Player Features and Ideas Discussion

As occasionally suggested before. This would essentially be the ability to drag and drop active/launched drones from your drone bay window to the Main hotbar slots next to your capacitor/health UI.

This lets you use F1-F5 (or any slots of the players choosing) to control each drone independently with hotkeys, or to simply group them all as a single or multiple group(s), as you would with turrets and missile launchers. Achieving more consistent drone management to your control of all other ship systems, as opposed to having them as a separate window entirely.

From these groups in your hotbar you can utilize hotkeys to shoot multiple targets without the fuss of 'select target' > 'right-click' > 'engage target' for all 5 of your drones repeatedly, as well as letting you return to orbit, return to drone bay, scoop etc individual groups at the click of a button, instead of having to select the specific drones you want within the drone control window.

It's a pretty simple concept to imagine but here's a visual example for simplicity sake:
Example

Or.... you could just drag your drone groups into space, then use the "F" key shortcut that already comes as default to make drones engage selected target. You know, use the already useful tools provided instead of begging for more tools.

What would be the point in making one hotkey into another hotkey?

That's looking past the fact that the EULA specifically forbids macros.

There are times where you want drones to focus on different targets.
Salvage drone is likely the best, and possibly only example of this, but the point stands, none the less.

If a person wants to group, or even un-group their drones to the hotbar, the should be able to.

Except that ungrouping does not ensure that they engage different targets.

I've been playing with Salvage drones a lot lately, and they will all engage the nearest wreck to your ship.
The only way to get them to engage independent targets, even while set to ungrouped, is to target each wreck and manually tell each drone to engage each wreck.

There's not hotkeys for drones apart from engage, return to bay, and return and orbit.
When hot keying either of these options, it effects all drones.

Compare it to turrets.

With turrets, you can group or ungroup. If ungrouped, you can engage individual targets with each turret, through the simple use of a hotkey and/or clicking an icon.

If you made them react like drones, this would require you to lock all targets, right click turret 1, tell it to engage, select target two, right click turret 2, tell it to engage, select target 3, right click turret 3, tell it to engage.

There is also cannot set drones to different groups, like you can with turrets.
If you want two drones to engage target 1, and 3 drones to engage target two, you must right click each drone and tell it to engage selected target..

I don't think the simple drag and drop/stacking of drones into your hot bar is an issue we need to worry about balance on.

It's actually significantly more time annoying than that. I, for example, when doing any PvE with a lot of frigates will set sentries or other drones to each shoot a single frigate. This means moving back and forth between selected targets and my drone management window selecting the individual drone I want to shoot at the currently selected target and tell it to engage. As I said this has to be repeated 5 times for all drones, then tens to hundreds more times to complete an entire site.

It's not like I'm keeling over and dying at the act of it, it's just a simple quality of life change (what these forums are for....) being able to click target > F1 > click 2nd > F2 etc is quicker, and is similar to the use of all other modules.

I can understand if this doesn't help you in particular, but in no way does this negatively affect anything.

edit: or just allowing us to assign hotkeys to launched drone slots 1-5 would be great.

In that case, luckily this isn't a change to how drones are used and in-fact is literally just a control/ui benefit that doesn't have to affect a single person who prefers the old ways. But if you're anti-change that's just how it it's going to be.

If I was disagreeing simply for the sake of disagreeing, I'd be in every single thread in F&I. Not all of us latch onto every single idea they see and support it like it's the second coming the way you do, Joe.

No, my disagreement of this lies in that there is already a perfectly servicable and usable method to do everything OP is asking for. That it isn't convienent enough for him is entirely his problem, not something that needs to be addressed by CCP.

I am the kind of player CCP wants to try to entice. The kind of player that truly loves the game, enjoys it for what it is, and will try everything he can to keep it the game he loves. If you want to cater to the lowest common denominator, by continually trying to dumb the game down to WoW level, you can expect me to be there arguing against it until CCP finally makes the change that drives me from the game.

CCP is better off with 20k players like me than 200k of the lowest common denominator. Sure, they can pull in more money with them, but it's the players like me who truly pay the bills over the long term. As they say in the bar industry, your weekends fill the coffers, but your regulars make or break the bar.

Super EZ. Been using drone hotkeys and dragging since it was introduced.

10/10 will continue to use.

Thanks for actual feedback. I didn't mean the F1-F5 quite so literally, rather that in a drone boat I might personally use it. I Imagine in PvP most people would simply stack their 5 drones onto a single hotbar icon (grouped, like you would group guns) and place them where you might put a neut or nos in the hotbar.

I also never mentioned or compared anything to 'all other games', to what are you referencing?