Warfare & Tactics

First of all, I am not an expert in drones nor do I have all my drone skills to level 5, but I can see the great value in them for missions and pvp combat.

Drones are skill intensive, so if you are going to use them as your primary offensive weapons, focus on the drone skills or it’s going to take a long time to become good with them . You do not have to train for heavy or sentry drones for level 1,2,3 missions but BC’s die fast on level 3 missions with heavy drones, even if you only have heavy drone skill to level 3. Level 4,5 missions you need to have good heavy and sentry drones skills. But with all mission levels you don’t really need to train up to tech 2 drones, but it really speeds up the mission when you have tech 2 drones.

Pick the right ship for your drones. Anything with some type of drone bonus. Remember you’re drones are your primary offensive weapon not the turrets. Fit your ship to support your drones not your turrets. I like to use Projectile turrets even though the ship might have bonuses for another type of turret. Projectile turrets use no cap. That means you can use it for other things like active armor tank and still be cap. stable.

Drone discipline is a must. Drones can be an unruly lot if left unattended and in active mode especially in missions. There is nothing like having your drones fly in all directions and agro the whole room. So keep them in passive mode for missions or you are going to waste a lot of time warping in and out of rooms to repair your armor. Active mode is good when your targeting is jammed and you need to kill something, like pvp combat.

It is time to kill something. First thing, jetcan something cheap. Start to orbit the jetcan. This will help to negate some damage from the npc’s. Target one ship only, shoot that ship, wait for all the ships in that group to agro you, then target them. Deploy your drones only after the group has agroed you, not before. This will keep the npc’s from killing your drones. Kill the ships from smallest to largest. Return your drones to the drone bay, agro the next group, deploy drones again. Keep doing this until the room is clear. Also deploy the right size drone for the size of ship you are attacking. Kill ships first, then turrets then structures. Some time if you shoot structures first it will agro the whole room.

I hope this will help you in your drone endeavors. Please feel free to leave suggestions and comments or questions if you have them.

If you can tell me where noob help is and how to move it

Drones were my primary weapon of choice for missions for a very long time. I remapped for drones back in December 2010 and put myself on a fast path for drone supremacy lol! In my opinion drones are great for exploration too. You can fit up an Ishtar for hacking and salvaging while your drones take care of the rats. With Warden II's and an Omnidirectional Tracking link you can snipe even frigates from a great distance. On top of that, you can save a ton of isk over a period of time because you don't have to buy ammo.
I had a Fed Navy Dominix as my "lazy-man" mission boat for a very long time. The drone bay was always full of wonderful T2 drones, I also fitted omni's and drone link augmentors to make my laziness even worse. Some tractors and salvagers make for a pretty complete mission/salvage boat all in one. I have switched to the Ishtar for my drone mission runner mostly because I've lost patience in the Dominix crawling from one gate to the next. Speed tanking is also pretty effective in the Ishtar.

To the OP, if you want to improve your drone skills and really be serious about using drones, you may consider a remap for them. It would make the skills like drone interfacing, advanced drone interfacing, sentry drones, heavy drone, fighters and fighter bombers a LOT less painful. And you'll really appreciate their usefulness in PVE and PVP alike. GO DRONES!