Assembly Hall

*this is not about drone damage/balance thread*

With the upcoming expansion and with all the ship rebalance drones have become a common main weapon. It is now a good time in my opinion to review the drone skills.

To start with lets take a look at the drone skills themselves (going to divide them to support, specialization and core skills)

Core drone skills:

• Drones
• scout drone operation
• combat drone operation
• Heavy drone operation
• Sentry drone interfacing
• Fighters
• Fighter Bombers

Support drone skills:

• Drone Durability
• Drone Navigation
• Drone Sharpshooting
• Drone Interfacing

Specialization drone skills:

• Advanced drone interfacing
• Amarr drone specialization
• caldari drone specialization
• gallente drone specialization
• minmatar drone specialization
• Electronic Warfare Drone Interfacing
• Mining drone Operation
• Repair drone operation
• Salvage drone operation

The concept of drones as main weapon used to be reserved for a few selected subcapital ships and of course carriers, which left a lot of players with just a few drone skills in order to be able to use selected drones (tech 2 light - medium drones + EW drones mostly).
That's not the problem though and old players wont have any problem leveling the correct/needed drone skills.
However a new pilot that just started playing eve and assuming he has little guidance by friends/corp/guides will find himself lost and overwhelm.

Comparing drones to other weapon system will make my point clear lets take as an example the hybrid weapons:

• Small blasters/rails --> frigates/destroyers
• medium blasters/rails --> cruisers/battlecruisers
• large blasters/rails --> battlecruisers/battleships

There is a clear line of progression and all the players will soon realize (if they haven't already) that fitting medium neutron blasters to their megathron is a mistake.

But when it comes to drones there is no line of progression, well at least not a clear one that is. let me demonstrate this:

• light drones ---> frigates/destroyers/cruisers/battlecruisers/battleships/carriers
• medium drones ---> frigates/destroyers/cruisers/battlecruisers/battleships/carriers
• heavy drones ---> exactly the same as above
• sentry drones ---> exactly the same

But wheres the problem? everything is working as intended!!! well yes and no at the same time. *i am not suggesting that we should allow drones to be fitted only to certain classes* after all drones are most of the time the only defense of large ships against smaller. NO, drone mechanics should remain as they are now.
What i am saying is that a new player does not know which he should train first. Unlike conventional weapon systems the drones don't have a clear line of progression and this should be change.
You may argue that simplifying things in game is bad and will make it easy mode. THIS IS WRONG!!!! we're not changing the depth of the game or the benefits of a maxed out drone pilot! but the skill tree needs to be simple and easy to understand.
Complexity is good in many things, the skill tree isn't one of them though.

alright alright you made your point but what are you suggesting already?

Well first of all we need a few skill name changes because most of them are very confusing:

1. Sentry drone interfacing ---> sentry drone operation
2. Scout drone operation ---> Drone range operation (explained below)
3. Repair drone operation ---> Logistic drone operation
4. Electronic Warfare Drone interfacing ---> EW drone operation
5. Combat drone operation ---> split into 2 skills
6. Advanced drone interfacing ---> description change

REASONS

1. has a similar name to drone interfacing but its identical to heavy drone operation.
2. The skill is named scout drone operation yet it gives 5000m increased range per level, makes no sense.
3. The only reason I'm suggesting this is because in the skill description it says logistic drones not repair drones. Keep it simple.
4. Same thing with the sentry skill, wrong name! also the bonus on the skill (3000m per level) makes no sense to be here. (more about it below)
5. Split into 2 skills: light drone operation/medium drone operation Will explain below
6. DESCRIPTION CHANGE: say that it can only be used by carriers. to a new player having more than 5 drones seems awesome but he'll be dissapointed when he finds out he wasted a month of training.

Alright time for the skill changes themselves:

• First of all the faction drone specialization skills must be removed. yes you read that right, they make no sense at all and some of them are rarely if ever useful (looking at amarr drone spec). Don't worry i don't want to remove them completely, they'll just change.
• The Combat drone operation will be split into Light drone operation and Medium drone operation, both will get a specialization skill (light drone specialization and medium drone specialization).
• Each starter skill will have a 5% damage per level bonus on the corresponding drones and each specialization skill will give a 2% damage per level bonus. Same goes for heavy and sentry drones, both will get a specialization skill that will give them a 2% bonus per level.

NOTE: The training times should be altered, HOWEVER the specialization skill must NOT pre-require the lighter version spec (example: medium drone specialization should not require light drone spec to IV, unlike guns). It should be like the missile specialization skills if anything.