Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I'll just reiterate what I stated above but explain more. I think this is a little large of a hit for drone users. Gun based ships have the capability to repair any of their weapons at will so long as they have enough nanite. However this only occurs if they are a overheating. Under normal use guns don't take any damage. Compare this now to drones which cannot even be overheated for extra dps. yet they can be damaged under normal operating procedure. So now you're telling me that I have to sacrifice either A) tank on my ship or B) dps of my drones just for the ability to repair them? I would venture to say most people would say forget that I'll just let the little guys die. Ultimately still not accomplishing the goal.

You already have the ability to repair drones all you want, by using remote repairers. Drone ships can easily afford the high slots, my own drone ships ran for years with only a single gun for agro.

I would say the loss of the single low + some cap and cap regen is a bit heavy, except it's not purely a quality of life issue, and the faster the regen gets, the more important it becomes. I am proposing a module that grants a passive rate to drones in bay, so due to how passive regen works larger drones would regen faster than smaller ones. The regen rate would be set by the module, not the drone itself, so smaller ships that only carry smaller drones would get less benefit. It also helps to make BS stand out, as they have more slots to use, and so the battlecruiser and cruiser hulls either go without or make a harder choice for the ability.

In addition, I'm suggesting that it behave like station services for Shields. Certain drones would benefit more from this as they have more Shield HP than others. This balances in having less operational time under fire as to maximize this you would have to bring them in before they get into armor. The Gurista hulls in particular would make tremendous use of this.

I am against this using paste or other material to repair the drones because part of the design of drones is that they not require ammo. At some point that road leads to each drone being a scripted high slot module that uses a big pile of nanites to construct drones as needed, with the script determining type and activating the module launching the drone.

This is dangerous, as a thanatos pilot i could say as much as i would love being able to repair my drones and Not just simply replace them; the fact is i have 1307 drones in my bay at the moment and a large cargohold for nanite pastes, i would literally be able to keep a fleet of Geckos out or fighters with extreme ease and very little risk to them. while it could seriously benefit smaller drone bay ships when you step into Dominix's, Sins, and Carriers it really gets silly and easy to break the system with.

Actually i very much love that debate, if you want to take it elsewhere feel free to mail me, i can argue* about carriers and what does /doesn't need fixing all day. Its my 3rd favorite subject lol

well hull and armour repairs would make more sense than just armour.
but yes a drone-bay should be a maintenance hangar as-well for drones

on a sidenote i also think drone sig radius needs reworking.. alongside remodeling of the very old looking drones , they still have fixed turrets which look awful, and the actual model sizes should be increased as the drones scale upwards..
and then reduce the HP's too compensate.

lights
8
mediums
13
heavies
16
sentries
20
geckos
25

you just have too think about the drones fitting inside the ship of a frig (30 sig radius) .. and realise how silly it is having hammerheads coming out with sigs larger sigs, there not tardis's.
especially if in the future they want them too come out of the ships drone-bays force-fields themselves

it would also make sense if drones had a 'ammo-bay' inside that it had too refill from the drone-bay, which would draw ammo from cargo-hold or add a 'drone-ammo bay'.. special 'drone ammo' would be added to the game .. perhaps as a PI make-able commodity or the usual blueprint manufacturing avenue..

u misunderstand .. i don't mean replacing dead drones via the drone-bay .. i mean drones having infinite ammo and not having too reload is stupid and needs changing via the proposed way

i guess the sig could start higher than 8, they should reduce the amount of drones on ships anyway , so many ships have full sets of drones, kind of kills the uniqueness of ships and reduces the gallente being drone masters feel when everyone has them.. adding more counters too kill small drones might make sense in combination .. light defenders could be designed for this job, along with HP nerf so less applied hits are needed just a few good shots which is really how it should be ..

drone ammo, could have say the same amount of ammo as frigs do on say neutron blasters, but with the 4s ROF , they would last a fair while.

I've been thinking about this for awhile. In particular the Myrm gets completely shafted IMO. Yes it can launch more drone bandwidth than a vexor but then u get into the issue of mixed drone sizes. In the end it gets blown away by simply the navy vexor which, granted is more expensive, can launch a full fleet of large drones and have back up for more. Personally I would love to see the Gallente ships follow a similar (but not so exaggerated) route as the guirista ships with the unique drone buffs.

For example....(not exact but you'll get the idea)
Remove the excess bandwidth on the Myrm so it can only launch a full fleet of medium drones,
Increase Gallente BC skill bonus to 12.5% to damage and HP.

I'm am well and sure those numbers would break something but hey i'm just coming up with an idea. CCP gets paid to perfect those.

That is a basic thought but I think we may be straying off the drone topic.