Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Firstly, this idea is not about dumbing down drones, but rather to improve the existing UI to avoid the Drone Click Fest.

My idea is to improve the UI using the already existing Module UI.
The idea is that you can drag Drone Groups to the Module Bar to create a new "Drone Module Shortcut".
The same group should be able to be added multiple times as buttons, the reason for that will come a little later.

The shortcut itself will have two features.
Firstly, whenever it is clicked, it will launch drones from that group, if there is any available bandwidth. It will then order all drones in that specific group to engage on your currently selected target.

The second feature would be to be able to Right Click the Drone Shortcut on the Module bar, and set a "maximum in space" variable. This is the maximum of that group that the shortcut will have in space at one time.

Example: You have dragged a group to your hotbar (To F1 f.ex.), and then have set the "Maximum in space" to 2, but you have 5 drones in the group. When you click F1, it will then launch 2 out of the 5 drones, and the drones will engage your current target, if you have no target, they will simply start to orbit.

Then if 1 of the drones gets destroyed, the next time you press F1 it will launch a new replacement.

But then you ask, what if I want to be able to launch the whole group at one time?
That is why I said that one group should be able to be dragged several times to the Module Hotbar, you can then set each button up differently. One for launching all of them, and one for only launching some of them.


I feel this will be a big improvement on Drone UI as Drones are currently cumbersome and hard to use, and even in PvP they can become more of a bother than a use because of the veritable click fest to launch them, and any micromanagement of several types of drones on different targets is near impossible.

It will improve the UI to the point that even newbies would be more happy to use the cumbersome drones.

It will also allow you to use utility drones on several different targets for what ever reason you want, run DPS drones along with Logi Drones and so on.

Other improvements that can be done using this system:
Add another right click option to change the button from launch and engage to Return to Drone Bay, Guard, Assist, orbit and so on. So you can customize the buttons for any orders you would normally be able to do through the right click menu and so on.

(I'd be happy with just the original part of the idea though)

Then you might ask: That may be a lot of buttons for a few groups?
The only thing I have to say to that is, you will probably only have your important groups put on that hotbar, and if you only use one flight of the same drone, to engage the same target, you probably wont need Return to Drone Bay on your module hotbar, and you will still have access to your shortcuts that can be set through the menu.


One reservation:
The problem is that you might have an 8/8/8 ship, so these buttons should only be visible as long as you have "Show Passive Modules" off. This would reduce the possible conflicts with the rest of the modules.

I hope people will not give conservative feedback and just say: "We can already do all those things" because yes, it is possible to do this kind of management through advanced macros. And then some people might say: "I can just drag drones to space to launch" and I'd say, yeah, but that is still cumbersome, and in PvP situations, that second or two you are spending to launch those drones, and start engaging might be very crucial, and can be difference between life and death.
Then you might say: "Micromanagement of different types of drones is already possible". Yes but again, it's cumbersome, and especially in PvP situations it is simply not feasible, as those precious seconds starts ticking away.

Think of this as an improvement to the UI, making it more accessible, and easier to control. Just because we can already "do" these things doesn't mean it shouldn't be improved upon.

And I also considered this idea through the shortcut system, but intuitively I think it fits better in the Module Hotbar, and for drone dedicated ships, drones will become as easy to launch and control as firing your guns, equalizing the playing field between guns and

I agree that the drone UI needs some improvement. I had something quite different in mind so I'm just gonna add it here. I'd like to see some buttons in the drone ui. Not anything fancy, but having an "arrow" shaped button next to the grp name that will launch the drones, which will change to an "x" for example that will be the recall button.

Also I'd like to be able to see which drones are damaged without having to launch them all. I found myself many times in the situation where i recall a drone, try to launch another and end up launching the damaged one. This results in loss of drones and/or loss of dps.

I just want the engage button to be farther away from return to cargo bay. I rarely screw it up but still bad location. Return to cargo should be at top of list of return to... instead of being mixed in with common buttons like return to drone bay or engage.

I agree we need to improve the Drone UI. Buttons either as modules or on top of the drone window would be great.

We need to get rid of the overuse of the drop down box and allow all common commands to be set to buttons, with hotkeys to supplement the button commands.