Player Features and Ideas Discussion

At the moment there are a couple problems with drones. I don't want to delve into the big problems that are hard to fix, so I'll start with the little problem that is easy to fix.

Drones signature radius when MWD is way to big. A single light drone in normal operation will light up bigger than a battleship. Its signature radius ballons whenever it MWDs (which happens all the time and the user has very little control over this). This makes the drones very easy to hit, but also very easy to scan down. It is very difficult to play "under the radar" in low or null if you use drones. No other weapon systems have signature radius bloom like drones.

Proposed Soultions.
1) Remove active (ie connected to a ship) drones from the scan menu. Drones that have been abandoned may still be scanned down but active drones can not be. They show up on dscan, just not of scan results (just like a wreck).

OR
2) Remove the signature bloom when a drone MWDs AND apply and ECCM bonuses from a ship to the drones launched by that ship. If you fly an ishtar with 2 ECCMs then both you and your drones would difficult to scan down (not impossible by any means), but your light drones won't be putting up signature strength 10x greater than your ship.

-Ellen

Increasing base speed/tracking doesn't to anything to compensate for the fact the drones (unlike any other weapon system) make you VERY EASY to scan down.

-Ellen