Missions & Complexes

Well first off sentry's are a must, i see that you can use 5 ogres which means you can fit and use 5 sentry's, this will avoid the trouble of having your drones so far away.

second, npcs really hate light drones, use heavy drones or meds to kill scrammers.

Use a Tengu

I did a couple of lvl 3 without losses using a target painter, lights and mediums. Still the frigate npc switched targets several times and did some damage. The mobile drones are now a short range weapon, if you need to kill something far from recovery distance use sentries. Lvl 4 are more drone friendly than low levels, big rats look for big targets.

With my Rattlesnake:

0 km to 15 km: Ogre II
15 KM to 50 km; Garde II
over 50 km: Bouncer II

Ogre II can easily kill frigates too, though Hobgoblin II are faster.

I rep drones as necessary, hence I don't want Ogre II too far away (at 1km / sec, they are about 5 sec from safety). I keep all drones target-locked (10 targets), and usually leave something to NOS.

I think you should not wait until one of the npc's should agro your drones. You should pull them in from time to time. But the best way is to not use drone ships still.

Thats stupid. A dominix does not struggle with drone aggro. Sentries attract very little aggro, and dominix light drones will often have 50% more hps, 50% more damage from the hull, and 40% more damage from DDAs fitted to the ship, and a dominix pilot will typically just snipe the frigates first with the sentries anyway. I hardly ever actually put lights on the field.

The "problem" is 75m3 bay battleships that are reliant on drones to kill frigates, because the largest missiles do really poor damage to frigates under all circumstances and cannot snipe them like a turret or a sentry.

For someone without pirate-battleship or Marauder money, it's quite possible that the best solution might be to put a brick-tank Drake armed with RLMs on a battleship's wing. Obviously that's not a solution for someone running a single account, though.

Drone boats have taken a massive nerf in terms of PVE and to some extent have actually been made obsolete, certainly for DED PLEXS in null and low.

Using a drone boat is now unfortunately completely impossible for a large selection of PVE due to NPC drone insta murder. If you are using a drone boat the majority of your DPS will be in drones which causes the NPC's to target your drones, with 25+ ships on one drone they simply insta pop.

''Some will scream but I use my drone boat against sleepers in WH's so deal with it.'' This is a fair point but is countered by the fact that sleeper sights were designed with the harder AI in mind and balanced as such. Normal Sec DED's and missions were not and that is where the problem resides around drone boat insta murder. Some missions by chance are doable in a drone boat some however are impossible.

Normal turret ships deploying drones will not really see this kind of aggression against their drones so using the odd drone to kill small frigates is not a problem if the majority of your firepower comes from turret form as the AI see's your ship as the threat not your drones.

Ships such as the Gila, Vexor, Myrmidon, Ishtar and Dominix (navy) are now no longer suitable for PVE. Expect the Domi, Ishtar and Gila to crash in price as PVE runners no longer fly these ships. The others will not crash due to their use in PVP which drones still can perform.

The drones themselves will crash in price too, yes I said crash not rise due to PVE runners no longer using drone boats. More drones are being destroyed but this is the short story. Long term drone boats are now obsolete and players will simply no longer fly them for PVE purposes.

Carriers will also drop in price as they have also been hit hard with fighters being targeted although fighters do have a bit more tank which will allow carriers to rep them or get them back alive. Fighter, carriers and drones will all drop in value as less people use them for PVE. They have remained unaffected for PVP use.


I like the new AI changing it for drone boats is not the answer, the simple answer is to adapt by moving from Drone boats to turret boats. Another way to level the playing field would be to allow turrets on ships to be targeted and destroyed much like drones that way drone pilots would be level in both PVE and PVP. Drone DPS can be destroyed so should turrets.

Some are saying IVs are easier on drones than 3's but V's are about ridiculous. Theres only a few seconds to pull in sentries, just dont even use mobile ones beyond 7km. Fighters get blapped as well. Reps and tp's dont work there. When youre doing V's its especially critical to get those scramblers down as on top of all the drone/ fighter micromanagement you need to dscan every couple seconds.

In my own case this AI reorganization has rendered most of my methods useless adding another month of training to be able to adapt . Its ok though there was nothing else i was really wanting to train besides new weapons systems for something i had no issue doing 2 weeks ago.

The dominix vid using MJD and wardens was pretty impressive. Though he never had his entire overview completly full of npcs to scroll through. If i were doing level 4's or working my way towards them with domi like OP this looks a good way to go.

Ive noticed myself that my heavys tend to kill frigs in the same time if not quicker that lights for a couple of reasons, first of, bigger range, this means as they fly to the frig with low transverse rate most of the time they pop the frig before they even get to it. Second, instead of orbiting like mad bugs round a flame, they sit behind the target and again have low transverse rate meaing there lack of tracking is not a issue. Finally, the firgs wont switch to attack the heavy drones that i send after it unlike the light drones so you kill the frigs quicker cause your drones aint dead.

Yes i use a couple of omnis but then i use a navy domi so why not.