EVE General Discussion

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.

What if the Ishtar and Dominix only received a drone bonus to heavies?

I don't understand why they can't see that the issue is with the bonuses on drone ships and how they scale with large drones on cruisers... The problem does not lie with the drones themselves.

According to the CCP minutes drones might have a reload timer similar to guns.
The thing about drones is they already have a disadvantage from guns because they first have to return from the target if you want to swap them, then they have to return back to the target you want attacked.

As long as all other weapon systems get the reload + flight time factored in so they are on equal footing.

Funny how drone boats weren't OP till they were flown in a 150km arena where the target couldn't leave.

It seems everyone forgot they can warp out...its not like the sentry boats also has you tackled from 150km.

If they have a friend, get one yourself.

And lets not forget...you can shoot the drones and take away the weapon system. Can you say the same for turrets?

Why?

Drones are RP / Lore ideas like defender missiles and auto targeting missiles, bombs, and mines, that happen to work.