EVE General Discussion

Due to excessive boredom i decided to run a couple level 4's last night. Entered the room in my Nightmare, Sansha, lots of Sentries, couple BS, couple cruisers, couple frigs, all at about 20k.
Frigs aggro immediately and I only manage to kill one before they get in close.
No problem, i'll drop drones....
Drop 5 Valk 2's, Drone durability 5.
Frigs are 6k away, agress one of them, see instant damage on a drone, recall them...and lose one on the way back......
So, I let the flies buzz, instapop the cruisers, kill the sentries and BS.
I again drop my 4 remaining drones. One is killed instantly, before I can order them to redock.
Now I know it's been a long time since I've done missions, but the NPC's now instalock your drones? The three frigs never stopped firing on me, never lost aggro on them. Yet they were able to kill a drone within five seconds of being released?

The first time, I assumed i simply didn't see one of the NPC's refocus fire, but I didn't see the frigs refocus fire, so, NPC's will now fire on multiple targets at the same time?

Glad I don't have to do missions to earn a living.....

CCP improved the NPC AI for the normal mission NPCs. It is now much more like sleeper and Sanshas.

Elite frigates will attack light drones and larger.
Frigates and cruisers will attack medium drones and larger.
Battleships will attack heavy and sentry drones.

I am not sure what BCs do. It is either medium or heavy drones that they attack. Somebody else might know.

The new NPCs also go by threat level. So best is to put DPS out and make your ship the biggest threat and let your drones not wander off too far. If you can then always try to kill the small NPCs before the larger ones to increase the survivability of your drones.

Once you get the hang of it will you only occasionally lose a light drone every 5 to 10 missions, which is acceptable (imo), and one can probably get better than this.

Edit:
Attack order for drones was wrong and will still need looking at.

Some players mentioned the use of ECM Burst as a method for keeping the aggro on the ship, but this is pretty risky for high-sec as this will get CONCORD on you when someone sneaks into your missions.

I have only read about the use of ECM Burst, but there are the normal ECM modules and the Target Spectrum Breaker. I doubt a single ECM module will be good enough to get all the aggro and to keep it, and the Target Spectrum Breaker breaks your own locks, too, and cripples your lock speed and uses a lot of cap. I doubt it is useful in missions. I actually once tried it and it caused my drones to get more aggro, probably because it break the aggros and allows NPCs to pick a new target.

I do not think it is necessary though. One just needs to keep the drones close and only use them for what is actually necessary, like killing the tacklers that are in close range. Then dealing a lot of damage to the bigger ships will let one keep the aggro.

Most times when a drone dies is when there are multiple groups in a mission pocket and not all have begun to aggro one. Then these other groups will go for one's drones and one needs to be careful and pull them back fast.

Sentry drones are then almost immune and can take a lot of hits before it gets critical. The easy times are over though. It is now more challenging to do missions and it is fun.

There's your problem right there. Don't use mediums to kill frigs. It's slower and frigs will take them down really quickly. Also they're too slow to get back to your ship if they're taking fire. Use lights and the problem you are describing is no longer a problem. That way you can kill the frigs even with all the other ships on grid because only NPC frigs and elite cruisers will target light drones now.

Your welcome.

/thread

Confirming that I have had absolutely no issues with LVL4's in my tengu.

They are just as easy and quick as before.

Not sure why anyone would run a LVl4 in anything but a Tengu, but there you go...

Nothing to see here, move along.

That was also a mistake. The NPCs have a timer, they only switch aggro every so often. If you recall and redeploy right away you can get some kills in before that swap back to the drones. Also, use Warriors. They get home so much faster.

Micro jump away from the frigs, drop sentries and kill them as they fly over to you. If they somehow get under your sentries, repeat.

You could try not soloing lvl 4s and use a small gang of people instead.

Which is all lies, by the way.