EVE General Discussion

Out of curiosity (and still not having finished grinding one of the sandings I wanted), I took out an alt with less-good drone skills in some BCs for level 3s, loaded with tech 1 drones, and tried to think of them as disposable.

Didn't loose any goblins with a Drake, but realised I was TP-ing all the time and doing "good" dps, plus I've barely met any elite ships, so swapped to a Myrm, that should see proper agro using medium drones.

It got interesting.
First Hammerhead I lost while it was shooting a sentry tower quite far away. I pressed the recall button when it had 90% shields still left, but only the other 4 got back.
So far for paying attention being remarkable.

Ok, so drones can get properly agro.
Second was a Hammerhead lost, Damsel, killed Krull just for the heck of it, drone 15-25 km away, room snapped over, my notice was shields dropping instantly, pressed the button, 4 drones made it back full health.

Ok, time for some serious TP magic.
TP and going close to the hostiles made my drones "invulnerable" afterwards.

...But you know, I trained my drone skills so they can go over 50km without a drone link (and had one on anyways, Angel Extra had rats spawning 100km away at L3 even, and then by sheer brilliance get stuck on an object....)

Another interesting issue I noticed that folk say "yellow box" = drone agro, recall them before they get into shield.
Well, true, but only if they are already within their prefered engagement range.
What if I want my drones to intercept them? I mean, Myrm with AC450s but no TE while my drones go 70km, why would I wait for the rats to get to me?

All in all, to get back on the topic, the AI Adjustment made light scout drones viable for anything below L4, and thus anything with below 50 mbps is good to go. Yay for new players!
Thorax with blasters or any short range weapon system ship is also cool.
Sentries are also cool as they were before, you can recall them just fine.

Any gunship not normally fitting any EWAR having a better drone bandwidth... well...

Next step: L4s with medium drones!

As far as I understand from the patch notes, running a Golem, your chances of having agro on the salvage drones stays after you kill elite frigs until you also kill the elite cruisers, while the easy frigates are of no consciquence dead or alive.

edit: forgot the word elite there.

i do love the new AI, as i'm currently training a couple of noobs with a group of small ships in lvl 3 missions, the new aggro mechanic makes things much more exciting, the perma-aggro on the first target was both unrealistic, and somewhat dull.

solo mission running however, got somewhat more annoying.
drones now take MUCH more micromanagement then before, and pretty much requires me to pay as much, sometimes more, attention to my drones health then my own if i dont want to loose tons of drones.

of course missions shouldn't be run afk, but drones should not need quite this much player attention, and it should really be possible to save drones reliably if i notice the instant they get aggro, this is not the case, ogre's at over 30km away, have high possibility of not all of them making it back

and really, if i have a ship with 125mb drone bandwith, using medium drones instead of heavy, that's a considerably lower dps

this is not counting that highly regular drone loss, makes the use of T2 drones, LOWER my profit margin, as the increased loss rates, is costing me more money then the T2 dps is gaining for me with faster kills
edit:mabey T2 drones should have T2 resists?

this is on a typhoon, which has room for spare drones, so that loosing one dosnt kill my dps untill i dock, like a lot of ships do.

however, the ship always auto-launches damaged drones first, full health ones never touched while there is a damaged drone in the bay
i think this should be the other way around, it would help somewhat for the domi and other ships with spare drones
obviously a drone with no armor left has lower life expectency, and has no business being launched FIRST

Using heavies pre exansion netted less money than running sentries.

Using heavies post expansion nets less money than sentries.

Billions of AFK ISK nerfed, working as intended.

At the end these new mechanics are improving group play and nerfing afk safe isks.. That's pretty cool !
Of course drone as a weapon system are less efficient than before. But that's exactly like blasters for example :

Have you even tried to run a l4 mission with a battleship and blasters ? No, and no one is complaining about, because each weapon system has it's advantages and disadvantages. Close-range weapon systems tends to be better in PvP, as opposed to long-range weapon systems.

So, drones can make damages at long-ranges, but they are also efficient at close-range. Sounds like a pretty unbalanced situation... Oh wait, but it was the case of heavy missiles too, and they were a bit nerfed with retribution... too.

But rather than making again a weapon system that is close range = pvp or long range = pve, they decided to reverse it by making rats able to target drones.

Now, drones tends to be better un PvP than PvE. You can still use them in PvE but that's a bit more painful and it requires more micro-managment... Exactly like with blasters, again.

See ? Everything's working as intended.

How the latest iteration SHOULD work (according to patch notes, not that I fully agree with such mechanics):
Sentry/Heavy: EVERYTHING agroing it is not a bug, but working as intended.
Medium: Any sub-BS rat agroing it
Scout: only elite frigs and elite cruisers. <-- Still no explanation how/why elite cruisers should kill small drones as appropriate for their sig...

Now...
When a new wave spawns, they go for a random target. Can be a random drone of any size.
When a drone pulls proximity agro, all rats go for it. Can be a random drone of any size.

Now for the interesting parts:
Drones have sig blooms. That may make them a target for ships normally not intended to shoot at them.
Any other behavior you observe, may be a bug.

Yes, and no.
You see, one big issue with the new AI was, that many ships relied on small drones to get rid of tacklers.
Now... when the full room kills your hobgoblins, and you don't have a spare flight ready because let's say you use 4 heavies and 5 smalls with your Mach, got webbed down to 4 m/s, and your setup involved speedtanking, suddenly your chances were grim.

What the patch did do...

running missions in the new drone dessies became easy, so yay for new players (except if they use a ship like the Thorax, with 50/50 bay)

in L4s, getting rid of tacklers with drones is also more doable now.

What it (or I) didn't quite get

I'm still not comprehending why elite cruisers go for small drones, would love a CCP answer for that plan.

Heavies were quite bad for anything than getting rid of close-orbiting ships, so not much change there, and sentries were doable even before it, more or less. Not a pleasant experience compared to what we were used to, but doable.

And ofc this patching gives no help at all for ships that have 125/125 dronebays, or before L4s 50/50.

Bit of a ham-fisted change, feels more like a band-aid.
Fighters... well, considering how nothing compares to the sig of a carrier, shooting it's drones is what the original plan was as well, so not much change there. Mainly a nerf to the gallente line, the rest can get equal damage from sentries, at a fraction of the (drone) cost (but at the cost of fitting modules). Oh wait, did I just find a new way Gallente was nerfed?

Made that easier for you.

Jokes aside, real droneophiles can manage with sentries and a MJD on the good ol' Domi.
Being... Gifted enough to do so, instead of the often discussed alternatives, is an entirely different topic.

Mund, I would like to see a fit that can support what you are suggesting.
Assume a Navy Domi for more PG, CPU, and slots.

Secondly, how will this work with the spin-up cycle?
How about waiting for cap to come back up for the 2nd Micro-Jump, back to your original spot?
Or are we to slowboat 100 km to a gate?

And what sentries am I to use when I have jumped 100 km from the NPC's?
Gardes are useless at that range.
Warden's and Bouncers do very poor damage against EM/Therm rats, and are not great to start with in overall damage.
Curators, well, let's not even begin to discuss them.

You proposal might work, but as I stated elsewhere, this new AI was designed fundamentally as a huge nerf of PvE income.
CCP can talk about enhanced game play, or wiping out AFK ratters (Fox Four herself that the new AI does not remove AFK'ing), but the actions and results speak far louder than words.

I have to dash out, but re: Sentries in null, when I lived in Pure Blind, Havens were a snap with a Armour tanked Ishtar, Gardes and Omni's.

You and I know this is far more than an "annoying blow".
And yeah, you know why I can't let this go.

Every cause needs its activists, even if the cause is a lost one.