Missions & Complexes

They are not useless. You just have to take care and look at the frigate aggression once when you deploy your drones. If the bracket around frigates turns yellow, it would be advised to put your drones back in the bay or they might get full aggression from the NPCs.

Just take care on the brackets around NPCs and you will be fine. NPCs switch targets, and if they hold an aggression on your ship for long enough, it may seem that they 'hate' the drones instantly as you deploy them.

- Watch closely at the brackets.
- Don't send the drones too far away (out of the reach of your drone bay).
- If you're using the sentry drones, get some remote repairers.

Everything what I've written applies on the high security space and missions.
DED sites tend to ignore drones (?).

I have not lost a single drone since the previous expansion (Retribution) and it's all about being there, nothing else.

EDIT: patch -> expansion; adding the name of the expansion.

Yes, we've noticed the same pattern. Instead of promised 'NPC will try and pick targets matching their own size', it will look like that they're randomly selecting and shooting targets. I'm not sure if this system works as intended or not, but it certainly seems that it's broken.

We've run a lot of missions and it seems that NPCs randomly switch targets as they please. Even if they are, maybe, trying hard to match the ship classes/sizes, it certainly seems they're constantly failing to do so.

As annoying as it is, missions and ratting in general was a little tedious. Now it's at least more engaging.

If you lose drones, you either are AFK or you don't know how to use them

Little tip : Clear the frigs progressively, don't wait to the end of the mission when everything else is dead and you got 6 elite orbiting you.

I heartily disagree. I've seen flights of drones get chewed up quickly when I'm engaging the frigates and cruisers first. I've actually spent time practicing it in epic arc missions, pulling in drones as soon as they take any damage. I can get them back before they're dead, but as soon as I do, they're on to the next drone. I've gone as far as cycling out drones one at a time and cycling in a fresh drone to replace it, and gotten all 15 drones into armor before being able to take out frigs/cruisers groups of 5 or 6. I haven't had much trouble in L4s, but I haven't hit any of the hardest missions in a while.

That's why I've said:

Light/Medium/Heavy drones -> deploy only when you're near them. Wait for webbing frigates to come to you and then deploy. It's really easy to get them back.

Best solution, if you're high on drone SP, get the Sentries and fit few remote repairers and you're safe to go.

With the changes to the Domi, I took all the guns off of mine, and stuck a remote armor repairer in a high slot.

I use a micro jump drive to get range, stop, drop a full flight of sentries, and I pop almost every frig long before it ever gets into range.

When a sentry does take aggro, I just stick the armor rep on it, and that keeps it alive. If it starts taking too much damage, I just bring it in and drop another flight.

So far, I haven't lost any, though I came close once when I forgot to stop after the micro jump and ended up 20km from my drones before I realized it (camera was in directly in front of my ship, looking back... oops).

If you have mobile drones, there is no reason for you to stand still, you can either delay scrambling frigates reaching you whilst you kill the cruisers, or you can carry the drones to the frigates - depending on the encounter, the "other player" risks of beng scrammed and your ships propulsion abilities vs the frigates.

From a droneboat this is of course as easy as drop sentries, shoot frigates first, and from a turret boat, it is not fundamentally different.

ie I'd suggest that if your drones need to do multipe 20km missions, then you simply suffer from having played eve for a long time when drones allowed you to avoid seriously thinking about the applied dps of your main weapons, or working on your piloting skills.

I have enough time to manage drones, keep an eye on local and scan and do ded 5s in lowsec, with traffic and known pirates about.

5 t2 hobgoblins vs 4 elite frigs

- Deploy drones, they are taking demage immediately
- Dock them, now you have 4 frigs circling
- Deploy again, again drones taking damage

Basically, the 4 elite frigs destroyed all 5 t2 hobs, with 1 frig left

That's how weak drones are.

And yes, I always pop frigs first, from a distance, but assault frigs take a good minute each to kill with cruise, it's basically like having to fight a battleship that scrambles you and gives 20k bounty.

I have top notch drone skills, missile skills, t2 everything.

Drones got boned.

CCP was sick of everyone AFKing their way through missions with Dominix & sentries... so they made a patch that ruined all valid drone strategies other than Dominix & sentries, because CCP is kind of stupid that way.