropped Bouncers, I dropped Hammers on frigs, all the things that would have instantly lost me drones a few weeks ago.
I ran a total of 8 L3 missions and not once did my Drones get hit.

So, did they dumb the AI back down to pre-boost levels? Or is it simply another stealth bug introduced while patching the numerous buggy patches?

Honestly i have no idea how you made your drones survive, but for me npcs constantly agro any kind of drones.
Only place where my drones rarely get agro is forsaken hub, but npcs in belts, missions, other anomalies always go for your drones almost instantly.
Now imagine a DED complex with zillliooons of elite frigates / cruisers, they act like zombies "braaaaiiiiinnnnsss", only difference they say "drrrrooooneeeeeeeessssss", welcome to the world of improved AI!
If you smart enough, you can even exploit this ridiculous AI, just spam your T1 drones and you will get a new kind of tank, the "DRONES TANK".

A bit more seriously... i really think that your drones should never get agro at all, its the primary weapon system of many ships and currently almost all of them useless for pve and pvp too (except some nice sentry setup)
Just imagine a Machariel losing its 800's or a Tengu losing its HAMS because AI shoot it down... unbalanced.

that's supposed to happen

Little trouble with The Assault mission vs. Guristas the other day. Two frigates aggro'd drones instantly upon dropping them even when I was target painting and shooting them myself (my primary weapon was lasers) - when the drones hadn't aggro'd the frigates yet.

The rats are supposed to target whatever they think is the higher threat - but they're also supposed to /really/ hate EWAR (such as TP), and the drones were on idle

I also had battleship rats attacking medium drones, which is not supposed to happen at all. In this case, the battleship rats were not yet aggressing me, which might be different? Are rats supposed to attack an undersized drone when there is no other player target they will aggro?

I've done lowsec exploration, belt ratting and some missions. Usually there's very little drone trouble - if I aggress the frigs myself they'll often ignore the drones. This is the only mission I've had trouble. I wonder if there's some strange interaction with some missions that makes rats act weird?

Lol. When you remove the ships that do most or half of their dps with guns from that list, you are left with 14 ships out of hundreds, it's not "many".

I fly only drone ships in PVE, and they happen to be the best possible ships for what we do. Not really that imbalanced tbh.

Yes, you have explain why drones are inferior to any other weapon in almost every pvp situation, otherwise you are just another troll who can't back up his arguments with any facts.

Almost forgot, I guess you also claim that the above ships are inferior in PVP

Ok true if you count Amarr, Caldari and EWAR drones.

I use Hobs and Hammers as much as Warriors and Valks, in many situations their speed is enough, and in same situations the tracking difference isn't a problem.

Ogres are brawling weapons. You use them at range where you can recall them and against targets that are slow, and they do absolutely brutal damage.

So it's random now?

I had the identical issues described here over the last few weeks. Yet others told me they were having no issues. Now I see no issues, but other people are still having them...

Random death in the life system.....

lvl4s, lvl 5s, high low and null exploration, flying mainly an ishtar, ndomi in high. I havent had an issue at all with drones. You just cant afk now. As it should be.

The first day you start pvp you going to understand what i talking about, guess why there are almost no (non-sentry drone) fleet concepts at all, simply because its dont works.
No alpha strike, no fast target change, your dumb fail drones have to fly to the target then you have to recall it etc, while a standard gunboat simply pump its damage straight into your face by pressing F1 button...

And now im pretty sure some people playing a different game, just try to warp in to a DED 8/10 for example and have fun keeping your drones alive, seriously.. try it out then come back talk to me again.

I must be doing something wrong. None of these horrible things have happened to my drones, and I use them all the time.

Just out of curiosity: When you use drones - do you warp in, launch drones and then start shooting, or do you warp in, pull aggro, and then launch drones?

My general rule of thumb is - if something isn't blinking red yet - don't launch drones. They will die.