Player Features and Ideas Discussion

so then it would be a slow warrior?

All the Amarr drones except the Curator are terrible.

No, it will be slightly slower than a warrior but it has then comarable EM damage like warrior which is the prefered damage if you want to engage Shield-Kiting-Ships. This adds choices. At the moment Warriors are just better in almost all situations than Acolytes. With the proposed change you have to think twice. You are hunting an Shield-Boat then go Acolyte... you are hunting Armor-Boat then go Warrior.

Caldari Drones have their role. They have the best Shields.

Current Choice Rules are:

• You want to kill fast stuff? => go Warrior
• You want to have max damage? => go Hobgoblins
• You want most durable drones => go Hornet (Caldari)

Acolytes currently have no role.

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tl;dr:
Comparing racial drones is not that easy as it looks on first glance, imho, for there are way too many factors to consider.
It is a matter of faith for each capsuleer in what factional drones he puts his faith in to get the job done.
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Post:
I don't even want to emagine what massive balancing work would be ahead of the CCP team, thus it is understandable why the drone rebalancing is still not accomplished.
Factors like damage modifiers, base damages to shield and armor, accuracy, defensive stats, velocity, and orbit velocity have to be looked at. Technically, these are way too many factors for promising four outbalanced faction drones.

The damage modifier alone and the estimated DPS value in the fitting window do not carry sufficient amount of information in order to allow a final judgment about the drone performance overall, like "Acolytes are useless, one only needs Warriors and Hobgoblins".
Especially the DPS value in the fitting window is a very very rough estimate.

To me, it seems like the racial drones have been designed to face their local NPC pirate factions in the for different empire spaces.
Currently I am running level 4 missions in Amarr empire space, fighting mainly Bloods and Sanshas. The Bloods and Sanshas just melt away with the amarrian drones, while the other faction drones seem and feel slower.

Before I continue, may I express my understanding about "DPS". DPS stands for damage per second, an ideal value where two objects stand still in place, one object inflicting damage and the other object tanking it. It does not take into consideration any defensive stats of the tanker, otherwise "DPS" could not be used as a comparing factor. Furthermore, and I think this is overlooked and not considered by many, the estimated "per second" damage value has to be put in relation to the overall battle time of for example 10 minutes.

In a battle however, the two objects are in motion and after each drone shot all possible random and fixed factors mentioned above are considered in the calculation and the outcome is the inflicted damage.

In the past, when one could just aggro the entire misison pocket, then deploy the drones, without worrying the NPCs to switch aggro to the drones, back then yes, it was sufficient to use only damage modifiers and base damage to shield and armor to speak about DPS and back then, yes, gallente drones were just the best and there was no reason to think about other drones. There was no need for any drone management. This has changed...

Since the NPCs do switch aggro between targets, the gallente drones got hit the most in their overall DPS performance. Their DPS gets drastically reduced due to the longer travel time between targets anyway, but also, the sending forth the drones and recalling back when they are targeted, while they fly, they have zero damage, thus not adding anything to the DPS pool during a 10 minute battle for example. As a matter of fact, gallente drones need the most micromanagement and most replacement of all drones, in my experience. Furthermore, they are the most expensive, costing usually twice as much as amarr drones. The slow ogres get focused and destroyed so easily.

Yes, the gallente drones have high damage modifiers and base damage values to shield and armor.
We can say that gallente drones are burst type damage dealers, meaning, WHEN they hit, then they hit hart (DPS increase to the battledamage-pool), but they miss a lot more (DPS reduction from battledamage-pool) and they waste a lot more travel-time not dealing any damage to any targets (DPS reduction from battledamage-pool). Furthermore, gallente drones are the worst speedtankers, getting destroyed more frequently, and when destroyed, they do not add DPS to the pool.

Acolytes for example cannot be compared with Hobgoblins, imho.
I would characterize Acolytes as such:
Acolytes deal no burst damage, but are consistent type damage dealers. When they hit, then they do not hit hard (DPS reduction from battledamage-pool), but they don't miss as much as gallente drones (DPS increase to battledamage-pool), and spend less travel time while they do not deal any damage (DPS increase to battledamage-pool). Furthermore, amarr drones are descent speedtankers, surviving way longer, thus adding more DPS to the DPS-pool.

With "pool" I mean the battle timeframe of for example 10 minutes or so.

There is only one way to compare the four different racial drones. One has to run the same mission for all different factions, for example running the blockade mission every day without killing the final boss and wait for the next DT, focus on running the mission each time the same way, stop the time and observe as many factors as possible, also considering the drone management.

Overall I am not that convinced that the amarr drones are "useless", as propagated by the community and I think that such generalizations were true back then when drones did not need any micromanagement. But since NPC switch aggro from tanking ship to drones, the slow and inaccurate gallente drones do not perform that well anymore.

I am no drone specialist, but current generalizations, leading to absolute blessings of for example hobgoblins and warriors and absolute curses of acrolytes and hornets do not match to my ingame experiences and in general do not seem that right and legitimate to me, for there are way too many factors that depend on the final inflicted damge per shot to allow any kind of generalizations.
Because of the large number of factors, imho, it is a matter of faith of each capsuleer only what drone faction performs best in whatever currently faced situations.

I personally always thought they should make amarr and caldari drones much tougher rather than just mkae them copies of minnie/gal drones. Is in keeping with the racial ethos too.

Gallente drones - mad damage
Minnie drones - mad speed
Amarr drones - mad armour
Caldari drones - mad shields

I'd say go further:

Buff Amarr drones multiplier to 1.3 and NERF Minmatar drones multiplier to 1.15. Then drones actually follow something remotely resembling a logical progression.

As it is now Warriors are faster and deal more damage with no real tradeoff other than a dozen or so structure points. And Amarr are the race with Drone-focused ships in their lineup.