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Sentry Drones Modes
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Hopelesshobo
Hoboland
#1 - 2014-10-21 03:08:40 UTC
Sentry drones are good at providing firepower at a specific location, and even offer the unique ability to drop them in one location, and burn away from. However there is not a useful way to recall the drones. Therefore, I would like to see sentry drones be given 2 modes.

Deployed - The drones would act as they do now, except they wouldn't move (not even at the amazing 1 m/s as they do now)

Mobile - The drones would not be able to fire, however they would move about half as fast as their current heavy drone counterparts.

Base
Bouncer II - 900 m/s
Curator II - 828 m/s
Garde II - 600 m/s
Warden II - 675 m/s

Level 5 Skills
Bouncer II - 1125 m/s
Curator II - 1035 m/s
Garde II - 750 m/s
Warden II - 844 m/s

It should take 5-10 seconds to anchor and unanchor the drones, this means that if someone was repositioning their Gardes back to their ship from 30 km away, it would take...

5-10 seconds to unanchor
40 seconds to move back to the ship
5-10 seconds to anchor

This would mean that the drones would be effectively out of combat for 50-60 seconds. I would like to also point out here, that it takes 60 seconds to anchor a mobile depot, so assuming that your goal was to recall them, at most you would be gaining 10 seconds, to get more drones into your drone bay, assuming you were not moving and that you had replacement drones in your cargohold.

A more tech reason for having the sentry drones work this way would be that the drones do have propulsion engines, but to be able to utilize their large weapons, they need to use their engine power to anchor themselves in place to allow the drone to actually deal with the recoil.

Lastly, the drones should be launchable from your ship in either Mobile or Deployed mode, which could be toggled like we can for drone aggression.

NOTE: I am unsure whether we should allow the drones to move towards a target or move to the person the drones are assigned to while in Mobile mode, or restrict Mobile mode as to only allow the drone to return to the mother ship.

Lowering the average to make you look better since 2012.
Donnachadh
United Allegiance of Undesirables
#2 - 2014-10-21 03:35:14 UTC
-1
Lugh Crow-Slave
#3 - 2014-10-21 03:35:23 UTC
one of the draw backs to the drones is the difficulty to grab them after they are placed even when the fight is over so -1

BLOPS Hauler
The 16.8km Bubble
Zan Shiro
Doomheim
#4 - 2014-10-21 04:24:13 UTC
Heavy drones say hi, ccp made us better as well. They have DPS and movement.

That and last thing we need is ishtars dropping sentries, flying off, assigning them to someone else also moving....and now the damn sentries are buzzing around too. The Ishtar can mosey on back to pick that stuff up when done.

Yes I read they don't fire....I want the Ishtar assigning trick to have some pita aspect to it even if its just moving/reclaiming drones.
WhyYouHeffToBeMad IsOnlyGame
#5 - 2014-10-21 06:00:17 UTC
anchoring drones sounds dumb but giving sentries actual engines would make them much easier to use.

I like this idea but not sure if EVE should be any easier now...

Everything's a game if you make it one - Uriel Paradisi Anteovnuecci

CCP: Continously Crying Playerbase - Frostys Virpio
Ix Method
Doomheim
#6 - 2014-10-21 10:08:27 UTC
Zan Shiro wrote:
Yes I read they don't fire....I want the Ishtar assigning trick to have some pita aspect to it even if its just moving/reclaiming drones.

Making a game annoying to play is about the worst way of balancing something conceivable.

Letting people position them through assigning them to fast ships could in theory be a nice little strategic reward for defending/preparation/controlling the field, etc. but is probably a bit ridiculous given their power.

Allowing them to slowly return to the ship just makes sense though. Infact iirc someone said this was on the to-do list a while back but it never happened #ccpquellesurprise

Travelling at the speed of love.
Dark Drifter
Sons of Seyllin
Pirate Lords of War
#7 - 2014-10-21 10:59:26 UTC
+1 this idear has merit.

however restrict the assignment of sentry drones all together
elitatwo
Zansha Expansion
Brave Collective
#8 - 2014-10-21 11:08:38 UTC
Dark Drifter wrote:
+1 this idear has merit.

however restrict the assignment of sentry drones all together


No it doesn't. A Dominix with sentries is a very cool battleship. If you want to kite with drones, you can always take heavy drones or by a Gurista ship.

I hear Geckos are very fast and have 2x small electron blaster tracking.

Eve Minions is recruiting.

This is the law of ship progression!

Aura sound-clips: Aura forever
WhyYouHeffToBeMad IsOnlyGame
#9 - 2014-10-26 15:10:29 UTC
Dunno bout you but I heard Geckos are non-reproduceable and therefore belong in a remote hangar where they will stay forever.

Everything's a game if you make it one - Uriel Paradisi Anteovnuecci

CCP: Continously Crying Playerbase - Frostys Virpio
elitatwo
Zansha Expansion
Brave Collective
#10 - 2014-10-26 16:04:01 UTC
WhyYouHeffToBeMad IsOnlyGame wrote:
Dunno bout you but I heard Geckos are non-reproduceable and therefore belong in a remote hangar where they will stay forever.


They are not that is correct.

However if we assume for a minute that at the day everyone got five of them as a gift EVE had 500.000 subscribers, we would have 2.5 million Geckos in the game.

Even if they get killed every day it takes a 'while' to count to 2.5 million.

So for the next 4 years or so there will be Geckos flying and killing stuff.

Eve Minions is recruiting.

This is the law of ship progression!

Aura sound-clips: Aura forever
FT Diomedes
The Graduates
#11 - 2014-10-26 18:03:46 UTC
WhyYouHeffToBeMad IsOnlyGame wrote:
Dunno bout you but I heard Geckos are non-reproduceable and therefore belong in a remote hangar where they will stay forever.


And while you sit on your pile of Geckos, other people will be happily using them to get kills.

CCP should add more NPC 0.0 space to open it up and liven things up: the Stepping Stones project.

Zan Shiro
Doomheim
#12 - 2014-10-26 22:11:43 UTC
elitatwo wrote:
WhyYouHeffToBeMad IsOnlyGame wrote:
Dunno bout you but I heard Geckos are non-reproduceable and therefore belong in a remote hangar where they will stay forever.


They are not that is correct.

However if we assume for a minute that at the day everyone got five of them as a gift EVE had 500.000 subscribers, we would have 2.5 million Geckos in the game.

Even if they get killed every day it takes a 'while' to count to 2.5 million.

So for the next 4 years or so there will be Geckos flying and killing stuff.




This. Markets don't reflect availability. Some are holding out for market speculation. Others....keep them to themselves and use them for personal use. Not everyone rushed to jita after these dropped to sell them.


Also guessing they don't know some people put in remote reppers to keep them (and other drone types) alive longer. Not all drone users release their little friends and leave them to hang out and die. They rep their little friends.
Hopelesshobo
Hoboland
#13 - 2014-10-27 04:02:11 UTC
Zan Shiro wrote:
I want the Ishtar assigning trick to have some pita aspect to it even if its just moving/reclaiming drones.


Primary the drones? Isn't that enough of a PITA aspect to it, having all your dps shot out until you can't do anything?

elitatwo wrote:
A Dominix with sentries is a very cool battleship. If you want to kite with drones, you can always take heavy drones or by a Gurista ship.


A Domi will go 986 m/s with a MWD (1243 m/s after boosts)
An Ishtar will go 1663 m/s with a MWD (2092 m/s after boosts)

I fail to see how a drone, that will not be able to fire and move at the same time, will be able to keep up with either ship if it is trying to kite when they can only travel 750-1125 m/s (And that's the fastest I could see them traveling) depending on the drone.

If either one of these ships will be doing any heavy kiting, they will still have to abandon and deploy more drones as they do now. This will just allow them to retrieve them more effectively.

Lowering the average to make you look better since 2012.
Tabyll Altol
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#14 - 2014-10-27 13:14:36 UTC
Not a bad idea.


Just joking is a bad idea.


Use Light/Medium/Heavy Drohnes if you wanna scoop them.

-1