Player Features and Ideas Discussion

**updated for Rhea**

Possible Drone Improvements
Drone armor repair while docked inside of ship. There are two options I see for this and obviously both would need to be assessed for acceptable rates of recharge to not become OP. It doesn't make sense for the lore either that the Gallente have these amazing drones with a lot of armor hp., they are the best at armor repping and half their ships get bonuses to it, but apparently don't know how to repair their own drones while docked? Anyhow curious what other people think

Passive regen
Basically any time that a drone is docked in the drone bay there is a passive armor regen. It would have to be slow enough though that when a ship that has large drone bays (cough istars!) pilots could not just constantly cycle drones with less damage and keep spewing undamaged drones on the field.

Nanite
Another option would be to give them the ability to consume nanite paste to repair. Again rates would need to be assessed for balance. One of the aspects of this would be that while the drone is being repaired it is inaccessible.

In both cases could we please have drones health displayed while docked in the ship. This would be nice when trying to decide which drone to use when you have more than 5 of a particular drone so you don't select a drone that is beaten to hell when you have 2 more than are completely untouched.

On a final note. could we PLEASE get abbreviated names for the faction drones or at least split the drone status into a separate column......I get annoyed when i have to make the window bigger just to be able to see if the drones are attacking or sitting around doing nothing.

*update* ONE ISSUE RESOLVED IN RHEA! PROGRESS!

All of this has been mentioned before, but spread out over a few posts, I give you a +1 as a collection thread.

You can maybe try finding the others and link em in your top post.

Otherwise, I think we should get the HP display of drones in bay and also the option to right click - repair them there. For the cost of nanite though.

Further points for a whole collection thread about drones would be also: Naming drones, Drag and drop options for watchlists (assign/guard) and other small changes to the UI and possible options/customization.

Agreed in part, though that is easily fixed.
Drones costing nanite to repair (which have a cycle time) and pre cancel will delete all progress. Those cycle times can be adjusted so reshuffeling 2 aggressed flights won't ever been an option.
Hull repair could still be excluded or take 10x armor repair time and nanite.
And I guess most of the discussion revolves around PvE, in PvP they get popped too quickly or are being abandoned rather then recalled more often.
Anyway, passive regen for armor or hull should not be an option - it is not for ships in dock either.

The Ratter for example does not have enough space to reshuffle drones and hp is a lot to repair which means they are out of combat for a long time, active RR took almost as much time as repairing the Ratter itself. And a T2 Guard got instant popped the other day too from just NPC rats ... so much for being to OP as perma drones.

Got max drone and Ratter skills btw.

but like those offensive weapons, it should take N-Paste +1

Yeah I didn't touch the hull aspect for good reason. There should be some point of damage for the pilot that is unrepairable or at least a significant drawback. Like the possible idea though of hull points being repair at an EXTREME repair time and nanite however would prefer at least armor ability.

You can btw still abondon drones, spew out new ones and target and then RR the abandoned ones already, so I do not see any problems there. And in case you say "the abandoned still take damage and aggro"... yes and no, you pull em in, drop em again, then abandon, drop anotehr flight and have them agro and take damage. The you can still RR the old ones without problem.

All it does is shift the drones into the bay and using nanite instead of cap while making it a bit more manageable, well and saving the one high slot maybe in case you fly solo.

I think you're down playing the hassle of drone micromanagement. Given the limited controls, and how easy they are to kill in a PVP situation to begin with, I don't see this being nearly as much of an issue as you're making it out to be. Drones cannot be overheated unlike guns and guns cannot be destroyed or damaged by hostile players. Your analysis leaves those points out, but they are crucial differences when discussing drones vs guns.

On a side note, if you make the argument they're hard to kill then you should probably be using a size appropriate weapon or properly bonused hull.

I don't know what point you are making here? People do this already. By one of two options

A. they just let the drone die and pop another out out . still have 5 drones.
B. They recall the damaged drone and pop another. out still have 5 drones.

The only difference is that people would be able to reuse drones in option B but but AGAIN AND I'M TIRED OF ITERATING IT ..... I'm not talking about something where a drone is repaired to full strength in 10 seconds. We're talking about a slow repair rate so that there is at least an option to repair. A lot pvp fights happen so quickly this is not going to change the battle. On top of that the biggest death dealer to drones in pvp is bombers to which this would change nothing as they die instantly.

What is your real concern?

I would love a module, probably with a similar cap reduction like MWD as a balance, that gave the equivalent of station services to drones while docked. Shields are instantly replenished, and armor/hull can be repaired.

Again, for balance, I would not make it instant repair, but rather a rate equivalent to passive regen. That rate would not have you spewing 2 or even 3 sets of drones under active fire in a continuous loop. If they aren't being actively fired upon, it does not matter anyway, because it won't be long before I pop out an armor and hull rep drone and set them to repairing everything anyway.

The more drones are improved, ironically, the more pronounced and onerous their destructibility becomes in comparison to other weapons, to the point where some method of dealing with it in a more effective manner becomes necessary to maintain their balance. More and more ships are designed to rely completely on their drones---for instance new iterations of Dominix and Armageddon, and the T2 drone ships, many of whom have lost functionality in their other weapon systems and a buff to the drone system.

Opportunity cost of a lowslot+reduction of cap and cap regen seems a fair trade for something that is almost completely a quality of life issue for drone users.

Give the drones passive armor regeneration while in the bay, at half to one-third the rate of shield regen. It will take forever and a day to repair a drone that's down into structure, but it still gets done.

Passive structure regen would be nice too, at half the rate of armor regen - though admittedly that's probably to slow to ever notice.