Player Features and Ideas Discussion

In light of how drone assist is going to be handled near term, wanted to throw out some suggestions:

Drone Assist Skills: Further reduce the base number of drones that can be assisted to a single character from 50 down to something like 5 or 10. Introduce two new skills (e.g. Drone Assist Management, Advanced Drone Assist Management) that allow players to increase the number of assisted drones they could manage, maybe an increase in the neighborhood of 10-15 (so with base total would be 15-25). Seems like a reasonable number to address most of the uses Rise mentions in his post: "frigates on gates trying to catch cloakers, small fleets trying to use assist to avoid e-war, logistics pilots who are too busy to manage their drones, ...". Also, provides a set of skills individuals can specialize in (particularly since the Lvl 5s would allow control of sets of 5 drones) and provides slightly more value for some of the odd drone bandwidth ships (75s, 100s) while limiting to a large degree the number of drones that can be assigned.

T2 Drone Bunny Ships: Introduce one or two lines of T2 ships that serve as "drone bunnies". Thinking at least Battlecruisers, maybe destroyers as a second small ship line. Battlecruisers because it seems to fit the role they have, serving as ships with robust tanks that provide a "command" role. Example of bonuses for T2 Drone Bunny BCs (pulling BC from Myrmindon):

• Role Bonus: XX% Bonus to Damage Dealt by drones assisted to you, 50-75% reduced impact of Drone E-War
• BC Bonus A: 10% Bonus to Drone Hitpoints and Damage Dealt by Drones <- Only your drones
• BC Bonus B: Traditional Armor/Shield Bonuses (7.5% reps or 4% resistances)
• Drone Bunny Bonus A: +5 drones can be assisted to you (with skills would be the current 50 cap)
• Drone Bunny Bonus B: XX% Bonus to Some Drone Parameter by drones assisted to you (tracking, optimal, speed, ...)

Not sure what the right bonus would be for damage or the other drone parameter, particularly given that they would be spread across 50 assisted drones, so even if small would likely have a big impact. Never flown in an incursion (much less been a drone bunny in one), but seems like a ship like this could serve that purpose well.

Might be room for a smaller version (e.g. destroyer T2 line) with the Drone E-War suggestion below. Maybe bonuses along the lines of:

• Dest Bonus A: 10% Bonus to Drone Hitpoints and Damage Dealt by Drones <- Only your drones
• Dest Bonus B: 10% reduction in microwarpdrive signature radius penalty
• Drone Bunny Bonus A: +3 drones can be assisted to you (with skills would be around 35)
• Drone Bunny Bonus B: XX% range or impact bonus of some Drone E-War modules.

Lots of ways to play with the bonuses to spread across a line of ships; could also have other forms of E-War as bonuses (e.g. Amarr gets capture drone E-war bonus with neutralizer bonus).

Drone E-War: Introduce two new forms of E-War modules related to drones (with associated modules...). First is longer range and causes all of the affected characters drones (personal and assisted) to go idle for some duration, duration affected success rate and fall-off. Second is shorter range and causes all of the affected characters drones (personal and assisted) to temporarily become under the control of the character executing the E-War, controlled as if they were drones assisted to him/her. Drones in excess of the temporarily controlling character's drone assist management limit would just go idle. Not sure how to handle the potential ability to chain drones captured. Drones affected by either E-War would be unable to be recovered or assisted to another player for the duration of the E-War effects. Alternative way to handle both forms of E-War would be to fix the duration over which the drones are idled/captured, with the number of drones affected (personal & assisted) being the variable.


Think something like this implemented for drones would shake some things up a bit. Good? Bad? Suggestions on how to improve?

I don't know why they would add a class of ship that's sole purpose is to compliment a FoTM fleet comp that only worked to get drones nerfed.

50 is the best number, 50 for everything.