EVE New Citizens Q&A

With tracking script the module will increase drone tracking by 30% and reduce range.

Can you explain how that affects the different sized drones and their capability to hit different sized NPC ships?
ex:
- heavy drones chance to hit the NPC frigates, NPC destroyers, NPC cruisers
- sentries chance to hit the same ships

I'd use

light drones against frigs, destroyers and cruisers.
medium drones against cruiser BC and BS
heavy drones against BS only
sentries against everything at range

Using tracking link with a tracking script will allow a heavy drone to hit a cruiser, and a medium drone to hit a firgate, the smaller size drones will still work better in that situation.
Only with sentry drone does the omni tracking link really become important. With a tracking script your sentries will be able to hit targets below their optimal range a lot better, while a range script will allow you to hit further out.

My strategy is usually:
1) Drop sentries at range and start out with the range script.
2) Once the rats move closer (within your sentries optimal range if you were not using the omni), switch to the tracking script.
3) Once the rats get within about half your sentries optimal range, you'll notice your sentries start missing even with the tracking bonus. Recall sentries, launch light drones (it's usually the small fast ships which get under your guns first) and burn to range while the light drones kill off anything chasing you.
4) Once at range, repeat from step 1.

That's a good strategy. How can the Geckos hit from frigates to BS everything? Of course, frigates are harder to hit, but they still hit them. So 2 Geckos, 1 medium drone and 2 small ones seem to do the best work.

How will the next release affect the Ishtar, when it will rebalanced?

If you want to understand gunnery and tracking then you need to do a google search and some reading. Eve gunnery and tracking is a long discussion in and of it's self that has been had here repeatedly so I'll not duplicate it. However a short summary would be that guns actually track slower against smaller targets and faster against larger targets.

Like many other's have said the dual omni tracking links are mostly for sentires. There are stacking penalties for multiple tracking mods so when you have the ability to choose range you might want to experiment with one of each script. I personally keep 2 of each script in my cargo and switch them up depending on the situation. I do fly the domi much more than the Ishtar but it's basically the same offensive set up.

As far as what is getting nerfed I think it's just sentry damage. iirc it's going from 10% per level to 7.5% or 5% something like that. I believe there is also some kind of change to range or tracking of the minmatar sentries also but that is to that drone type and not specific to the Ishtar.

Here is the flash based gunnery tutorial:
http://dl.eve-files.com/media/0910/eve-tracking101.swf

Eve Uni is a great source for eve info. It is a good place to start for any questions but here is a link to their basic gunnery page:
http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Gunnery_Guide
That is just the basic page keep in mind. Eve Uni can go off the deep end on this stuff sometimes so if you dig you can find pages on things like turret damage as well:
http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Turret_Damage#The_random_damage_distribution
So that will give you an idea of how the RNG math works for turrets just as an example.

Also a youtube search should get you some results also like the spiraling and tracking video that I think is done by the guys at agony unleashed. Keep in mind that all of the info that you are getting here is based around ship's turrets but in eve gunnery is gunnery and the math works the same for drone's turrets as it does you ship so the concepts are identical.

Finally here is the dev blog on the balance changes:
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/balance-changes-coming-in-scylla

Sorry about my bad english. I was talking about attributes in module

Just curious. What is OP's Drone Durability skill?

What I do to try and not loose drones is when I start loosing aggro on the NPCs especially the frigs I pull my drones in and re-establish aggro then redeploy them. Sometimes even whey they are just yellow boxing me my drones will take aggro. If you wait until they take damage you will likely loose one before it gets back. Once a drone has aggro if there are webbing NPCs they will be slowing it and if you recall them then they come in a strait line right to you which drops their transversal to almost nothing.

I've read and noticed to be true that NPCs seem to attack only drones thier size or larger so NPC frigs will go after all drones but NPC cruisers will not go after small drones and NPC BSs will not go after small or medium drones etc. So another tactic can be to kill the frigs first with your small drones if you are close then kill cruisers then switch to medium drones. However my ideal tactic with the domi or ishtar is to sit at range and just kill everything starting with the smallest and moving to the biggest with my sentries at range.

And btw. I am getting used to take care of my drones. But it is hard work.
I will never use OTL again . I am using the freed mid slot for some more tank.

And I will sell all my heavy drones and replace them with more medium drones and Geckos. Sentries are good to take out the structure or ship that has the loot.

Geckos rule all :D . They can track all NPC ships, from frigates to BS.

Use the following:

Light drones against elite frigate NPCs (Shadow Serpentis, etc, with bounties exceeding 25000) and against players in frigates if you do not have them webbed (for players in Assault Frigates sometimes mediums are better)
Medium drones against non-elite frigates and elite cruisers, and player cruisers. Also use these on player frigates if you have them webbed.
Heavy drones against most other targets. In particular, if you are web fit, always use heavy drones against players if you have a double web on them.

Sentries are best on anything over 15km away unless it is orbiting you.

The benefit to heavies is that they can hit battleship targets hard, and those BSes have a lot of trouble hitting back. This isn't true with sentries.


As for losing drones - they are expendable ammunition, get used to it.