Missions & Complexes

INB4L


Yes I agree Drone aggro has if anything made drones a pain in the butt but there are countless other threads about it.

+1

By "fun" I assume the thread creator meant "why can't I leave my drones outside, on aggressive and not have to worry about them".

Dautrin Maize, it's difficult to lose drones as long as you think about what you're doing and what the NPC is doing.
Here are some tips...

1) kill off frigates from range without drones where possible.
2) Never set drones to aggressive as they'll be re-targetted quicker.
3) When Frigates get too close for guns, hold back on just throwing drones out. Wait until they are within 12km and then engage them. This way, you have time to get them back in the hold when/if they take damage.
4) don't leave the drones out there for eternity even if they haven't been locked. Kill a few things, then pull them back in and redeploy them. Remember all NPC's have the ability to retarget and this includes anything you leave outside.
5) always keep the drone window fully expanded so you can see when drones are taking damage and pull them back in.

I fly a rattlesnake in null and have lost about 3 drones and that's normally down to neglect (i.e. me not watching) than the NPC being ultra-effecient at drone execution. The rules have changed so your tactics have too as well.

I spend plenty of time in low-sec, but for obvious reasons, I fly level 4 missions in hi-sec. It is neither 'hawd' nor 'scawy'...but I appreciate you stepping up to the challenge of being a huge smartass. I know it's hard work.

My point was not about whether the change made it hard (it doesn't), but that it makes it unnecessarily aggravating (that is: not fun). Games are fun...

@addelee:

My drones are never on aggressive. They only attack when I tell them to (always had it set this way).



This is much to my point. Previously I had damage augments and range augments fitted so that I could send drones out to as far as 65km. But that's now utterly foolish unless I want to spend continuous ISK on replacing drones. I see posts all the time saying "I only lost 3 drones since the change...", and clearly, these folks are not seeing what I'm seeing in level 4 missions in Angel space.

Anyway, as I've stated, the change is just detrimental to a player's enjoyment - an unintuitive, shoddy, overkill'ish adjustment by CCP.

Sentries, pop frigates, lights if the enemy gets too close, target painter to help your drones and perhaps draw some aggro. I run lvl4 with a plain domi, usually i don't bother to use the turrets and I only recall the drones to switch to another kind... Ofc things were different just after the first december patch, but now drone aggro is a non issue for me.

I don't find it a problem. I can still run missions fine you just need to actually pay attention.

I believe he meant that watching your drones' health bars and/or the color of the blinking brackets belonging to the NPCs constantly is a PITA. And he's right.




Where did you get this one?




BS. If the NPC frigates multi-web + point your drone (and this happens), there's NOTHING you can do except watching it die in seconds, trying desperately to get back in your bay, even if the NPCs were only at 7-8 km.


I agree with the fact that being able to AFK-drones PvE was not okay, but I think that you should not lose ANY drone if you pay attention enough and don't send them too far away, which is clearly not the case.

Rattlesnake + sentry drones in high-sec here.

Get aggro, launch drones, go browse forums or watch xxx-movie.

Yes, sometime NPCs aggro drones but most of the time T2 sentry doesn't die fast enough to make any trouble. Sometime i repair drones in station but never lost 1 sentry.

Have tried to use regular.... yes, it can be done but it's too much :effort: from nothing.

Personally i prefer old system when you used regular drones. It was more fun after all: most of missions don't allow "launch drones and go AFK" anyway but this was more funny than sitting and watching sentries kill stuff without any risk to them.

The current npc drone aggro and drone management mechanics is like counting the number of wrinkles on my dog's balls. It's a lot of work, not challenging at all, and not much fun.

Look up definition of game. Challange enhances fun. Counting the wrinkles on my dog's balls, not so much. Care to help with it?

I just stopped doing missions and exploration...

I had high hopes for the new AI, and it was just a huge disappointment. PvE content was never been more boring then it is now, so i'm doing other stuff until they get around fixing it.