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Yes, on Duality.

CCP FoxFour is on vacation. He tweeted the other day he was leaving on xmas vacation.

And since I ran out of space in the earlier post, a word on EWAR as aggro management:

I did NOT test EWAR for aggro control of drones, beyond the very first set of tests. Which proved that while I am able to keep the target under TP from attacking my drones, all other targets that would engage those drones normally continue to do so.

Further, I feel that as a drone boat user, being forced to use EWAR to keep drones viable is NOT FAIR and thus SHOULD NOT be done. Why? Simple. Remember how drone boats have 1 LESS SLOT than comparable non-drone boats? And yet drone boats are the ones that are supposed to sacrifice one or more slots for EWAR to keep drones (somewhat) safer? No thank you, CCP. Thanks, but no thanks.

Well, I feel like I wasted enough time today on this. So I'll be moving on. Fix the drones, CCP. The stuff on Duality still doesn't cut it. Not by a long shot.

EDIT: Oh, and I almost forgot - I also don't feel that drone suvivability is high enough in current missions. Case in point, one of my lights got literally 1-shot. It was alive, I blinked, and it was gone. Literally. I was staring at drone HP bars as it happened. There was no way in holy hell to prevent this with player skill. With so many enemies attacking (and it wasn't even full room aggro, just 3 out of 5 groups), drones are simply impossible to keep alive. This goes double for heavies - they're so slow, especially the Ogres - that keeping them alive is impossible if they draw heavy aggro, which they often do, they crumble in seconds, with Drone Durability IV.

Sentries are still somewhat useful though. Especially with the new Micro Jump Drive. But they've always been an exception to the general rule. To me, they're not even "drones", just destuctable, deployable in-space turrets. Because...well...that's what they are!

Bottom line though - not planning to run any more missions in drone boats until drone issues are addressed. It's not that it can't be done, it's just WAY too much hassle to do it, and more inefficient, compared to many other ship types.

If you don't mind, I'll try a somewhat more TL;DR version, with (unsurprising) comments.

Which translates into whatever anyone claims having witnessed drones working like X, it may quite be just because that's how the random gods decided, regardless of his results indicate deadliness or easymode.


The -1 slot, and now also -1 EWAR slot is really stinging.
Not to mention, even with an EWAR, the results aren't that uniform.


Which is a nice feedback to those saying "There's a skill to increase drone health!" - not to mention he did these tests in a drone ship giving also quite a bit of health to the critters.

Thus any ship WITHOUT a hull bonus to drone health will be even worse off!
Not to mention it may be unwilling to fit any EWAR module if it hasn't already even more.
Sure, the new AI hurt drone boats, but it hurts others without precision missiles as well, specially with long range guns if he gets tackled by NPCs.

Hey Mund, you willing to buy into my conspiracy theories quite yet?

Every day this looks more and more like a pre-meditated attack against PvE income.
If these testing results hold true, and CCP releases this tweak as (which is the pattern they have established with the UI in the summer, FW LP farming in the summer, and the Retribution AI last week), will you finally concede that maybe, just maybe, this was part of a plan to hammer PvE income all along?

OK, did a little more testing, against my better judgment. And it does look like they're trying to push us into a "Peeling the Onion" approach.

I engaged a cruiser and a battleship.

Releasing lights, no matter what they did (including taking the BS into structure) did not result in drones getting aggro.
Releasing mediums was iffy. I once got aggro from cruiser. But repeating it over and over couldn't replicate same aggro, despite yet again drones taking the BS into structure.
Releasing heavies - immeidate aggro from cruiser.
Releasing sentries - no immediate aggro from what I saw, but as soon as they started shooing at the BS (but not hitting, he was orbiting at 3km and they couldn't hit this close), the cruiser started firing too.

So, my guess is that the design idea is as follows:
Frigates will protect the larger ships from all drones, light and up.
Destroyers same as above, more or less.
Cruisers will protect larger ships from all drones medium and up.
Battleships won't attrack drones at all, from what I saw, at least I never saw anything to indicate it.

Thus, as a drone user, your approach would be as follows:
Kill frigs/destroyers first. This makes your lights "immune" to attack, as cruisers and up ignore them.
Kill cruisers next. This can be done with lights still, and makes your mediums "immune".
And once cruiser/battlecruiser hulls are off the field, you can AFK at your leisure, because BSes won't touch drones at all.*

*- what I didn't test is multiple BSes, one orbiting close and one far away. Would the far away one try to help the nearer one if drones attacked it? Because I'm reasonably sure it could land good hits on drones. Perhaps it appears BSes don't attack drones because so far in my tests it was just 1 BS being attacked, and no other BSes present, and BS being attacked probably "knew" it couldn't do jack to drones, though it doesn't explain why it wouldn't go after sentries.

Problem with this approach? In many missions, there's still so many frigates/destroyers in a single wave, that drones still die, especially lights. So for best results, pick them off with sentries on approach. That way risk should be minimal.

Oh, and one other thing I forgot to mention - all ships seem to "focus fire" on a single drone, always. That is, out of 5 drones in space, they will always pick on the "weakest" one - one that already has armor or hull damage on it. Which makes it that much more likely to lose a drone - because they will try to drop one that's closest to death.

Also, and I can't swear to this, but I'm pretty certain, is that the NPCs can "lock on" drones pretty much instantly. Or at least considerably faster than I can. They're cheating, in a way. So even if "drone is being targeted" was added, the NPCs' targeting is so quick that you wouldn't get much warning.

Going to test this theory next in a mission and see what happens.

EDIT:

Just ran "The Score" L4 vs the Seprentis. Peeling the Onion" seems to be working.

Basic rules are:
1. Only use sentries vs frigs.
2. For everything else, downzise by one step.*
* - for battleships, use whatever you want, they don't fight back.

Room 1: Nothing but frigs, dessies and cruisers.

Aggro everything in the room, use sentries to pick off frigs and dessies on approach. Release LIGHT drones (or keep using sentries until enemy ships get to sneezing range), even though the only remaining targets are cruisers and you SHOULD be using mediums. But mediums will pull aggro, lights did not. Aim at jump gate (50km away) and go AFK for 10 mins. Come back to clean room, all LIGHT drones alive!

Room 2: Two frigs/dessies, lots of cruisers, four battleships.

Aggro everything. Use sentries to take out the frigs/dessies. Release lights. Once cruisers are all gone, switch to heavies and they'll mop up the battleships.

Room 3: Half a dozen frigs/dessies, some cruisers, six (?) battleships.

Same as above. Sentries for frigs. Bring out lights for cruisers, or keep using sentries (I did, more DPS). Then with only BSes left, brought out the heavies to mop up.

Mission complete. No drones TARGETED, never mind lost.

In theory, with good skills (drones + hull) the mission can be done semi-AFK. Once frigs are gone - release Lights. It'll take them a while to chew through battleships, but they can do it. Note: this may be unique to Serpentis, due to them using Gallente ships, which suck. Will try a mission against someone else when I can, and see if the same holds true.

EDIT:

Just ran "Right hand of Zazzmatazz" L4 vs Angel Cartel. The basic rules held true. Just watch yourself for step 1 - Sentries vs Frigs. If you are too slow, sentries WILL take fire from cruisers (which is supported by earlier testing). So you may have to play a little sentry peek-a-boo. As soon as frigs are off the field, release LIGHTS and go for a cup of tea. Come back to mission complete. Lights, needless to say, weren't optimal to take out the Raven and the Machariel, but they managed with 3x DDA IIs. Mediums probably would have been OK too, but I've had wonky results - sometimes cruisers did go for mediums, and sometimes not. Lights are safe though.

Drone loss: 0.3 (one Sentry lost some shields to cruiser missile spam before I could pull it).

Oh, and by the way, drones still happily split damage, even with "focus fire" enabled. Still. How long have we had this bug? Seven years? Eight?

In closing: did this AI change make the game better? I don't see how. You can still run missions AFK in a drone boat same as before, just a little slower. Also this approach is heavily counter-intuitive. In the old days, I would use mediums to take out targets that lights should be taking out, and so on. Now it's the opposite - using lights for medium stuff, and mediums for heavy stuff, and so on. Don't see this as an improvement, merely a slowdown to missioning (i.e. big fat nerf). But with new DDA modules, I guess it evens out?

this all abound drones is one big nonsens. whit this new "AI" the playability of the game is going down
because all what players do in missions is watching drone interface and trying save theyr drones before total wipeing.
Its something terrible for me, to play lev 4 missions and still watching that stupid drone interface and recol drones back and out and back and out and back and out and back ................ and out ... and back and out ..................and back and back and out and out

If CCP think this is funy they are in big mistake.
at the and, I know CCP sou I dont except anything

best way is rollback because we all spend a lot of time be typeing some topics without effect (wastin of time) like this one

Yeah some really good work on this! I do hope they read through all this and take note.

Sadly I can't log in Duality but did someone test Salvager drones?
Do they still get aggroed by rats randomly?

Hmm, seems Fozzie is now on vacation too ... so i wonder which dev is next up on the list.