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Warfare & Tactics

 
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An unasked for solution to Drone Assist
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Viviseciant
Doomheim
#1 - 2014-01-18 14:35:27 UTC
Troll. Roll. No really. Imo which is well mine, drone assist does need a small tweek.
Is it realistic to expect ONE ship to be able to process handling 2500 drones? 250? 25? Assist is currently unlimited iirc.The workload should be extreme since a ship launching the drones can only handle 10 max..Yet ships with 1000's of drones can still target max ships and run all of their mods as if unencumbered. Should be a cpu suck of unbelievable proportions. Assisted ship pays NO price for directing that fire power. Am I wrong about that?
Brilliant solution on the way......
Put a cap on the number of drones that can be assisted to you. I use drone assist all the time as a mission runner but massive fleets of drones being controled by one ship seems to be alot of cpu cycles.
DA lovers hate on me now.Lol.
Corraidhin Farsaidh
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#2 - 2014-01-18 17:50:00 UTC
Agree completely...maybe i'm harsh but i would limit the drones a pilot controls to his/her skill level in drones...doesn'matter if they are their own or assisting drones...you can still only interface with the same number of drones as you have the skill to...maybe include advanced interfacing into the count to...would give a reason for people other than carrier pilots to learn the skill.
Bad Messenger
Rehabilitation Clinic
#3 - 2014-01-19 12:14:21 UTC
drone assist is fine, to make it balanced CCP should add weapon assist too for every weapon example for smart bombs !
Abdiel Kavash
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#4 - 2014-01-19 13:24:42 UTC
Bad Messenger wrote:
drone assist is fine, to make it balanced CCP should add weapon assist too for every weapon example for smart bombs !

Couple this with a Fleet Jump button in addition to fleet warp, and I can finally play minecraft in peace without being constantly interrupted by the FC wanting me to play EVE.
Noxisia Arkana
Deadspace Knights
#5 - 2014-01-20 15:04:05 UTC

I'm not sure your reasoning is sound. "A single ship couldn't handle the load," but since this is a game and I don't care about backstory I won't argue the point.

I don't think that this is the magic bullet. It is a valid suggestion and it would fix some of the problems.
Theroine
Pew Pew Pirates
#6 - 2014-01-21 04:54:06 UTC
Maybe I have this all wrong, but the ship the drones are assigned to doesn't really control the drones. The mechanic allows them to attack whatever ship the assigned ship engages, and having used drone assist this can be a buggy mechanic. Having said that, I do agree that having 100s or 1000s of drones assigned to one fast-locking ship is a broken mechanic.

What about adding a drone drone assist module. So, if you want to be able to assist drones, you need to sacrifice a slot. You would also need to lock the person you want to assign drones to. In addition, this could be a non-repeating module, so at the end of the cycle you would need to activate it again on the ship you are assisting drones to. This way in a massive fight with Tidi, assisted drones do not become the 'I win' button.

Join in on the pew
Corraidhin Farsaidh
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#7 - 2014-01-21 14:22:33 UTC  |  Edited by: Corraidhin Farsaidh
To my mind drones are not fully autonomous as you can only put as many as you have skill level into space, so the pilot *must* have some control over them, even when they operate mainly autonomously. From the description of modules etc the pilot is acting as a conduit between the drones and the main ship systems for targeting, navigation etc (hence why you can improve these with DDC mods etc). This would mean that the drones rely on the pilot for the more complex guidance and tactical decision making functions even if at a subconscious level on the pilot's part.

On that basis I still think that a pilot should be limited to flying Drones + advanced drones interfacing number of drones whether it is their own or assisting drones.
Batelle
Federal Navy Academy
#8 - 2014-01-21 16:42:42 UTC
Viviseciant wrote:
Troll. Roll. No really. Imo which is well mine, drone assist does need a small tweek.
Is it realistic to expect ONE ship to be able to process handling 2500 drones? 250? 25? Assist is currently unlimited iirc.The workload should be extreme since a ship launching the drones can only handle 10 max..Yet ships with 1000's of drones can still target max ships and run all of their mods as if unencumbered. Should be a cpu suck of unbelievable proportions. Assisted ship pays NO price for directing that fire power. Am I wrong about that?


Since your arguments here are lore-related, i shall refute them in a lore-related manner. All of the drone control and the heavy lifting of processing commands is handled by the original ship, and the skills of the original pilot. The assited ship is merely telling the other ships which target to focus their drones are. Each individual ship is still doing the work.

"**CCP is changing policy, and has asked that we discontinue the bonus credit program after November 7th. So until then, enjoy a super-bonus of 1B Blink Credit for each 60-day GTC you buy!"**

Never forget.
Garviel Tarrant
Beyond Divinity Inc
Shadow Cartel
#9 - 2014-01-22 07:20:16 UTC
Its a bad mechanic in general

Should be removed.

BYDI recruitment closed-ish

Serendipity Lost
Repo Industries
#10 - 2014-01-24 13:01:27 UTC
The game worked just fine before drone assist and warp to zero. Both were claimed to break eve. One did, one didn't. Keep warp to zero and remove drone assist. Reverting back to not having drone assist will not ruin the game.

One of the bravest things you can do in life is admit you made a mistake and 'undo' it. I'll help with the press release.

"Dear eve customers. Drone assist is being removed from the game. It was instituted to make some group activities more manageable. This it accomplished successfully. This success came at a price. Certain large scale fleet compositions are simply overwhelming our servers. The hardware costs to overcome the server load issues with these fleets would result in unacceptable monthly subscription increases to you the end users. For those that found reasonable benefit from the drone assist function we regret its removal. We have taken this steps to ensure the overall continued health of the game.

Thank you for your understanding in this matter."

Maybe add something about those mega drones assist fleets not being fun for the general player who can mow the lawn while engaged in pvp.

Ovv Topik
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#11 - 2014-01-24 15:12:36 UTC
Viviseciant wrote:
Troll. Roll
Is it realistic to expect ONE ship to be able to process handling 2500 drones? 250? 25? Assist is currently unlimited iirc.The workload should be extreme since a ship launching the drones can only handle 10 max..

Think of it as ISBoxer for RP'ers.

"Nicknack, I'm in a shoe in space, on my computer, in my house, with a cup of coffee, in't that something." - Fly Safe PopPaddi. o7

Princess Nexxala
Zero Syndicate
#12 - 2014-01-24 15:14:53 UTC
Garviel Tarrant wrote:
Its a bad mechanic in general

Should be removed.


THIS!

nom nom
Old Phill
Doomheim
#13 - 2014-01-26 03:38:49 UTC
another solution is return old dooms day they have 1000 archons 1 dooms day and all them drones are goneee woo wee everyone is happy cept the thousands of archon pilots and subcap pilots and everyone else who disliked big smartbombs
Joan Greywind
The Lazy Crabs
#14 - 2014-01-26 07:35:28 UTC  |  Edited by: Joan Greywind
Omg what a brilliant idea, first time I ever read it, how come noone thought of it before???


I understand the CFC members need to fill a whinning quota per day, but please can we not create a new thread every time we think we got a brilliant and unique idea, and post instead in an already related thread?

Btw I do think drone assisting needs to be fixed, but I don't believe it is going to end EVE as some people claim.
Oska Rus
Free Ice Cream People
#15 - 2014-01-26 20:21:52 UTC
Being against drone assists just admits that you are worse at flying your ship than simple script which tells your drones to shoot what someone else shoots. :D
Silverbackyererse
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#16 - 2014-01-27 04:51:02 UTC
Just remove drones and while your at it, remove Gallente too. Make Eve a better place for all of us. Lol
Garviel Tarrant
Beyond Divinity Inc
Shadow Cartel
#17 - 2014-01-27 08:46:25 UTC
Oska Rus wrote:
Being against drone assists just admits that you are worse at flying your ship than simple script which tells your drones to shoot what someone else shoots. :D


Stop being bad.

BYDI recruitment closed-ish

Corraidhin Farsaidh
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#18 - 2014-01-27 14:45:31 UTC
Question: If a fleet of 200 archons got hit by 200 celestis playin 3-4 damps each over the archons, would that wreck their drone assist?