Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Just a quickie.

With the changes to drone skills in Kronos, Hobgoblins (and other light scout drones) now require the new Light Drone Operation skill as opposed to the old Scout Drone Operation (now Drone Avionics) skill.

However, I feel like there's a slight oversight in the execution of this change. As Light Drone Operation is one half of the old Combat Drone Operation skill, it - like Combat Drone Operation used to - requires the generic Drones skill to level III to inject.

Now, while the roughly 3 hours of training time to get a 1x multiplier skill to level III is quite irrelevant to veteran players, I would believe that this could have quite a significant impact on a brand new player trying the game for the first time and that is progressing through the tutorials. For these players, waiting 3 hours to try out the first Civilian drone they just got will be, at best, a nuisance and, at worst, may even lead to them discarding the weapon system entirely for the first few days of playing the game.

To resolve this, I'd suggest a very simple change to bring training requirements for "baby's first drone", essentially, back to what they used to be before Kronos - change the requirement to inject Light Drone Operation to Drones I (from III) while leaving the requirement for Medium Drone Operation at Drones III.

There is no real reason why this shouldn't be a thing.

Because drones are not a primary weapon system until you get into larger ship classes, regardless of what other may think.


Let the rookies get into the swing of controlling one type of weapon system before you start throwing more and more systems at them. If they need to learn how to control their own ship's weapons, they don't need the added confusion of having to remember to launch drones, recall them before warping out, when to put them on passive vs aggressive, etc. Once they've gotten the hang of flying and fighting on their own, 3 hours won't mean anything to them just like us bittervets.

Well, lets look at that again.
if Tristan, Algos and Dragoons (especially Dragoon) main weapons systems are NOT drones, something is wrong.
Is it because they have a second bonus to other weapon systems (except for Dragoon) or turret slots in general? Gallente advanced military introduces them to their secondary weapon system, drones as well as giving a drone ship (Tristan). All 3 function very well as drone ships with secondary weapon systems (turrets)

As for "let the rookies learn", drones are introduced in the Gallente Advanced Military Career where they are given their first Civilian drones (which for some reason has skill requirements), just like Caldari gets introduced missiles, but is that too much? So since they are given drones during tutorial, why should they wait 4-5 hours to use them, when other secondary weapons systems are just around 15mins?

Wouldn't it just make sense to have the civilian drone not take skills into account just like other civilian weapons?

No need to change the skills for real drones.

I'm usually against any shortening or shortcut in the skill tree, but you make very compelling arguments.

+1

There are civilian combat drones ?

Besides that, yes , it doesn't make sense to not have the drone skill in line with all other weapon systems.

And while we talk about that, the civilian mining drone that does exist, needs a few skills, usually civilians don't need any skills - fix that too (or at least to level 1 req) ?

Recently started playing EVE.
Training up skills for Tormentor (Amarr frigate).
Wanted to use drones... trained drones level 1, level 2, level 3, light drones level 1.
Tormentor can only use 2 light drones?!?

So yes please, let frigate pilots use drones sooner!

+1

Not a bad idea.