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Petition to CCP for Drone Mechanics Revamp
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Jame Jarl Retief
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#41 - 2012-12-07 15:21:01 UTC  |  Edited by: Jame Jarl Retief
BoBoZoBo wrote:
I will petition - NOT to have it revamped.
Working as intended, maybe Drone Pilots need to start working as intended also.


OK, I'll bite.

Do you feel that drone boats are just fine as they are right now?

If you feel they are fine, how do you explain the following:

-Drone boats do not appear in top #20 most used ship, nor have they to my knowledge in the past 3-5 years. They underperform in most situations, and are seldom used. Which is basically the very definition of something that needs a comprehensive review.

-Drone boats are in considerably less demand than turret and missile boats, and cheaper because supply far outshines the demand. Case in point, Navy Domi recently dropped from 500 mil to 300 mil (cheapest faction BS?).

-Drones take 2-5x more clicks to use (launch and attack and watch their HP) than firing all turrets/missiles (grouped, 1 click).

-Drones are the only weapon system without overheat mechanic to it allowing to boost its effectiveness.

-Drones are the only weapon system without appropriate rigs (there's sentry damage rigs, but no heavy/medium/light damage rigs).

-Drones are the only weapon system without appropriate implants (there's implants for turrets and missiles and scanning and mining...but not drones). This was brought up by CSM as far back as Jan '10, and still nothing.

-Sentry drones still bugged, they don't require nor benefit from racial drone specialization, when all other T2 weapons including other drones do require and benefit from such skills.

-Drones have insane stats, a heavy drone has 100 sig radius, while a ship carrying 3 of them has a sig radius of 120? And fast shield-tanked drones have the same sig radius as slow armor-tanked drones?

-Drones of T2 type have the exact same resist profile as T1, when it should be better (which could be the root cause of many current complaints).

-Ships capable of being drone boats OR turret boats are outfitted as turret boats 99% of the time, why, if drones are fine? (see Proteus)

I could go on with these issues, but there doesn't seem to be a point.

All of this working as intended? Seriously? Roll
Josef Djugashvilis
#42 - 2012-12-07 16:22:05 UTC
I never thought I would become a 'bitter vet' but the drone nerf has turned me into one.

Forums and skill training - bah

This is not a signature.
Liandri Jenquai
Doomheim
#43 - 2012-12-07 17:18:35 UTC
Anyone notice that a bunch of topics have dev responses in them but not one topic about the new drone mechanics has a dev response?

I think CCP is pretty much telling us to shove it somewhere and play a different game if we don't like it.

Apparently too many carebears are able to pay for their accounts using in game money and this is a way to force the sheep into the packs of wolves sitting on the other side of that 0.5 gate.

That or the large null groups that have more clout are whining that they don't have enough targets to shoot.

At any rate since drones are useless in L4s I am just doing them in a Tengu now.


Good luck with your petition.
Mhari Dson
Lazy Brothers Inc
#44 - 2012-12-07 17:22:15 UTC
I've read over alot of the issues with drones and decided to do a little testing with my indy alt. Prior to the patch he could run L4's with a fair degree of proficiency but not with any great speed as his skills were tuned more towards research and mining. So i got out his rattlesnake and loaded up a full bay of T1 throwaways.

First mission included a structure that gave pocket wide agro, so I triggered it and so long as it was getting hit I kept solid agro on my ship. Within 30 seconds of the structure going down I launched another flight of hob 1's because the first got wiped out crossing the 15k recall distance. lost a few more along the way but no biggie.

Second mission I decided I'd probably done something wrong and reevaluated my approach, also adding a flight of ogres to see how well they lived. Got into the mission, settled in for a few minutes while I let everything that was interested get into their optimal orbits and turned loose the ogres and set them onto a BC. They arrived at the target and started to do their job, I spent 100% of my time waiting for that first tick of damage and watching to see if anything went yellow instead of red on my overview. Sure enough, before the drones got through armor about half the rats decided to switch over, hit recall, I got back 4 out of 5. I repeated this process with light and even some medium drones to observe the results.

After 5 missions I determined I'd be better off in a scorpion with 2 125mm rails in the non-missile slots to deal with frigates.

So i took my main out with a legion and a corpmate and went looking for trouble. First off it's a legion, it has no friends with the letters D P or S (unless you count suckage) but it was my pet project and tanked very well. After poking around awhile I determined drones aren't worth having anymore.

I have a few more ideas on how to try to control the situation but at this time I've decided liquidating my drone ships was the primary solution.
BoBoZoBo
MGroup9
#45 - 2012-12-07 17:49:58 UTC  |  Edited by: BoBoZoBo
Typed something but server screwed up my post - meh

Primary Test Subject • SmackTalker Elite
YoYo NickyYo
Doomheim
#46 - 2012-12-07 17:52:35 UTC
Jenn aSide wrote:
iskflakes wrote:
There are more important issues to fix, like nullsec, capital ships and POSes. A drone revamp is much needed, but not at the expense of those features.


And of course ccp only works on 1 thing at a time....


Assuming they are working on anything you want may be a bad bet....


I am not, nor will I ever be...Nicky Yo.... The question you should ask is.....When will they release the NICKY!
Jame Jarl Retief
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#47 - 2012-12-07 20:30:45 UTC
Liandri Jenquai wrote:
Anyone notice that a bunch of topics have dev responses in them but not one topic about the new drone mechanics has a dev response?


The pessimist in me did notice that. They joke and horse around in other threads, but stay the heck away from any drone thread.

The optimist in me still remembers the 2 month old blog by CCP Ytterbium where he said, looking forward to Dominix rebalance, that the ship is mostly fine except for "terribly outdated" drone mechanics. That gave me hope there's someone there that's aware of the issues at least.

And the other positive sign? In the ship rebalance so far, they added one drone boat frigate (Tristan) and two new drone destroyers. Why do that if they're trying to keep drones in the doghouse?

So I remain optimistically pessimistic. Or is that pessimistically optimistic? One of those.

Quote:
I think CCP is pretty much telling us to shove it somewhere and play a different game if we don't like it.


See, I'm actively forcing myself not to think that. Because I like to think CCP folks are smart. And telling your paying customers "If you don't like our product, please use our competitor!" isn't something a smart person would say.

Quote:
At any rate since drones are useless in L4s I am just doing them in a Tengu now.


Yep, ironically with all the crying about the Heavy Missile nerf, Tengu is still the winner after this patch. Sad but true.
Nomistrav
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#48 - 2012-12-08 04:46:36 UTC
Jame Jarl Retief wrote:


OK, I'll bite.

Do you feel that drone boats are just fine as they are right now?

If you feel they are fine, how do you explain the following:

-Drone boats do not appear in top #20 most used ship, nor have they to my knowledge in the past 3-5 years. They underperform in most situations, and are seldom used. Which is basically the very definition of something that needs a comprehensive review.

-Drone boats are in considerably less demand than turret and missile boats, and cheaper because supply far outshines the demand. Case in point, Navy Domi recently dropped from 500 mil to 300 mil (cheapest faction BS?).

-Drones take 2-5x more clicks to use (launch and attack and watch their HP) than firing all turrets/missiles (grouped, 1 click).

-Drones are the only weapon system without overheat mechanic to it allowing to boost its effectiveness.

-Drones are the only weapon system without appropriate rigs (there's sentry damage rigs, but no heavy/medium/light damage rigs).

-Drones are the only weapon system without appropriate implants (there's implants for turrets and missiles and scanning and mining...but not drones). This was brought up by CSM as far back as Jan '10, and still nothing.

-Sentry drones still bugged, they don't require nor benefit from racial drone specialization, when all other T2 weapons including other drones do require and benefit from such skills.

-Drones have insane stats, a heavy drone has 100 sig radius, while a ship carrying 3 of them has a sig radius of 120? And fast shield-tanked drones have the same sig radius as slow armor-tanked drones?

-Drones of T2 type have the exact same resist profile as T1, when it should be better (which could be the root cause of many current complaints).

-Ships capable of being drone boats OR turret boats are outfitted as turret boats 99% of the time, why, if drones are fine? (see Proteus)

I could go on with these issues, but there doesn't seem to be a point.

All of this working as intended? Seriously? Roll


Quoted and will be moving to my original post since someone actually took the time to make a comprehensive list. Kudos to you.

Should also take onto there that they're they only form of "weapon" that is destructible..

"As long as space endures,

as long as sentient beings exist,

until then, may I too remain

and dispel the miseries of the world."

~ Vremaja Idama
Beiny Lemmont
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#49 - 2012-12-16 14:10:48 UTC
I hate CCP and wanna "old" drone system back
Natsett Amuinn
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#50 - 2012-12-16 15:16:05 UTC
I think that if CCP is going to impiment changes that require you to have to manage your drones, that they should also impliment the changes to drone mechanics.

I believe that the very next thing CCP needs to address, is the drone UI.
Drone commands should be like using turrets, as they themselves have said. I don't think this is something they can put on the back burner.

With the changes in retribution, drone mechanics epitimize the very issues that were brought up in the article about the future balancing of EVE.

I think drone mechanics may be one of the most offputting mechanics in EVE.
They aren't exactly the kind of experience that are going to leave a possitive impression on most new players.
Eraza
Fuzzyness Enterprizes
#51 - 2012-12-16 15:42:06 UTC  |  Edited by: Eraza
i greatly miss having 10 drones as a standard and 15 on drone boats, that was nerfed because it became a tactic for some groups to use only drone boats to intentionally cause massive lag
EDIT: i know that happened years ago, but it seems on topic to me

i dislike that change because it makes each drone more valuable, and thus, it takes MUCH more micromanagment to use drones
excessive micromanagment is not my idea of fun

on recent things, for the past year or so my drones have been acting chaotically and attacking random things, quite often sevral targets, the focus fire tag, does nothing

again, this needs more manual control, again, annoying

there is nothing really wrong with drone DPS in my opinion, i havent tested drone specific ships after patch though, so i have no clue what the myrm complaint is about

the new AI seems to make frigates attack my drones quite a lot, realistic actually, that´s what any sane frigate wing would do in a battleship fight
it is however somewhat annoying, because it again adds to micromanagment

i mostly want the drone swarms back because launching 15 drones looked really cool, launching 5 drones(with heavy bonuses) same dps yes, however, much fewer targets for my enemies, which makes getting rid of drones MUCH easyer.. also MUCH less cool :)


also right click options, aside from "launch drones", when i have more then one size drone(fleet typhoon for example has room for a set of each size), then it would help to have a "launch heavy drones" and such for other drone types/sizes, currently, having more then one drone type in a ship, requires a lot of selecting and clicking

here´s an idea that would help things along, can we have damaged drones slowly repair while in the drone bay?
and/or have the drone bay prefer launcing healthy drones over damaged ones in ships that have spares
always seemed kind of stupid to have a full set of spare drones, occationally two sets of spares, and yet it always launches the damaged ones first
Pretty GuyYeah
#52 - 2012-12-16 15:49:33 UTC
I agree with many of the suggestions to drones in this thread. I'd love to see CCP put some of these through in order to compensate for their old style and high nerf with the Retribution patch.

Post with your main.

A legend walks among us, a genius so significant he so dares to degrade himself as camouflage when you dispute.
The Protato
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#53 - 2012-12-16 18:12:21 UTC
Kind of irritated by everyone saying "Capitals are more important than drones". Please compare the percentage of users that actively use a capital (not just can fly one or own one in a hangar somewhere) to the percentage of users that actively use drones. For anything. Drones are as much a PVE weapon as a carrier; both can (and should) be used for PVP, so don't pull that "bears gonna whine" story, it's old.

As a player who regularly uses a spidertanking Domi in PVP, I've gotta say that the drone mechanics are beyond awful. Alongside sub-par DPS for a battleship focused with one weapon system, I cannot "overheat" my drones to react to circumstance, unlike guns/launchers, and I cannot deliver instant damage, unlike guns. The destroyability of drones is fine, but not alongside the inconvenience. Fixing drones is surely going to buff carriers, no? Fixing one of your capital problems...
J3ssica Alba
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#54 - 2012-12-16 18:16:40 UTC
iskflakes wrote:
There are more important issues to fix, like nullsec, capital ships and POSes. A drone revamp is much needed, but not at the expense of those features.


I use drones everyday but i don't do nullsec, capitals or POSes so who cares about those. Fix drones please!
This is my signature. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.  Without me, my signature is useless. Without my signature, I am useless
Sebastian N Cain
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#55 - 2012-12-16 19:15:48 UTC
Drew Solaert wrote:
I really can't see why people are getting so up in arms about the drone changes, unless they are some of those lv4 AFK/Bot varmin.

It needs a slight adaptation to your play style. for example, launch the hob's once the elite frigs are ontop of you, then pull drones in and out *instantly* as needed. Yes you have to pay attention but its no different to volley counting with missiles. Remember those turrets on the top? start using them more. the Dominix with 350mm's does a far bit of DPS while the hobs are on the little things, the 350mm's should be ripping those cruisers a new one, after that its normal service resumed.

Job fecking done. Just you need to have focus now.

*Edit* Though yes, Drones do need some love I wouldn't put it up there as overly high on the agenda, they are fine.

Well, yes. That´s the solution. Use autocannons on the droneboat.
Drones were not really competetive with turrets or missiles to begin with, easy to use in missions were the only thing they had to go for them. And now... well you can rather easy make sure they aren´t destroyed, but keeping them close means you have terrible range, so you need some other weapon as well, drones alone won´t suffice anymore. Additionally anytime you recall them or need to micromanage them, they stop shooting, your damage and therefore your efficiency drops even further (also, given that terrible UI micromanaging them is torture, and the AI of the drones makes you wish someone would help you getting rid of them and destroy these buggers). Right now you´re better off using blasters than drones in PVE.

I got lost in thought... it was unfamiliar territory.
Simetraz
State War Academy
Caldari State
#56 - 2012-12-16 19:27:49 UTC  |  Edited by: Simetraz
They could just remove drones from all ships except carriers and supercarriers and be done with it.
To some extent they have been working towards it for some time.
That would that mean reworking some ship balancing but all things considered the only ships that would really need work would be the drone boats.
Those are all gallente and have been dead anyways for some time.

The question is it time for CCP to cut there losses in regards to drones and move on.

EVERYBODY KNOWS
Alavaria Fera
GoonWaffe
#57 - 2012-12-16 19:39:31 UTC
Simetraz wrote:
They could just remove drones from all ships except carriers and supercarriers and be done with it.
To some extent they have been working towards it for some time.
That would that mean reworking some ship balancing but all things considered the only ships that would really need work would be the drone boats.
Those are all gallente and have been dead anyways for some time.

The question is it time for CCP to cut there losses in regards to drones and move on.

Better yet, just leave the drone boats as they are, keep on breaking them if necessary and rely on the forums to tell complainers to:

"HTFU"
"adapt or die"
"can I have your stuff"

Triggered by: Wars of Sovless Agression, Bending the Knee, Twisting the Knife, Eating Sov Wheaties, Bombless Bombers, Fizzlesov, Interceptor Fleets, Running Away, GhostTime Vuln, Renters, Bombs, Bubbles ?
Nomistrav
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#58 - 2012-12-19 06:23:53 UTC
Null-sec is getting along just fine without any major changes being done. Sure, the sovereignty game sucks and anything you will ever do requires a massive fleet of super capitals but let's be real, what else are you going to do with all that money you've got laying around from your plexing/officer farming?

Capitals in general are just ridiculous, I'd go so far as to say that they just need to be removed all together as it's only caused a -massive- power creep. All it takes to play the sov game is a super-capital fleet and thirty minutes of time to use your drones to take out sov structures and then it's just a back and forth game of repairing/reinforcing until someone gets burned out - but again, what else are you honestly going to use the money on when there's barely any isk sinks in the game?

Capitals and Null-sec aren't the problem, the entire ECONOMY is the issue. It's cheaper to get anything you need from Jita (and those carebears that you ***** about so much) than it is to actually have your own self-sustaining system. Maybe not isk-wise but time and effort wise. Then again when you're sitting on billions of isk, it's not exactly an issue to buy a bunch of Jita merch and have it carriered/freightered in.

This is all digression of course because I know that all the bitter vets are just going to cry, ***** and moan as much as the hi-sec bears because it's what they do. Everyone wants a share and/or piece of the **** sandwich without the bread but their share is more important than everyone else because (brace yourself) it affects them.

SO. We have Null-sec, which is stupid in and of it's entirety as it's just farmville with the added bonus of an even more ridiculous sov system with the occasional PvP..

We have Capitals which aren't going anywhere besides up.

POSes which could actually use some looking at because, yanno, they don't affect JUST the 12% that fly Capitals in Null-sec.

Annnnd Drones which are terribly outdated, were nerfed a thousand times over ages ago for SERVER reasons rather than Gameplay reasons. Further more, they are also used by -EVERYONE-. Even the capital pilots in null-sec and their incredibly complex internet chat-room where they talk about dicks, farts and oh, I dunno, MAYBE something actually related to Eve Online. Because, yanno, Capitals do use drones - more of them - and smarter ones at that with their inexplicable ability to warp around without deactivating themselves.

This isn't going to stop someone from saying, "leave high-sec more" because (god forbid) anyone actually decides they don't like the silly politicking and endless hours of POS/Station bashing with no actual combat. But I'm content in that this is enough of a pressing issue that it will be taken seriously without their (un-needed) support.

Larga vida a los aviones no tripulados!

"As long as space endures,

as long as sentient beings exist,

until then, may I too remain

and dispel the miseries of the world."

~ Vremaja Idama
Wacktopia
Fleet-Up.com
Keep It Simple Software Group
#59 - 2012-12-19 10:13:33 UTC  |  Edited by: Wacktopia
/signed

I would not say it's top priority over POS's and some other stuff perhaps but it is important.

I used to love using drone ships. Domi was my mission staple, loved using Ishtar and Gila in small gang situations, Ishkur has always been a cool ship to me too. Tri-Myrm was another favourite.

But sadly I use these ships less because fewer doctrines call for drone boats and I got tired of trying to make the mechanics work vs the competition.

Around that time I was cross-training and quickly changed to a Mael for missions, dropped Myrm for Drake / Cane and the Ishtar and Gila kinda sit around.

Drones are a complex system because.
- they are easily destroy able
- some med and large are painfully slow
- managing sentry drop and collection while avoiding tackle is a pain.
- the whole deploy and collect time lags your damage
- the stats are BONKERS

It's safe to as that I'd only use them out of novelty as a sub-cap primary weapons system in all but a few edge cases.

Kitchen sink? Seriousy, get your ship together -  Fleet-Up.com
dexington
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#60 - 2012-12-19 10:25:50 UTC  |  Edited by: dexington
Beiny Lemmont wrote:
I hate CCP and wanna "old" drone system back


I think that's is the short sighted solution, while drones are worse then pre-patch, i still have some hope for the new AI in the future. The new AI should make it possible to make better, more advanced and more fun PvE content.

CCP "just" need to fix the drone mechanics, they were broken pre-patch, it just became more annoying and visible with the change to npc's.

I'm not sure what you mean by old drone system, i read it as you want the old AI style npc's back, i could have misunderstood your meaning.

I'm a relatively respectable citizen. Multiple felon perhaps, but certainly not dangerous.
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