Missions & Complexes

observation: I flew the same DED site/anomaly with different ships (VNI, dominix, stratios, nestor) using the same heavy drones but for some reason the VNI-s drones were barely ever focused aside from initial aggro while the others (especially the nestor's) drones were repeatedly targeted by most ships in the same wave including battleships.

I thought it's related to the speed bonus so I added navigation computers until they exceed the VNI's bonus but it didn't help one bit. also tried remote repping them but to no avail...

I'm trying to understand why BS heavy drones get so much hatred from rats, if anyone has any tips or info please do share

My experience from about 100 gurista deds, was that they rolled a random timer for a periodic general drone aggro, and then they aggro on that timer every time reliably.

ie you could get a ded 7 that did not aggro a drone ever, or you could get one that aggroed it every few minutes or the worst case, every 30 seconds, which means you are lucky to kill a battleship between hauling the drones in.

I've observed the sites in all of those states using the exact same droneboat fitted proteus with the exact same drones.

My other experience was missions occasionally do this, deds do more often, and sleeper content seemed biased towards always having a timer and it often being short.

That isn't necessarily the only drone aggro switching cause, but its obvious when the encounter has rolled a periodic timer.

Bear in mind I usually use sentry drones, and heavies have more methods of getting aggro as a rule.

You'll get a dozen different answers, but the truth is that only CCP really knows how their NPC threat assessment function works.

PVErs are superstitious sorts lol (i once said that if you old PVe players that jumping up and down on one leg would increase escalation chances, there would be an increase of emergency room visits in several countries due to ankle sprains ). This means that sometimes PVE players misinterpret actions and results and thus they will sometimes give you bad/incorrect advice.

Some will tell you that putting an Auto-targeting unit on a ship "counts as ewar and will keep drone aggro off your drones" (it doesn't), that NOSing one of your drones will make npcs not aggro them (also not true), that lighting a smart bomb for one cycle (giving you a weapons timer) will do the trick (yep, you guessed it, also not true) and so forth.

Also if you do 12 anomalies you are sure to get an escalation and if you get a multi stage escalating path expedition (like "special forces", the one you get from Angel Provincial HQ), you MUST be sure that the player/character that got the original escalation gets the final blow and thus each subsequent escalation, else the escalation chain will fail!!


In other words, it's kind of futile to ask PVE guys these kinds of questions lol, the truth is we don't know even though some pretend to or think they do. Play the game and come to your own conclusions based on your own results (and even then take those with a grain of salt).

there have been a few mechanics where not even ccp knows, or even ccp says one thing when another is true.

light drones hardly ever get aggro in most missions so I just stick to using them. the only other drones I use are sentries which I keep in scoop range so when they get aggro I just scoop/redeploy and continue on.

It has to have at least something to do with your ship size and type of drone.

For example, if you are flying a BS and using light drones, rat frigates will nearly always target the drones instead of your ship.

Never get any drone aggro with VNI and Ishtar in the Sansha anomalies. Like ever at all...

Sansha DED 10/10 on the other hand is really hard to do due to drones constantly getting aggroed the first few minutes upon warping in. After a while they stop getting aggroed, but until then have to micromanage individual drones by scooping and launching them the moment they start to take shield damage.