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Drone Hardpoints, Server Load, and Miniature Geckos
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Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2017-03-12 19:32:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Reaver Glitterstim
As many of you are aware, large numbers of drones in space doing combat is server-intensive. One of the main reasons we have so many drones in a fleet engagement is because so many ships have a drone bay. When they have 25mbit/sec of bandwidth, they're bound to bring five small drones rather than one big drone, because the five small drones have higher collective DPS plus higher tracking and higher movement speed.

If we gave ships drone hardpoints, allowing them to launch one drone per hardpoint, then drone ships could have 5 and everyone else could have less. With some adjustments to their drone bay and bandwidth, they could have roughly the same power as before but with fewer drones.

Example:
The Hurricane has 40m3 // 40mbit/sec and many players will use that drone bay to launch 4 mediums, 3 mediums and 2 smalls, or just 5 smalls. Most pilots launch at least 4 drones from their Hurricane.

Say we adjust this to 50m3 // 50mbit/sec but give it just 2 drone hardpoints. Now it gets its best drone DPS by launching 2 heavies or 2 sentries and it has roughly the same drone power as before, but it can never launch more than 2 drones at a time.



With ships limited in number of drones they can launch by hardpoints, they will be incentivized to launch fewer, larger drones instead of the current meta which encourages players to launch more, smaller drones. This also will help alleviate the problem in which large ships easily win in fights against small ships since they have no difficulty scoring hits with their several small drones.

Miniature Geckos
With drone hardpoints, smaller versions of the Gecko can be made. Each of these drones would use 2 drone hardpoints instead of 1. The small variant would take 10m3 and 10mbit/sec, and would be a perfect fit for a Worm. The medium variant would take 20m3 and 20mbit/sec, and would be a perfect fit for a Gila. Now you can fly any size Guristas vessel and dominate with a single drone!

Now the Worm and Gila don't have to be bonused for a specific drone type, instead they'll have just 2 drone hardpoints. That way they can deal decent damage with a smaller set of drones, it'll just be less than with the main set.


Next, perhaps a Guristas Carrier? It could launch just one Guristas faction fighter.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
Do Little
Bluenose Trading
#2 - 2017-03-12 21:07:38 UTC
I believe the intention is for drones to eventually use the same interface as fighters - launched and controlled as a squadron. I recall this was mentioned when the fighter interface was introduced but can't remember if it was a devblog, fanfest presentation or forum post. The server would only need to keep track of a single entity.
Daichi Yamato
Jabbersnarks and Wonderglass
#3 - 2017-03-12 23:44:11 UTC
Squadrons are the way forward.

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Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#4 - 2017-03-13 00:37:08 UTC
But this will still help with tracking and Geckos, and other balance issues.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
Arthur Aihaken
Kenshin Academia.
Kenshin Shogunate.
#5 - 2017-03-13 02:12:49 UTC
They could also just nerf drone bays from a lot of ships, too.

I am currently away, traveling through time and will be returning last week.
elitatwo
Zansha Expansion
#6 - 2017-03-13 11:20:21 UTC
Do Little wrote:
I believe the intention is for drones to eventually use the same interface as fighters - launched and controlled as a squadron. I recall this was mentioned when the fighter interface was introduced but can't remember if it was a devblog, fanfest presentation or forum post. The server would only need to keep track of a single entity.


....and since they are gooderererererer then, CCP increases the pricetag on one drone by only 75000%.

yeay-ish

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Corraidhin Farsaidh
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#7 - 2017-03-13 11:36:10 UTC
That's going to be a tricky job then since they'll need to re-balance (or just replace) drones to account for the fact we can no longer micromanage them e.g. recall the one drone that's been hit and lose 20% of dps as opposed to recall flight of drones and lose up to 100% of dps whilst they return.

Get it wrong and they turn drone boats into the FotM ship, or more likely nerf them into uselessness.
Corraidhin Farsaidh
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#8 - 2017-03-13 11:38:21 UTC
Arthur Aihaken wrote:
They could also just nerf drone bays from a lot of ships, too.


To do this they'd need to replace them with some kind of secondary battery hardpoints instead as the small drones on a BS are supposed to be for anti-frig work for instance.

Not that I'd be opposed to that idea.
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#9 - 2017-03-13 21:50:55 UTC
Corraidhin Farsaidh wrote:
To do this they'd need to replace them with some kind of secondary battery hardpoints instead as the small drones on a BS are supposed to be for anti-frig work for instance.

Battleships get a drone bay large enough for a full flight of smalls and a full flight of mediums, they can fit webs as well as stasis grapplers. Why is it so important that battleships be able to obliterate frigates so easily? A lone frigate can't do hardly anything to a battleship other than tackle it and provide intel, assuming the battleship has any significant amount of tank. Why don't we stop buffing battleship's ability to shoot tiny targets and leave that part to teamwork? Oh noes, your battleship fleet can't shoot the interdictor that's holding you all down? Should have brought some frigs of your own. I really don't see why the battleships need to be so utterly capable of this work.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
Corraidhin Farsaidh
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#10 - 2017-03-14 00:31:22 UTC
Reaver Glitterstim wrote:
Corraidhin Farsaidh wrote:
To do this they'd need to replace them with some kind of secondary battery hardpoints instead as the small drones on a BS are supposed to be for anti-frig work for instance.

Battleships get a drone bay large enough for a full flight of smalls and a full flight of mediums, they can fit webs as well as stasis grapplers. Why is it so important that battleships be able to obliterate frigates so easily? A lone frigate can't do hardly anything to a battleship other than tackle it and provide intel, assuming the battleship has any significant amount of tank. Why don't we stop buffing battleship's ability to shoot tiny targets and leave that part to teamwork? Oh noes, your battleship fleet can't shoot the interdictor that's holding you all down? Should have brought some frigs of your own. I really don't see why the battleships need to be so utterly capable of this work.


BS don't need to obliterate waves of frigs, but they were given the drone bay for a reason, most commonly quoted to be frig defence. I didn't propose a buff for BS but rather a like for like exchange of drones for secondary battery defence. Same dps and roughly the same useful range but less server load. The impact on the drone market should be balanced by the added market for secondary battery modules.
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#11 - 2017-03-14 02:35:11 UTC
Corraidhin Farsaidh wrote:
BS don't need to obliterate waves of frigs, but they were given the drone bay for a reason, most commonly quoted to be frig defence.

This "frig defense" could be more accurately called "rock beats paper".

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."