Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I'm thinking of the little used EWAR drones [Not ECM, though potentially a contender too] here. When I say EWAR drones forget about ECM, that's a different beast

Given the advent of the gecko, I've decided this is now a thing and these other drones should be gecko'd™

As we know, geckos are just scaled up heavy drones - bigger, more grunt, higher bandwith allowing limited numbers to be deployed.

So...to EWAR drones, these are hampered for two reasons - DPS drones are universally better and the stacking penalties kill their usefulness.

So, we apply the Gecko method to them: By this I mean what about increasing their effects (to the point they might be worth using over DPS drones in certain circumstance/hulls), size and bandwidth to mitigate the stacking issues that make them worthless. So instead of 5 light painter drones, you would launch one "light drone" with a size/bandwidth of 25 and commensurate HP increase and effect increase to boot.

ECM drones....I'm undecided. It might work here and would probably be a nerf since less jammers would be cycling. I'd be inclined to leave them out for now and just stick with the web/painter/vamp/TD/damp drones.


I'm sure there's a good reason we wont do this, but I cant think of it right now - so....tell me why it sucks (or if it's a cool idea :) )

You've entirely missed the point

It is about upsizing the drones to alleviate the crazy stacking penalty issues.

So instead of 5x5% light web drones, a single (25m3) 20% drone would actually be more effective - as an example. Precise numbers could be messed with were this to happen, of course.


The whole "gecko-them" thing was about the conecept of the gecko being 2x heavy drones in all BUT physical number in space.

No worries

Just hoped my post was clear enough the first time, mostly irked at myself. They're definitely hit (well, vamps wont be). Those 5x5% ewar drones as an example come out to <15% iirc.

I think it would be a relatively easy and interesting way to breath some life back into these drone types.

Decent idea, would make them a lot easier to balance effectively too.

+1 if not to ecm drones.

duelled an honey bee orca in my nightmare on sisi. got jammed by medium ecm drones 5 times. 5!!

Wow. This is actually a good idea. That never ******* happens. Congratulations.

Right, because as of now everyone uses light web drones over warriors/hobs/ecms, right?

Yes I could see this being a possibility. Good job using the new concepts and reapplying them.

Dug it up, and I don't see any indication that there's a stacking penalty in the same way as modules. However, drones appear to just alter the result exponentially, rather than multiplying their effect.

multiple effect--> 0.05 * 5 = 0.25 = 25% reduction in sensor strength/speed/etc
exponential effect --> 0.95 ^ 5 = 0.77 = 77% of "base" (i.e. 23% reduction) sensor strength/speed/etc.

This would coincide with the other "negative" bonuses that we can apply to our ships (e.g. 5% reduction in cycle time), assuming they're not also subject to stacking penalties.

or my working of the maths is wrong -- I am not accounting for stacking penalties, because the drones themselves do not say they are affected by it.