EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hello all!

I am just starting to experiment with Sentry drones and some questions came out...


1) My Sentry Drones have an optimal and falloff ranges. This is the same as any other turret system. However, is it possible that those ranges are only relevant as long as my target is within my DRONE CONTROL RANGE?

Last night I was playing around with some WARDEN I sentry drones and I could not attack anything farther then my 60km drone control range (with skills and fittings).

So is this right? My drone targets must be within my drone control range even if the basic drone range (ex: warden with optimal of 50km and falloff of an additional 25km without skills)



2) How does Drone damage work. You have base damage (ex: 50 HP) and then you have damage modifier (ex: 1.4x for Bouncer I). Why having those two measures?



Thanks

1a. Drone control range has always been a wierd concept for most.

Basically, it does not matter how far your drones can shoot or fly... they will only attack things within a certain range of YOUR ship (see: drone control range).
Now this is a bit of a double edged sword... it means that you will never be able to hit as far out as a "true" sniperboat without the use of Drone Control Augmenters (high-slot modules). However, if you plop down sentry drones at long range and move your own ship in closer to the target... the drones WILL engage (provided they can hit things from that far out).

(NOTE: that latter part is pretty much the biggest reason why Ishtars are so disliked... they drop drones at range and then engage within their drones outer optimal range... where tracking isn't too much of an issue)


2a. Missiles and turrets have this same kind of bonus scheme. You have base damage (from the ammo), which is modified/multiplied by the weapon, which is itself altered by ship bonuses and skills. Drones operate on a similar principle.

Beyond this, I am not sure I know what you are asking.

This is only like 80% accurate. The drones won't accept commands regarding any ships or objects outside of your control range. They will still often attack things outside that range, they'll just do it under the direction of the drone internal AI, which... well, if OP's gotten up to sentries he knows that that's almost worse than them having no AI at all.

For sentries and typical NPC ships and PvE targeting ranges, this usually does translate to not shooting things outside your control range, since generally even 'sniper' NPCs have to come into what your effective control range probably is with a drone boat to plink you and invoke the ineffective wrath of the drone AI. But it's not necessarily a hard rule.

Couple more things.

Drones that are set to aggressive will pick targets that are within your drone control range OF YOU (not of themselves) and start shooting them. They will never engage a player unless expressly told to, or unless you have engaged that player with hostile modules.

Note that it's only your drone control range that matters, not your target lock range.

Secondly, on aggressive, drone AI favors shooting ships with signature radius similar to or larger than the drone's signature resolution.

Same way as ship MWD, essentially.

The "maximum velocity" number includes the MWD, while "orbit velocity" is with the MWD switched off.

Drones will MWD to a target, switch the warp drive off, then fire as they orbit. This is why they won't seem to ever fire if you send a larger drone against a faster target, sometimes, even if they're "keeping up". If the drone never can drop MWD to take shots it typically won't shoot (though YMMV on that).

When the MWD is on they do suffer the usual signature radius bloom, which leads to some interesting bits of not-fully-thought-out gameplay like it being really easy to probe you down when your drones are doing straight-line movement.