Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Basically I really want to use F1-F5 to control my drones individually, the same way guns and missiles can be assigned to attack individual targets.

If I am in my Ishtar running a Guristas Scout Outpost or a level 4 mission and I deploy my Gardes, I don't really want to hit 'F' and assign all 5 Gardes to a frigate. That is massive overkill, inefficient, and a waste of time. I want to kill 5 frigates at a time, 1 Garde per frigate. This is doable with the current drone list, but involves a whole lot of clicking:

- Click target 1
- Move mouse to drones window
- Click and hold on Garde 1, drag up to attack icon
- Move mouse back to targets
- Click target 2
- Move mouse to drones window
- Click and hold on Garde 2, drag up to attack icon
- Move mouse back to targets
- Etc....

Not exactly healthy for your hand. Even when I am using a flight of 5 Hobgoblins to take out frigates that get in close, I prefer to control them individually like this and assign one drone per frigate.

So yeah, I'd like to control my drones with F1-F5.

I came up with a mockup of a possible solution, a new drone interface. What do you think, forumites? Would this make sense and work for you? See any problems?

Mock-up: DRONE UI REVAMP (v3)

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edited after feedback. Earlier versions were here:

Mock-up: DRONE UI REVAMP (v2)

Mock-up: DRONE UI REVAMP (v1)

very nice,
i would rather see the functions from the drop down menu displayed (orbit, return, engage ect,ect...) set off to the left as in image one with the individual drones displayed as they are in # 3.
great work though + 1 from me good sir.

Impressive. It would be good to group say 3 and 2 or 4 and 1. This means that you could easily assign groups to different tasks on the fly. Great mockup by the way.

This a good idea pointed in the right direction.

+1

Edited image with what I think Ralph King-Griffen was suggesting: Mock-up V2
It's probably a bit tidier. I suppose the existing ring-menu currently in game could be shrunk down and fitted around the drone slot, but it's currently loaded with unimportant commands - keep distance to drone, view drone, etc.. stuff that is more about controlling your ship or camera than controlling your drones. That stuff can be done by selecting your drone on the overview and using the "selected-item" buttons... not sure why CCP put all of that into the drone ring-menu.



Do you mean group drones the same way that you can group guns? I hadn't thought of that. I guess that would make sense, as long as you're grouping the same type of drone. Same restriction as with grouping guns/missiles. Though drones have health... but I guess the group could display the health of the group-member that has suffered the most damage.



The gray bar actually is divided into shield/armor/hull, by little white lines. Perhaps it's a bit too subtle. Not a hard problem to fix though.

Along the same vein of what Solhid said, I'd like to be able to group all my drones into a single stack. I'm not always flying a drone-centric boat and separating my drones' dps is not as important to me as minimizing time spent managing drones.

But you represented your idea really well. Great mockup.

Also +1. I hate clicking drones.

I really like the idea and mockup you came up with. A few suggestions for simplicity...

• Whether you assign a single drone or multiple drones to a drone group, commands apply to all drones in the assigned drone group, ie: all attack, all return and orbit, etc.
• When you click on the drone group or press F1-F5, it auto-launches and/or assigns the drone group to engage the selected target. If there's no target selected or present, it simply launches the drone group. Reassigning a target is as simple as selecting a new target and either clicking on the drone group again or pressing F1-F5.
• Double-clicking on a drone group recalls that group to orbit.
• Rather than a mouseover, shift-click or shift F1-F5 toggles passive/aggressive using a display similar to the overheat indicator (blue for passive and red for aggressive). Right clicking a drone group brings up the drone settings menu.
• When attacking, the drone icons could have a pulsing green circle around them (as opposed to the traditional rotating green circle on most weapon systems); when recalling to bay or returning to orbit, the new dotted grey timer bar could be used as an approximate ETA for that drone group (based on the drone furthest from the player ship).

ah i can see that i guess it was just how they had been damaged that made it look off

an update of the UI would be awesome
+1 supported

+ 1 supported.

Need for the hand sake. ( and my little salvage drone =D)