Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Been looking at drones today, thought..

Tracking distruper
Sensor Damp
ECM
Web
Neut

Those are already there..

Now something to counter the Tracking Distruptur drones against gun boats would be Defender Drones against Missile Boats, shooting defender missiles.

Thoughts

ONLY if they are as useful as Defender Missles!

+1
and yes, Ive liked this idea for a while. should be less powerful than bombs, because they track their target, and because you can deploy more once they explode. I like the idea of making them more defenceless to fill their role, but would make sense to also give them speed boost (but that might make them OP)
-It would actually be interesting if you created the small ones to have damage bonuses against drones, so that they could be (like this thread was created for) drone hunters that took out other drones.

- A side note, is that you dont have to give them splash damage. think about missiles. cruise and torpedoes damage only one target, so your not stretching any rules there. maybe make large drones damage within range, but not smaller ones. (just thoughts, be happy to see any version)

Drones originally had this ability before the public beta (IIRC). There was a menu option to intercept the missile. The feature was removed; I think it was a game mechanics problem, as drones are slower than missiles.

It's good idea. Automating missiles defense is nice. But it would be op if you could have five light drones orbiting your ship killing 90% - 100% of all income missiles, and free ammo would hurt the market. Some practical limitations must apply.

Make them like sentry drones- same size bandwidth and cannot move.
Give it a 0.99 m3 ammo bay (66 missiles).
Must be launched before it can be loaded.
Must be unloaded before it can be returned.
10 second rof.

This should make it functional but balanced, even in large fleet fights.

I don't know about having to load them because that would mean they were pretty much unusable in a quick pop up battle.

Now, here's a couple things you could do to balance this out

1) very very slow movement like sentry drones

2) The respective bandwidth and m3 is determined by the size. So there's a small for rockets and light missiles (5m3/bw), medium for heavy and heavy assault (10m3/bw), large for cruise, torp, and capital missiles (25m3/bw). Using too small a drone will result in more drones needed to be used to take out one missile, and using too large a drone will result in too bad of tracking to be able to take out the missile.

3) Each drone can take out 1 missile in relation to their size per charge.

4) If used against a smaller or lager missile, they will fail to achieve their goal. The used drone MUST be the right size. This is to keep it balanced because each drone type will have a rate of fire determined by the potential rate of fire for their related missile size. Basically, you would want to balance the drones to where they would be able to engage every 3rd or 4th volley.

5) Like sentry drones they do instant damage. This should help keep it from lagging up the server, and also from the difficulty of getting missiles to engage another missile properly.. Currently, defendors don't work because they like to chase the missile, which can often mean the missile hits before the defendor engages.

6) Like with other drones, you can set them on passive or aggressive. If on aggressive, they will engage the first available missile of their related size when recharged. If passive, then these drones can also be engaged on a specific target the same way you do with standard drones. In doing so, the drones will focus their defense on missiles fired from that specific ship. So if someone is hitting you harder than anyone else, you can focus your drones on him.

7) While they are like sentry drones, there is a difference. They don't have an optimal. They are still effected by drone control range. So, if part of your strategy is to continue moving, then you can drop the drones and they will still continue to engage volleys fired at you. So if you have 120km drone control range, then you can launch the drones and they'll continue to take out whatever volley is fired at you as long as YOU are within that range of the drones.

8) They have the standard sig radius and hit points of their related drone sizes. Your own fof missiles WILL hit them. Although, I would think programmed missiles would be intelligent enough not to hit your drones or friendlies, but CCP tends to disagree.

My 2cents.

[quote=myself6) Like with other drones, you can set them on passive or aggressive. If on aggressive, they will engage the first available missile of their related size when recharged. If passive, then these drones can also be engaged on a specific target the same way you do with standard drones. In doing so, the drones will focus their defense on missiles fired from that specific ship. So if someone is hitting you harder than anyone else, you can focus your drones on him.[/quote]

I fixed it. I had over written that statement so it said both forms of passive, so I corrected it.

Uhh, read my concept on it. They wouldn't need ammo, and they would be turrets instead of missiles to allow for much more efficient destruction of the target, and I also stated that they were like sentry drones, plus they had related sizes, and no optimal or fall off. They're only limited by your drone control range.