Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hi,



for the first time ever since I play EVE Online I used drones. The first thing I noticed: they are stupid and useless except you fight against one target alone. The game lacks of an interface with commands for the drones behavior in combat so you need not to give very single target manually.

If you use drones the game changes from it normal gengre to strategy. For this purpose you need better and clear commands.

I list some commands I would like to see in a drone specific interface. These are basic commands based on modern strategy games.

ATTACK TARGET
Attacks the target.

ATTACK AREA
Attacks all hostile ships within the control range no matter whether they are firing on you or not.

ATTACK RANGE
Defines a range around the ship in which the drones attack all hostile targets. Everything beyound will be ignored. Useful if you want to shut from long range with your ship while the drones defend you against close range attackers.

DEFEND
Defend the own ship against all hostile targets attacking the ship.

DEFEND RANGE
Same as attack range only with the defensive behavior of the drones.

IGNORING TARGETS
Let choose from a list which targets the drone should ignore (e.g. structures).

STAND BY
All drones return to the ship and orbit it.

ALL DRONES OF THE SAME TYP/ ALL DRONES
Choose all drones for further commands. The possibility to chosse only one typ of drones e.g. only all Light Scout Drones or all drones together.

GROUPS/ DELETE GROUP/ DELETE ALL GROUPS
The possibility to group drones and give each group a specific command. You chosse the drones you want to group. Than push "GROUP". That is than Group 1. The next is automatic Group 2 and so on.


For logistic drones:

REPAIR TARGET
Repairs the target.

AUTOMATIC REPAIR
Repairs all friendly ships etc. in range.

IGNORING TARGETS
Repairs only the chosen targets (e.g. only the own drones and ignore the ship).

AUTOMATIC REPAIR SHIP
Repairs the own ship.

The idea is to give the drones a specific behavior for different situations and tactics.

Also you can gives commands while the drones are in the drone hangar. Than they are "programmed" with the command (a specific symbol for every command is shown at every drone) and waiting for the release command to implement to command.



Thank you.

I would to buttons on the HUD like for the installed mods to control the drones.

I agree a new interface would be fantastic as it stands now drones are less then user friendly maybe buttons instead of right clicks with key binds for each.

All CCP needs to do to make me elated about drones is LOOSE THE ******* DROP DOWN MENUS.

How hard is that? Adding a new button in place of the stupid drop down, you already made a mock up, it looked nice. Its not like making a new button requires months of research.

They also need to fix some basic AI issues with drones.

I think the commands are quite fine that we have. I flied gallente ships most of my eve time and there has not been need for different commands. However I would like to see improved UI for drove window because now its generic list. There could be much more nice visual way to describe the drones than just text and this horrid box.

So definitely a bump to improve the experience of using drones. But don't agree that much that there is need to add new commands!

So much needs to.be done on drones...

UI upgrade
AI upgrade
Stat rebalance

That doesn't sound.much, but its effectively everything apart from the art...

Caldari drones using a rocket style weapon visual would be awesome, sentrys can keep using rails.

That and I would love Kamikaze drones...

It's not so much that anyone thinks drones or their interface is good, or even unworthy of comment.


It's just that those of us who made heavy use of drones are tired. They have been so bad for so long that we were worn out before the recent AI change made NPC rats burn with a dark unnatural hunger for them. Now we just sort of wait in limbo for a fix to fall from above one day. Until then I've switched from drones to turret ships, and started training missles. Maybe if they finally do fix drones I'll be set up to make wicked use of a Rattlesnake.

Multiple Devs have commented that it needs done, I would expect that once they get done with some level of messing with ships they will get around to it. I was kind of hoping this is why the one dev team had named itself "Game of Drones", but saddly that name appears to be simply an uninspired shout out to a fantasy show. I love that show, and have loved the books since I bought the first well over a decade ago... but I had hoped for more.

Actually designing and changing a UI is much longer and harder than you may think. They have to design it on paper, and get it approved. That alone can take more than 1 month depending on the scope of the change. Then they have to create a test version of it, which could also take a while depending on their resources. Then hey have to test it and make sure the changes are okay (have their QA team test it and provide feedback). Then based on feedback they would probably make some adjustments, and have those tested again. Then if all is good create a more polished version and have it tested and rubber-stamped by their QA team, and then put it on the test server for players to give their feedback on it. Once the trial phase is done, they would have to add it to the game as part of the next expansion.

So, a few months to re-organize the current context-menu tree into a non-context menu interface is very reasonable when you think about all the steps involved (and I probably missed a few).

I agree with you there, I was specifically replying to the comment all in caps about how easy it should be to "just add buttons". I'm sure CCP has a ton of items on their to-do list and that their priorities are changing constantly based on player feedback and new expansions in development.

I strongly support the need for a revamped drone interface, but I just have no illusion about it being a daunting task for CCP.