Missions & Complexes

So is it just me, or are drones idiots?

Plan was to deploy a drone ship, crap out 5 sentry's and take aggro, while main char cleans out the rest. As always, its only good on paper, drones shoot 1 target and then stand idle....brilliant.
Jumped in first - check. Taken aggro - check. Drones set to aggressive - check.
Targets in ship AND sentry range - check. So WTF?

Once they get working, they work. Wardens shoot far and slowly take ships down, Garde for closer targets, but no, most of the time they dont do a goddamned thing. Same thing with Hobos or Ogres, they kill one target then just stay stupidly in one place. Giving them the Assist command to the alt ship does work, but that's about it.

Sometimes even if the command Focus fire is on, drones dont give a damn and each go their own way, from 5 frigs orbiting me, they choose to go and attack a 55km distant BS and other cruisers, ignoring closer targets, so ship size, aggro or NPC bounty doesn't play a role in order they kill things? I would swear they were killing smaller targets first before?


Any ideas? Did CCP play with drone mechanics....again?

I know the drone aggro mech. They worked fine on my main char. On support alt they are completely stupid. Warp in, shoot few groups so i get full room aggro, deploy sentries or drones...and they do nothing much.
Currently i am better of with a FoF boat that shoots every single thing in a room except red crosses :(

Cache is cleared on every patch, and i kinda doubt drone behavior is client side issue.
Honestly, i have no idea..

Drones will not start shooting until you are red boxed. If the rats keep missing you (e.g they are out of range) they will only be yellow boxed, and the drones will not shoot back. And if the rats don't aggro, the drones never will.

The AFK drone boat is a mostly mythical creature that only works in selected missions and plexes.

Edit: as for target selection who can tell? They seem to target rats that use ECM more often (which is good), but sometimes this seems to override the focus fire setting. If a rat starts to use ECM while the drones are switching targets then you can easily end up with 2-3 drones switching to the ECM rat. They also seem to prefer targeting ships that shot at them. This can be bad if it causes them to chase after a scramming frigate because they'll get webbed, scammed and killed. They seem to have some sort of memory of which rat shot first. This is often a long-range target, and they will ignore closer targets because the closer targets are often the last to shoot.

@Anya
I know about taking aggro, drone boat takes full aggro and dmg, and only after they are all shooting at me, drones are deployed.
As for target selection, before whatever made drones retards, i would take aggro, deploy a group of Hobos and they went for frigates by themselves, once all frigates in aggro status are down, they go up to bigger targets. Never had to worry about that, it worked like a charm.

Now, its just wishful thinking about any semblance of the logic with drones. Before i would get a drone split once in god knows how many days, now sentries split fire on their own, and drones ignore frigates and attack randomly.
I notice a big difference there. AFK drone boats only work in certain missions, true, but as a sentry support 30-50km behind main ship they snipe nicely (assuming they bother to shoot at all).

@Texty
Drone boat takes aggro first, that is the alt char, main warps in after the shooting starts and sentries start to shoot stuff. Most of the time it works, but drone brain-fart is too much of a occurrence now to dismiss it to far and between randomness.

I use alt drone boat is for getting aggro since it has a bigger tank and it shoots by itself...mostly. Main char then doesn't need a full tank, so it switches to fast moving glass cannon type.

As i said in first post, setting them on guard or assist does work, but then i need to tank everything with my main and sacrifice DPS and mobility for tank.

Ether method works, true, problem is that sometimes drones go stupid and then no amount of workarounds or tactics helps.