Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is a repost. The former topic got locked, I assume due to its age.

This would be a high slot module that provides dedicated remote rep for drones only. The trick is that it works out to whatever is your effective drone control range (thus making drone ships able to function again with > 10 - 20 km range).

To keep it simple, the rep would be a passive, always-on regen to shields, armor, and hull on all drones in flight. Probably a percentage of each per second would be appropriate, so it scales evenly with drone class. More modules would give more rep; and it should probably have the usual stacking penalty, so that three or four would be the most useful number of them to mount. With three or four mounted, you should be able to basically never have drones get popped by NPCs.

It would also be nice for the rep amount to scale up the closer the drones are to the ship. So in orbit range, the drones would rep up very quickly; say back to 100% within 5 to 8 seconds. At maximum range, maybe they could be fully repped in 30 to 60 seconds. So there is still a reason to recall them if they start taking heavy fire, either to keep them fighting in orbit range for maximum durability, or just to pull them back a bit to grab some reps, then send them out again. But you don't need to play stupid aggro games by launching and un-launching them, and you can keep them at 100% between fights so you don't need to lose any or dock up to rep / buy more in the middle of a mission.

Turrets and launchers that are 100% immune from damage until your ship explodes sound very broken. Have fitted weapon modules take damage and get individually destroyed by hostile fire, then we can talk.

Do your drones run out of ammo? No?

Can my frigate's turrets hit with perfect accuracy as much as 60km away from my position? No?

Can I deal the same amount of DPS with close-range turrets that I can with long-range turrets? No?

This is a bad idea. If you want to rep your drones, put a remote repper on and recall the drones to orbit and rep.

Missiles explode as they do their damage though... drones don't explode unless shot at.

Ok folks. Drones need a change and badly.

First problem:

Drones are not ammo. They don't have a cost similar to ammo, you can't carry enough of them to use them like ammo. It is inappropriate to try and balance them as if they were ammo without radically altering almost everything about dronebays, drones, and the production of drones. When I get a tracking disruptor that permanently destroys the ability of your guns to track until you repair (expensively) in station, we can start discussing self-repairing drones as being unreasonable.

Drones that never pop sound almost exactly like lasers not using upgraded crystals. Lasers with stock crystals are not broken, drones that never pop would not be broken.

Actually they are somewhat similar to lasers and missiles in that one of their main advantages is damage projection.---except that it is quite simple to extend the range of both lasers and missiles with a variety of means, including leadership skills and remote modules, as well as local modules and skills similar to drone users. They lack the short range/long range dichotomy of the other weapon systems, with the possible exception of sentries, instead being the only weapon system able to easily switch between size class of target in the field, assuming a decent drone bay---minimum 125bw and 150 bay to enjoy that flexibility.

The idea of the OP would only result in drones that never pop if the repair rate was set very high, and drones got a HP upgrade that made sure they never got alpha'd. Even then drones would be lost all the time, because I don't care how Elite you are, if you use drones on a regular basis you will leave some behind. There are quite a few here that will claim that such a thing only happens to people who are not them and lack their elite intelligence and ability... but they are lying. It's a tremendously simple mistake to make, and drones require a lot of micromanaging to use effectively. Mistakes happen.

As things stand now, especially with the new drone-hungry AI they put in with retribution and never bothered to tweak to more reasonable levels, drones need a massive re-work from the ground up, starting with their survivability. For starters that needs to go with t2 resist profiles, and some form of self repair at passive regen rates on all 3 bars----I'm fine with that being only while docked in the bay, but something has got to give on these things.

Modules to add or speed that repair, in bay or out, are entirely reasonable. Something needs to be adjusted with drone survivability. It was never that high to begin with, and Retribution dealt it a severe blow. The game has progressed, and in a needed fashion at that, but drones as a weapon system were never that well implemented to begin with and have not kept up well since then.

The OP's suggestion does not say what an appropriate rate of repair should be. It only suggests a passive high slot module that allows for regen on all 3 bars, and suggests a % of total health per second so that it scales per size of drone instead of being godmode for light drones and/or ineffective on large ones and sentries.

If set at something like 20% per second, meaning drones pretty much rep to full between shots, then yes, that is OP. If the repair rate is set so that they take a full minute to rep, then that is something more balanced. I'd be wiling to go with somewhere between 1 to 2 minutes being the best place for the regen to be. If it had modules and/or skills to improve it, then the outside of 2.5 minutes is reasonable.

I've seen light drones get alphad by a single ship using smartbombs. I have more than once seen an interceptor pilot pop all 5 of a light flight of drones on his way in to tackle me. Like missiles, they can be firewalled pretty easily. Large drones have the signature of a cruiser, and sentries are even larger and are stationary... they are not that hard to kill.

Their balance in PvP has always been precarious, but it was PvE that redeemed them. Now that they are all but unusable in PvE, their balance is non-existent, and since they have been added as a component to so many ships in the latest balancing pass their issues have been magnified to an extent that demands attention.

At minimum I believe all drones should rep to full in about a minute when stored in the dronebay without any modification by modules or skills. This would make having multiple flights useful while still leaving drones vulnerable to anyone willing to take time out of his attack to cripple the offense of a drone ship. I am less concerned with repair in space as that can be done with remote reps that already exist, and every dedicated drone ship I have ever flown carried at least one armor and hull remote repair for just that purpose. I'd easily trade the Gallente gun bonuses or the Amarr ewar bonuses that are paired with drones for a remote rep range bonus on drone dedicated ships, because I like drones and I don't feel like either race has drone ships that highlight their use the same way the other ships highlight their weapon systems. Damage+Tracking, Damage+Range, ROF+Falloff...etc... while the drone bonuses tend to get paired with something unrelated, at least until the new Dominix, and the nature of drones makes that bonus less useful than it could be for anything not a sentry drone.

would make drones way too OP.

Imagine a flight a sentry's that are then backed up by a domi almost filled all highs with those suggested modules of yours.

You already have remote reppers. Use those.

You must have missed the part where he mentioned the stacking penalty.



How is it broken? Drones do much less damage than their turret/missile based counterparts and you can't overload them. The ideas behind making it a highslot module is you're giving up extra potential damage.



Do you have an issue with t1 lasers not running out of ammo?

Frigates can't use sentry drones and they only have 45km range on drones. This plus the fact that drones have large travel time and can't be overloaded, and most definitely do not have perfect tracking nulls your point.

Drones don't do anywhere near the damage of close range turrets, another moot point.

Having to recall drones to repair them is silly, imagine if your guns took damage just by using them and you then had to stop every few minutes and wait to repair them. This idea (with some changes of course) could be very good, also I'd prefer a major drone overhaul instead as drones are broken far beyond their survivability.

I kinda like the idea of introducing something new to drones... but messing with drones is touchy... Anyone remember how drones were back in 2006? Made sense then how rogue drones came about, once they were let loose they went NUTS and attacked everything and everyone, including the person who launched them...

It took awhile for CCP to implement the "OBEY ME!" script into drones but they were at that time savagely broken...

So messing with Drones when there are tons of other things that need improvement/rebalancing/nerfs atm sounds kind of... scary...

Just imagine CCP trying to add something new for or to drones and they happen to leave out or delete the "OBEY ME!" code... Now join a fleet of 300+ pilots and fight another fleet of 300+ pilots.... The winners will be the drones. There wont be nothing left but a bunch of shocked pod pilots and wrecks with 3000-6000 angry drones swarming around... Sounds kinda scary... We'll have a Drone War on our hands like in Star Wars lol