EVE General Discussion

Drones have had major issues for a long long time. They suck in a multitude of areas such as:

• Drone management- Ever try to organize a carrier with around 100 drones of different types into groups? Gotta be un-docked for that too!
• Drone Usage- It is significantly harder to use drones. The window is a pain to use!
• Drone Performance- The amarr drones have no use at all. Caldari for long range sentry, Gallente for damage, minmitar for speed.
• Drones Stats- They have a surprisingly large signature and are weak. One medium smart bomb can cripple a drone ship/fleet. (In a lag fest it can be hard to see that too)
• Drone Damage- A drone has to fly all the way over to that ship to hit anything. By the time a drone starts doing anything (except sentries) the target or you are almost dead
• Drone Repair- In order to fix a drone you either gotta dock , remote rep, or destroy a drone. Why can we not use nanite repair paste to fix a drone while it's in our hold?

The fact is drones are significantly harder to use. They cannot be overheated like a gun, they can be destroyed and there's a very limited number that can be fielded by a ship (While better for the servers, the fact is a Dominix losses more damage when it can only field 5 drones instead of 10), they cannot be repaired when broken, and the only real way to see them being hurt is if the window shows an update to their shields or visually.

Prior to the change drones have only had 2 consistent and effective uses; structure bashing and player versus enviroment combat.

1) Structure bashing- Drones make killing pos guns, structures (except poses when the shields are up), caps, and super caps much easier. In a contest over a tech moon, where does the FC have everybody put their drones while they call targets?

2) PvE- Except wormhole sleeper ai and sometimes Incursions, drones were pretty good for PvE; excluding belt ratting. They'd kill tackle frigs and slowly chip away at a random target in a room of a mission/complex.

As of now, only structure bashing remains the primary role for drones now. Yes they do help with killing off the tackle interceptor (unless your drakes 5 drones die or the ship is too fast). But as far as gang warfare, it's not an effective weapon platform. Those 800 dps ishtars/gilas are using heavy drones (the slowest and biggest movable drone in existence) or sentries which tend to get left behind in a mobile fight which kills drone ships considering how big sentries are in a drone hold.

C.C.P. approaches drone fixes as a politician will approach clean coal. It's a hot button issue that scores them points when they talk about it at Fan Fest, but nothing really gets done. They've given out drone damage amplifiers but those really feel like a token drake module. Didn't C.C.P. promise removing the drone management window entirely in favor of something that goes on the same buttons as your guns/points/dc2?

I really think drones are a bigger issue than is given discussion. I think it's time for C.C.P. to sit down and decide what to do with drones in a comprehensive manner and present their plan to the community or remove drones all together; adjusting ships to compensate as need be.

TL;DR: Drones need a complete overhaul.

How? Is there a non-PvE situation in which, instead of Warrior II's, you'd use the slower, lower damage, higher sig, worse tracking, but marginally tankier Acolyte II's?

EV drones don't count (and their use is marginal at best).

Mmyes, ganking defenseless PvE ships in a small area of Eve is a totally acceptable niche for a quarter of all combat drones in Eve.

Just going to counter the energy vamp drones with a small tod bit about how the vamp drones receive diminishing returns the more are used. So, to that end, using a ship with a utility slot will get a much more effective neut/drain than the drones version.

Proof under Electronic Warfare Drones from Eve University

I don't have an answer either.

The only two things you'd want from the move drones is either speed or damage. Sentries would probably be damage at range so either caldari or minmitar; Gallente if you know you're going to have a good warp in.

CCP :

* Releases officer drone modules

* Makes drones useless for PVE

trollface.jpg

Grath, you must be trolling. There's no situation that a Valkrye or Warrior wouldn't put an Amarr drone to shame. I don't know very many people who focus on explosive damage as their primary tank. Not to mention how many hulls are weak to it.

Good post. However, it belongs in Features and Ideas.

That one would actually be cool, or maybe something like a drone repair module...

a little fix that would be nice; having drone groups as drag and droppable "modules" so that when you activate the "module" it launches that group of drones, and if they are already launched the button makes them attack/mine/salvage/repair etc and then right click to dock them like you right click to reload your turrets/asb etc.
i think that'd go a long way to making drones slightly more intuitive.