EVE General Discussion

You know, I don't doubt this happens, but how often? I've used drones extensively for over a year, I've never had ONE of those supposed problems happen to me.

Easy way to bring drones more in-line to other weapon systems? Make them use capacitor of the trigger ship. Suddenly, you can't use instalock interceptors on a gate because he won't have enough reserves to fire all five. It doesn't even have to be a lot of cap. It can be fairly balanced so 5 sentries on one ship is perfectly doable, even on an ishtar. But it does do a lot to balance them properly since now there is something you can do to counter the weapon other than "lol bombs despite the fact that you can't use them in half the space". Neut out the trigger ship - he can still reassign if he wants. But you'll need sufficient capacitor to trigger all those sentries, so any instalock interceptor won't be able to. And heck, you'll make those new void bombs that much more valuable if you can figure out the enemy trigger ship in a fleet (doubtful, but hey I leave that one up to you guys to figure out).

Plus, now that cap requirement will effect the active modules on the trigger ship, like local tank and prop mods. You may or may not be able to run them all at once.

Out of 5 major weapon systems in the game (laser turrets, hybrid turrets, projectile turrets, missiles, drones), a full three of them don't use cap. Since drones in general ignore all other forms of electronic warfare but are generally balanced, but sentries are inheritly different than other drones which suffer from travel time and MORE susceptibility to destruction, I think this would be a perfect trade-off for sentries.

I don't want them removed from the game, nerfed too hard, made unusuable, their damage lowered, their tracking lowered...I think this one change will bring them better in-line for PVP since now you have one more option to pursue.

Really? Maybe you should try ewar against drones and see...

That's why if they want to drop nerf hammers on drones, then just an arbitrary nerf hammer, like what they did to rapid missile launchers and the ridiculous reload time, would only be an exhibition of reckless ignorance.


if they want to make it harder to switch drones, then justify a "launch prep time" by letting us load up drones with different ammo and give drones module and rig slots.

If they want to reduce the damage output of drones, then let us weigh the "cost and risk" ourselves instead of a blinded and blanket nerf so that some players who will pay the price in CPU, grid or bandwidth can still maintain higher damage instead of, you know, having to park their drone boats and train for something else.

If they want to change NPC AI to make drone use harder, or worse, rapid drone nuking, then let us at least be able to equip and rig drones with armor and specific scripts to meet changing needs.


Yeah that's a lot of changes. Sometimes I think the brainless blanket nerfs (I've had a kicked dog reflex to nerfs since the rapid missile launcher debacle) is pretty much ALL that can be done when too many "important" players (large blocs *ahem* grrr goons and all that) put their complaint swarm to work.

Not I, ive stopped using drones for missions. When I deploy drones I see instant agro drop from my ship to any drone that gets launched and usually atleast 1 instapop

As well as I leave the drones for only close combat due to needing a quick recovery time when they get aggro before attacking anything.

Drones were already nerfed with the AI changes a few years ago. Drone have a lot of lost dps due to having to constantly recall and re-deploy them. I mean I guess from a PvP stand point that changed nothing but if you keep nerfing drones for PvP reasons and don't do anything to prop them up on PvE then where is this balance that you are claiming to be after?

I'm not arguing for balance mind you. In fact I argued against it in the discussions leading up to the tiericide. I'm just saying you claim to be seeking balance amongst the races when it is most certainly not the case.

I don't think a timer would really help towards "balancing" drone boats like the Ishtar. Many ships can use drones, and they are their only defense against smaller ones, such as battleships against frigates.

At the end, it seems that the main problem is the Ishtar and its ability to both have a large drone bay and field heavy/sentry drones, as it gives it a hard punch (nearly battleship-like) with cruiser mobility and T2 resists.
I wonder how would it do if each ship could only use drones its size or smaller. That is:

- Light drones for frigates and destroyers.
- Light and medium drones for cruisers and battlecruisers.
- Light, medium, heavy and sentry drones for battleships.
- Carriers and supercarriers keep their current abilities (all subcap drones plus fighters/fighterbombers).

Maybe that way we could prevent smaller ships from dealing too much damage for their size, such as the Ishtar.

Or maybe this could hurt other ships too much. What do you think?

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That said, I've never had any of the "problems" some people are claiming to have with their drones attacking whatever they want, etc.
If your drones are set to aggresive, they will attack the nearest hostile target if they were previously deployed, and attack the next hostile target once the first one is done, no matter if you told them to attack the first one or not.
If they're set to passive, they will only engage targets that you, personally, indicate them, and stand-by otherwise.
After each target, you have to manually direct them towards their targets, check if they're approaching the limit of your drone control range, and pull them back if they're taking too much damage.
You have to carefully control them, like if you were using turrets or launchers.

I'm going to bet we'll see something arbitrary but along the lines of how missiles were handled.


Back in the days of olde, a missile launcher did not really "care" what size missile. There was a time when the size of the missile was not pegged to the size of the launcher.

So I can see a day that, given the problems cited with a certain drone boat, we will see "small drone bay", "Medium Drone bay" and "Large Drone Bay", and maybe even "Fighter Bay", etc.

HOPEFULLY if CCP were to implement that to keep the size of a ships drones in compliance with the size of the ship, we would be able to treat drone bays like modules. That is, while say a frigate might only be able to fit a "small drone bay", we would have the option say with a battle cruiser like the Cyclone (as an example) which can hold 10 light drones OR 5 medium drones, we would have the choice then to fit one "medium drone bay" or 2x "small drone bay".

On such a system, then it could be construed that a ship like a cruiser would simply not be able to fit a "large drone bay" and such that a battleship could, but for the love of God, let larger ships "size down" while not letting smaller ships "size up" could correct this Ishtar scourge without boning every battleship pilot across New Eden.

Oldish post but I'd just like to point something out, about what you're saying.

If CCP let some OP mechanic in the game, Everyone would use it. Because everything else would be welped by it. So there would be no point in flying anything else

If CCP Nerfed everything into the same thing, Everyone would be using it. The only difference is the way the ships looked.


Illusion of choice much? Your post pretty much defeats itself.

All they have to do is give drones a fitting cost.

Drone ships are OP at the moment - Ishtar is just a stand out example.

No other ship type can fit DPS without any CPU or PG cost.

This leaves drone ships the ability to be uber tanked + Fast/hold some Ewar/whatevs else you want all while doing good dps.



So either a drone nerf or a fitting cost for putting them in the bay is needed + cap use for deploying them. (to stop people undocking with offlined modules and switching them on one the pew starts)

Here's a solution to the ishtar: remove its sentry bonuses.

Wow its like magic! All problems solved!