EVE General Discussion

Hi,
New PVP player, I've been looking for info on Sentry Drones. What do they do and what are they good for?

Ah... Not sure if... Well...

/inhale

/inner voice: Be positive. Give them the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.

/exhale

Yes, they're good. Which is why Ishtars and Sentry Drones and Drone Assist and DDAs have/are being nerfed a bit.

edit: current nerf thread: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=431058&find=unread

Im gonna be mean and useful in the same post:

If you're new to PvP it's a good idea to join a corp that knows about sentry drones. They're pretty hot right now and have been for at least a year, despite several nerfs.

So much for the "mean" part. Now as for what a sentry is:

Most drones are small ships you launch and start making their way over to your target before initiating orbit and engaging. Light, medium, heavy drones as well as fighters and fighter-bombers work that way. All the other drones follow the same path even if they use a web, a paint or a repper on your target instead of a gun.

The only exception is the sentry drone. Their speed is a whopping 1 meter per second. So it's basically immobile for combat purposes. This immobility is compensated by a heavy damage output and long range. So where other drones are small ships of their own that follow their target around, a sentry drone resembles a deploy-able turret. Wont move, but if you get in range of it....
Sentries follow the same racial damage profiles as the other ones. So explosive for minmatar sentries (Bouncers), kinetic for Caldari ones etc.

Most used at the moment are curators (Amarr - EM damage) and bouncers (Minmatar - explosive damage). Both have good range and damage output. Where EM damage is bad for shields, explosive will hurt armor tanks.

Good luck!

Basically those drones are good in combination with ships with drone bonuses cause they adapted to each other pretty well.

Sentry drones are preferred in PVP for a number of reasons:

- you don't have to wait for them to get in range of the target to apply their damage
- if the enemy brings friends and you need to GTFO fast, you don't have to wait for the drones to get back to your cargo hold
- sniping setups are more viable in PVP than in PVE (where every single NPC just MWDs to close orbit you)

Of course, their usefulness depends on the situation; they are considered "heavy" and "long range" weapons for the purpose of tracking calculations, so if your target is small or is likely to come close, they may not be the best choice.

Sentry drones are each the equivalent of a T1 frigate that can snipe to the edge of your targeting range, in most configurations. Battleships and some Cruisers and Battlecruisers can launch five of them.