Ships & Modules

Yo Mariner,

On forums

You spent an unecessary amount of time lamenting (the obvious conclusion) that i am a forum-alt. I'm not especially secretive, but i post on this character for the simple reason that i would like you to read what i have to say (not look at who i am, make assumptions and either give me too little or too much praise). I'm here for discussion not endowment, at least not beyond the praise of good posts. It's a forum, you should be able to deduct who has something worthwhile to say and who does not. Your character is in Ivy League, hardly the hallmark of high-end gameplay, yet i gladly talk to you without any attempts at character assasination.


If stature is important to you, you already have some experienced faces (FC's for alliances with drone use backgrounds) also arguing for current drone boats in this very thread. It's not like you listened to them then, so ...

It may be a hollow statement given the above, but i can let you know that in my forward stockpile (ie., the one used only for current and quick access PvP) i have about 10 ships. There are 4 Gallente, 3 Minmatar, 1 Caldari and 1 Amarr ship there (including an Ishtar and a Carrier). There are no Canes and no Drakes. I'm not sure how that should appeal to you, but there you have it, if it's any reassurance.

Nore am I sure exactly what you want me to teach you, though it amazes me a little bit that you have flown drone-ships for two years and not yet tried any of the best drone ships (they are really worth trying, so you have something to look forward to).

Then again, if you would rather fly a Drake, no one is stopping you. They are easy to train for and afford, so it shouldn't be any larger bump in your gameplan if that is what you want. If you have not flown Carriers, Ishtars, Gilas or techy BS, it doesn't leave that many true drone-ships to fly. Your main argument seem to be that your Myrm is not as accepted as a Drake or Cane by whoever you fly with. That's why the "lemming discussion" (as you dubbed it) keep popping back up.


See Drone ships

If you want to see drone-ships used: I posted up links to two old and well known movies in my post #85 in this thread. What is good about those movies is that they show drone ships used in slightly larger settings and scales than what is common (50 vs. 100, and among 75 in a capital engagement). Have you seen them yet?

Since you are obviously familiar with the use of KB i also suggest you look those up of the related alliances to see a vast and varied use of drone-based ships. The movies do not necessarily depict the most grand fights those alliances were ever in (for CH in particular their use of those tactics grew quite alot after the AA movie series; which is a full set of 4-5 movies if you like the one posted, followed up by another 4-5 movies from other people in that alliance). The movies are still good illustration though - if you want to see the very thing in action, you claim to have never seen.

Since we're on the topic of movies: one of the more well-known Gallente enthusiasts (from another renowned drone using alliance background) released a new part of his series as recently as yesterday. It's at much smaller scale, but if you want to see a good drone user in action flying some ships you claim to never have seen it might be worth a look (no Ishtar, but there's a couple of Eos fights, as well as the Myrm being shown in yet another strong setup for small gangs).


Speaking of Ishtars and sentry range, look at this: 100km Ishtars vs. Drakes (25 vs 25)

With that i've posted you example movies of solo action, pair-small (5), small-medium (10-25) and medium-large (50-100) gang action. That drones have issues at the largest fleet scales is something most of us agree on, and no one have a simple fix for (nore do any of your suggestions offer that). It illustrate and sum up all i have argued in this thread so far...

What else do you need short of me sitting down to fly with you?

Watch the movies, get all the drone ships as i have suggested and see if you can have some fun. Good luck .

Why not change the use of drones, from an offensive weapon dealing their own DPS, to that of support systems able to increase the DPS of the ship that launched them? In RL drones are used not only for killing but also for target identification and so on. So give drones 3 attacks (simulating them firing missiles or whatever) then they become support platforms. Drones could be used as a method of increasing weapon range, for example.

The biggest single drawback in using drones is the recall time - even with sentries, if you're not withing 2500m of all your sentries, there is a significant delay before you can get them all back into the ship and deploy different drones.

I like using my Ishtar but would never consider using it in pvp/wars because of this single inherent weakness.

That was fixed long time ago. Just abandon the sentries, deploy some other drones, recall them, reconnect to sentries.

It would be incredibly powerful, which is exactly why it will never and should never happen. It would be like if tracking enhancers and heat sinks both were combined into one module.

I like the DDA as they give the player a choice between DPS and tank. The other modules could be dropped and have the dedicated drone hulls receive a bonus instead. So, you could have a ship that is a drone brawler type and another that is a stand off drone user that would get a role bonus to drone MWD and control range. Perhapes another that got webber or neut drone bonus or any mix. That would make more sense anyway as a ship designed to use drones would have things like DLA and omni builtin to the electronics suite.

700+ dps vexor..
learn to use it, then try your complaints again please.