Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Im not sure if it would be possible to implement something like this but this is what I suggest how it should work:

Say you have 9 Hobgoblins and 1 Hammerhead in your drone bay and you want to create a hotkey for your Hobs first. Open up your folder with your drones it and shift click how many of the hobs you want assigned, then drag and drop the selected drones onto a hotkey on you HUD. So for example I select 5 Hobs and drop them on the F1 hotkey it then assigns those 5 drones. It should also put an indicator next to the drone in the drone UI so you can tell its assigned or even F1 next to it so you know what key that drone it assigned to. This way you could easily create several groups of drones of different numbers and sizes.

Next I want to create a mixed drone group so I select the 4 hobs then select the hammerhead and simply drag and drop then on F2. Easy, 4 hobs and a hammerhead are now bound to F2. When dragging and dropping drones it should create a 'drone' icon on the key. Now what I suggest now is that pushing a Hot Key with drones assigned to it launches the drones form your bay, however, they don't attack a target if you already have one targeted when deploying them, instead you must push the Hot Key again for the drones to attack a selected target.

What happens when you assigned more drones to a key that your bandwidth allows you to deploy. Id think the best thing to do would be for it to launch the drones that make optimum use of your bandwidth. So, you have 7 hobs and 3 hammerhead assigned to F1 but only 35 m/bit so it launches 2 Hammerhead and 3. The only thing I haven't worked out here is if a drone gets destroyed should a replacement automatically get launched? Or should you have to manually through the drone UI launch one? Using the Hot Key won't work as it would cause conflict with assigned the drones a target.

The problem now comes when you want to recall drones. Seeing as you cant overload drones I was thinking taking advantage of the shift + click feature so that when you shift + click on the drone Icon it recalls the drones to your bay. When you overload a weapon the small green tab lights up to tell you its heated, I'd suggest with the drone icon that there is also a green tab on it however it lights up when you shift + click on the icon to ask them to return, this way you know when you've recalled them. Also I suggest some sort of visual aid on the icon when your drones have engaged a target, so you know what your drones are doing at the time., maybe like a red haze similar to what weapons have when there activated.

so,
clear icon = no drones in space
Blue Haze = idle
Lit green tab = Recalled
Red Haze = Attacking

Im sure there's flaws in this and people will find flaws in my ideas so feel free in iterate on this if you think theres a better way or something simply won't work. :) Im also unsure how viable his would be for CCP to implement? Too much work?

The whole drone interface needs a rework tbh. Your idea isn't bad though. :)

Also what Daenika said about the "attack" key binding. Also a scatter mechanic (one drone per wreck/rock) for salvage and mining drones. :)