EVE General Discussion

As a gallente, I find imagining an EVE without drones a challenging exercise. But okay, I'll do this slightly backwards.

Inspiration: The Robot novels by Isaac Asimov, especially the Lije Baley and later Foundation ones. Drones are robots-- good for manual labor and tasks that are considered beneath the capsuleer. They're not even as good as non-capsuleer pilots given their low initiative and reaction speed, but they get the job done.

User needs: A way to do things automatically that the user does not actually want to do. Reduce grinding.

Usefulness: my god I really want drones to haul my crap between two systems. Especially when said crap is a lot of minerals from refine <> build. I might ever use a build pos.

Functionality: I'd like an RTS interface. EVE is sometimes an RTS, I want to be able to take logistics drones and load them up and then route them through systems/poses/stations, salvage and mining drones and give them a path to do their thing, and combat drones which I give orders to like a squad. For the last one, hotkeys would be essential.

Potential: Crimewatch. As drones are not considered particularly important and contain no sentient beings, CONCORD doesn't care that strongly if you shoot 'em, although you will incur a suspect timer for shooting at all. If you wanted to do whatever it is you were doing with that drone, you should have asked a capsuleer. If you want to gank dudes on gates, just send some drones through and see what happens. Content creation opportunities!

Little things can go a long way. Put one recall button on every drone in local space. "Itchy, you are hurt, come back to drone bay and get some rest!"

My turn

Needs: Robotics serve to replace humans in jobs that are too repetitive or too dangerous. Gallente use them for the latter, I would assume Caldari to be the former. So combat drones would be Gallente, task oriented ones etc. each race specializing.

Usefullness: Pet class (to use fantasy terms) so combat drones would still be the first to be instituted but scavenger ones that tow and or loot on command would be right behind. Drones would also be the only thing that would make sense for HULL repair.

Functionality: A more comprehensive set of programmable hotkeys. Subgroups of drones cna be set as flights. Launch flight 1, recall flight 1 launch flight 2.

Inspiration: Hull repair R2D2, dangerous tasks . . . bomb squad remotes

Potential. Scavenging. Bots to tractor items as mini tugs. Making looting more broad as a noctis prime drops its spawn and sweeps the field

my 2 cents

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Inspiration

Ok, My thoughts (for what they count anyhows)
When developing Software (or coding, etc, etc) the idea is to keep the system as simple as possible yet functional for both the end user and developer; this helps bug report/shooting, implementation, and so forth. Taking CCP Arrows scenario here of no drones existing in mind:

USER NEEDS: A set of assets that could be remotely directed to engage in utilitarian, combat, or logistical activities to augment current pilot capabilities and to interact with their environment.

USEFULLNESS: Running with CCP Arrows aforementioned scenario:

Drones could be used to augment on-ship weapon systems (kinda like, target painting), jam adversarial targets, repair friendlies, shoot adversaries, mine virtual rocks, assist with codebreaking derelicts in a minigame that has yet to be launched , could be some of the more localized uses of drones.

Leaving drones behind could help with remote monitoring of gates, POS defense drones, planetary bombardment drones (love you Dusties! ).

With all these potential functions: Drone Management and Information would be extremely important.
Information on drones being targeted by hostile entities may help enhance situational awareness. Damaged drones could also display their health status when stored, if they are damaged.
Repairing drones (Nanite Paste + Module as example) when stored in drone bay would be helpful. Knowing which stored drones are damaged would be convenient so the player does not inadvertently launch a severely damaged drone. A simple Red, Yellow, Green stoplight indicator should be sufficient.
Grouping drones or controlling them via standard RTS style (Ctrl+1 selects Drone 001, Ctrl+2 selects Drone 002, and so forth). An even BETTER feature would be the ability to mix drones (EWAR grouped with Combat).
There are plenty of RTS type games out there (not advocating ripping them off of course ) that can set some simple pre-conditions for when drones to return to ship or target new hostiles. With enough time (the eternal enemy), you could make drones more like mini-ships with the player able to throw on a rig/module/script on an unpackaged drone to modify it for more firepower, speed, or other criteria.

FUNCTIONALITY: Including a menu involving drones with the additional situational information. With screen real-estate as an issue, a sizable/movable menu with launched drones and stored drones (drone bay) with status indicators and drone controlling (single and/or grouped).

INSPIRATION: Well, virtually any movie with launchables. Or game for that matter. Real-world: status of remotely controlled assets are already utilized. Dark Reign (old RTS) for the concept of pre-set behavioral (return after 50% damage, aggressive stance, etc.)

POTENTIAL: Fighters, Fighter Bombers, Drones to top it off. Done right it could also set the proof of concept and platform for future squad/wing/fleet monitoring menus or status indicators. This potentially could provide a useful platform in the future for POS or planetary asset monitoring.

1) bring me beer
2) bring me beer!
3) I click the button marked "beer" or press the hotkey , and it brings me beer
4) Silent Running, with Bruce Dern, he has Hughie, Dewey, and Louie bring him stuff
5) Pizza! beer and pizza are awesome together

Ok, here goes; I am going to pretend completely that drones do not exist now.

User Needs- What is the single most important need this feature should fulfill?
To perform a job that my ship cannot do itself. Either because the ship is too slow, not agile enough, doesn't have the weapon systems, or whatever. These new 'drone' things need to do something I cannot do in my ship. Perhaps the drones can repair my ship?

Usefullness - Name one important thing you want this feature to do for your current game experience.
I would want it to give me more options in my chosen career path. More flexibility.

Functionality - How do you want to control this feature?
Using the F-keys and/or clicking icons around the existing modules general area.

Inspiration - Give one example of something from a Sci-fi movie you think should be used as a reference
Not a movie but I like the idea of the Combat Wasps from the Peter F Hamilton confederation universe. Basically the ships launched swarms of different wasps to do the fighting in space.

Potential - Name one good game mechanic currently existing in EVE which this feature could benefit from using
Certainly the module control either by the icons or F-keys. Also the damage arcs for my ship. My drones should have similar displays but perhaps smaller and positioned or shaped in a way that fitted the screen well. Weapon grouping controls are also nice and would be a good inspiration.

1) user needs - drones need to do what their launching ship can't. I think the concept of drones in EVE is more or less in a good place. Small ships use drones to supplement their main damage, big ships use them to either supplement main damage (sentries) or more commonly for close support.
2) usefulness - for my current game experience? I think as far as basic mechanics go, only the sentries need a serious look. The drawback of their stationary nature make it impractical to use them in quite a few situations. For sentries to be what they should, they need to be able to move with the ship that launched them. That would still let them behave like railguns, except more so. A module to enable that functionality (perhaps one that uses a turret slot?) would serve to help balance it. A sentry drone that works like that, with attributes more like blasters would also be welcome, as well as sentries/blaster-sentries of all sizes.
3) functionality - this is where we've currently got problems. Drones are meant to be a weapon system, we should be able to control them like a weapon system, with the f-keys. Right now, the drone AI is flat out stupid. When the drone AI is used at all, it pretty much never makes the right decision. Some mechanic that allows the drone AI itself to incorporate player feedback would be much more interesting. Perhaps drones should grant 2 additional targeting slots that can only be used for drone commands, that have built in auto-targeters (so drones lock, but do not automatically engage the targets the AI would currently just attack.) To jam those 2 targeting slots, the drones themselves should have to be jammed. The functionality of the drone window listing groups isn't bad. It would be nice if the groups were automatically collapsed/expanded. Buttons on the drone control window wouldn't be a bad idea. Some simple drone macro's would be nice as well... allow us to 1-button launch->attack->recall, or any other combination the users can think of.
4) inspiration - I don't think I can cite any specific cases, but it seems most sci fi with launchables tend to use them as close support. I'm not sure any example I can think of would have any common ground to compare to EVE.
5) potential - we'll throw this into a random thoughts categories, but it seems a lot of sci fi uses launchables as scouts, for intel gathering. Right now, any player who actually cares about EVE uses an alt to scout. Shifting that functionality to a drone seems like a pretty awesome idea. I'm not talking probes, but maybe a drone that will go through a gate and relay the overview back to the launching ship. I think it would still be balanced if the drone couldn't actually warp (just go through the gate) and if it was a 1-way trip (meaning if you don't go through the gate, the drone is lost), and if it didn't give you a list of local. It wouldn't provide all the advantages of having a dedicated scout, but it would still flesh out a game mechanic that is really kinda stupid as it is. And one more, I think I've also heard of plenty of sci fi using drones as decoys... if it played out as having a duplicate on the overview, or just in d-scan/probing, I think that'd be a pretty cool usage.

User Needs

Drones provide a granular means of adding offensive, defensive and utility functions to a ship, in a manner complementary to existing module and rig systems. As such, the Drone Management System must allow the user to:

• Select drones to interact with by group, based on the user's own criteria. For example one group of drones might contain a mixture of drone types such as a sentry drone, webifier drone and target painter drone
• Assign control of drones to a fleet mate
• Deploy drones to a specific location to perform their task from that location
• Assign a primary task for a particular group of drones, e.g.: "Attack", "Assist", "Guard" and allow this task to be identified with a hot key on the ship UI (i.e.: act like a module that can be dragged to the F1-F8 slots)
• Allow keyboard shortcuts for assigning commands to drone groups, such as deploy and recall
• Allow drones to be automatically recalled when the pilot initiates a warp sequence

Usefullness

Drones should be as easy to use as any module.

Functionality

Based on drones in my drone bay, I want to be able to:

• Select drones to form a drone group
• Assign a primary function for that drone group
• Assign that primary function to a HUD button
• Upon activating the HUD button (e.g.: press "F1"), have the drones deploy if necessary, then proceed to perform their primary function (on the specified target if a target is required)
• Select drone actions on targets in space by interacting with that target in some way. For example this could be accomplished using extensions to the radial menu: bring up radial menu on untargeted rock asteroid -> extra actions -> drones -> mine repeatedly => action is to target asteroid then assign drones to mine that rock

Inspiration

Any RTS UI: group units and assign action such as "move while attacking".

Potential

Radial Menu.

Some considerations that come to mind:

1. Being able to organize drones into flights or wings when docked beyond just dumping them in the drone bay is important. Some kind of mini palette like the ship fitting service. Organizing them should be separate from deployment to keep things simple and clean.

2. We know each flight or wing of deployed drones is going to be a max of 5 drones. (except for Carriers and we can't forget those)

3. We know bandwidth is a thing. A flight in the drone bay organizer should have a bar showing the bandwidth used, to make this visible and mean something like PG and CPU do for ship fitting and PI command centers and POS's.

4. Another indicator for # of drones possible per flight based on Drones skill. Max Drones and BW are the PG and CPU of drones in effect.


5. Radial menus for acting on an individual deployed drone or flight. Down with nested right click menus. And down with the separate Selected item windowette.

6. Having each preset drone group as a UI button near the module racks would be good. Click a button for deployment that pops the deployed drones onto the HUD with the info you need to command them. Click that button again to withdraw them. Or click another button for another preset to automatically recall the last set and then deploy the next one.

7. Since a ship will always have a limited number of drones in the bay, pre-organized into preset flights, the number of deploy/recall buttons will be restrained naturally.

8. Likewise you can only have 1-5 drones in space at a time for a flight, so you need an area that can display the info graphically for these 1-5 and act on them. A circle an outer ring divided into 5 for the max of 5 drones, with a circle in the center where the "attack" and "return" commands can be buttons.

9. On this ring or polygonal shape, a border of a drone element would flash yellow if targeted, red if red boxed/shot.

10. Each drone element would have your three health bars. Each one can be left clicked for radial menu love.


To recap:

1. A drone organizer palette similar to ship, POS or dropsuit fitting to pre-organize drones into flights, with each flight naturally constrained by Drones skill and ship bandwidth.

2. On the space HUD, one button to deploy/recall each group near your module buttons/central ship wheelie thing.

3. On space HUD when drones deployed, an array of the 1-5 deployed drones, allowing you to see their status easily and command them with radial clicks.

You can use courier contracts to do this today. Put up a courier contract, perhaps even advertise in local. Just like magic, your stuff has been moved! Of course it would be nice if I could create contracts for people to deliver stuff to or pick stuff up from my POS or POCO.