Ships & Modules

Thought about this some time ago, would agree with you that it's silly they cannot rep you.

Maybe it's just one of those decisions they made way back when that just makes no sense now.

There were many good reasons why you can not target yourself with rep drones, not all apply anymore. One that still remains is that any drone ship (those with more drone bay than absolutly needed) gain another "free" module. This is only really relevant outside combat, since you lose dps to rep yourself so it balances.

I kind of agree with what you're saying... But I feel my point still stands about simply having more real life cash to fund a second account, with which to use some drones or remote repair yourself outside of combat isn't really any different.

Also, drone boats are the only ones that would ever actually employ this, and I don't see it as a deal breaker. They're true power comes from their versatility. The ability to change damage types, ability to deal good damage against ships of all sizes, and at any (reasonable) range.

I don't really see an issue with them losing some drone space, and training up an extra skill to get a worse repair than a fully fledged module.

Also, I wouldn't class it as a "free" module anymore than I'd class combat drones as a "free" gun. It takes up drone space, and uses bandwidth to employ. A set of 5x Heavy Armor Maintenance Bots will take up 125m3 of drone hanger space. That's a sizeable "free" module, for something that a Dominix's ample number of low-slots can do better with a single LAR, which of course any armor Dominix will have fit anyway.


As an aside:

I can understand that the code's old, and pretty unfit for purpose. I can even understand that CCP might want to keep it the way it is, regardless. I really, really can't see why they can't just add a 10 word string to the description, immediately. Just to mention that you can't use the drones on yourself. I know when I was a newbie I trained this skill and bought some drones, only to find out that they weren't fit for my purpose. And when you're brand new to a game as complex as EVE, you need all the help you can get from the in-game literature.

I never mentioned targeting yourself.

When the drones are orbiting you (using the "return to orbit" button on the drone interface), they automatically start repairing you... Simple.

No changes to the targeting code required.

And what part of the current game interface allows you to do anything similar? This would require a completely new set of code.

I disagree it would require an entirely new set of code.

All that needs to change is that when a maintenance style drone is orbiting its mothership, it uses its repairer module on the aforementioned ship.

Nothing in the UI would change. It would be automatic, and the coding changes would occur within the maintenance drone class, which I assume is an abstract class.


if (maintenance_drone.orbit(mothership)) {
maintenance_drone.repair(mothership);
}

Gives you the jist of what I'm suggesting, implementation wise. I would imagine that CCP have all the necessary methods already in place. They'd basically need to check to see if the drone is orbiting its owners' ship. If it is, repair it. Otherwise, act as normal.

The free module point seems odd since combat drones can be seen the same way, but we're so use to it that its not considered. The problem I see is that you're repping yourself without using cap or consuming boosters (ancillary). Then again, you can't shoot mods.
I think CCP should revisit this when the drone overhaul happens.

I dont think you can even assign drones to a friend to target you and activate them on you either.

I dont think it would break the game but it does make sense..... because:

You can rep yourself with an RR module, so how about making new self rep drones separate to current RR drones?

Not relevant at all as drone ships general have less slots than standard ships to account for the utility that drones provide,

The question the OP asks is one that I asked pretty much within the first week of eve being released. I think now it is more than silly not to expect repair drone to automatically use their repairers on the controlling ship when the 'idle' nearby.

From a coding perspective it would be fairly easy to add an extra flag that says when drone are 'idle' they active reps on the 'parent' ship. This negates any potential issues around the self targetting issues.

Each T2 heavy logistics drone reps up to 90 HP per cycle or 16 HP per second. Five of them would repair 90 HP/second. A MAR2 would repair up to 35.5~ HP/s while a LAR2 would reach 71.1~ HP/s. On top of this drones would not require capacitor making them ideal for ships that have their primary source of damage as their onboard weapons. For a ship like the hyperion or the megathron this would actually be a good deal.

Let's look at it from another perspective. I have a nightmare that doesn't really need to run its XL booster non-stop. XL Boosters repair up to 120 HP/s for the T2 variant. My nightmare doesn't really need drones most of the time, and when it does light drones suffice. This leaves it with 50m3 for a pair of T2 heavy shield rep drones to rep 30 HP/s. From my perspective that would be a damn good situation because for every 4 seconds I run an XL booster in a mission on my nightmare something like 30 seconds go by where I don't need one. Not only that they would be superior for keeping me alive in situations where I'm under fire heavy enough to warrant running the XL booster non-stop while firing my guns as they will ease the need to run the XL booster thereby preserving my capacitor.

With the current mission environment packing combat drones heavier than mediums can be more trouble than it's worth for some people. For them packing a heavy repair drone or two in addition to their flight of light drones would make sense if the drones could augment their tank. These are the ships that present balance issues, not drone boats. A dominix pilot that gets in over their head, recalls sentries, and pops rep drones to keep them alive until they warp out aren't "OP," they just got their asses kicked after all. Likewise an ishtar using its full drone capacity to rep itself is going to have very anemic gun-based damage. A navy dominix might put out sufficient damage to make it a worthwhile consideration, but with only 6 turrets and a 5% damage bonus it might be difficult and not really worth it.

I don't armor rep drones being a significant concern in PvP given that popping rep drones is likely about as hard as popping other drones, and armor drones rep at the end of the cycle. The real issue is that shield rep drones rep at the start of the cycle so it's theoretically possible someone could dump them, rep a cycle, and recall them before you can lock them. The micro-manipulation required to do that, however, would probably take either a macro program (which if discovered by CCP could cause issues due to "automation giving the player an in-game advantage over other players") or so much of their attention that they're effectively useless for anything else.

Another facet to consider is that when used by logistics ships as a self-repair mechanism it would actually make them more likely to survive being primaried. An oneiros would possibly be the worst case scenario with 50mb3. MWD, cap injector, 1600mm plate, four medium reppers, and you get a cap-stable (with the injector going) ship that has near 50k EHP (omni), can rep near 170.6~ hp/s at 51km, and when the repper drones are on it can repair itself for 335 rDPS omni. I'm sure that that's not a great setup for an oneiros, in fact I would imagine a lot of posters would say that the best fit for an oneiros is repackaged and on the market so you can buy a guardian, but from my perspective being able to use your drones to self-repair in a situation like this makes for an interesting situation.

At the least I'd like to see the idea enacted on Singularity so that it can be tested out by players to determine just how unbalanced this would be in this day and age.