Missions & Complexes

Have spent most of my time in Eve flying Minmatar and Caldari ships... nothing real drone heavy. Reading the forums, I see a lot of comments here and there about using drones for missioning including seeing often that people run missions AFK using only their drones.

In theory, I guess that sounds fine but I constantly run into the problem of my drones getting blown up when I try to rely on them for anything other than managed assistance with frigates whilst I do the heavy lifting with missiles or arty depending on what I fly.

For instance. I wanted something that would do well with exploration and looking at various cruiser sized hulls I settled on wanting to try out the Gila since it had extra high slots for probe launcher, salvager etc. I trained up my drone skills to level 5 in drones/scout drones, level 4 in Combat drone ops, Drone durability, drone interfacing, drone navigation. Have Sentries at level 3 and the specialty drones (light/Medium) at level 2 just so I can use them.

I fit my Gila with 3 HAM launchers, Salvager, small remote armor repair in the highs, Analyzer or Code Breaker, AB and shield tank in the mids, BCS, DC and power diag in the lows and for the rig slots used shield resistance mods mostly.

The tank is good and the drones do excellent damage.

The problem I have is keeping my drones alive. I am constantly needing to recall drones to either swap out or repair. I originally thought I would be able to throw out sentries and then run around shooting my missiles and looting/salvaging as I went. That works for about a minute usually before I need to run back and repair my sentries or watch one or two die while I'm still on the way... so that didn't work. So I shifted over to putting out T2 Mediums or Smalls and manually picking targets... that works for a little bit but I am still needing to recall drones for repair. It's really a lot more effort than running around in a drake and simply blowing everything up from 60km away.

So... to all of you who throw out drones and go watch TV while the drones do the work... how do you keep from losing drones?
Is there a huge difference between drone durability 4 and 5? Are you fit differently to keep the drones from getting damaged? What's the secret to doing this?

I've flown Ishkur's in a previous life and have had the same kind of problem. Never flown a Dominix but don't see anything about that ship that would point to any different results. The Gila carries the same bonus to drone hit points as the other two ships I mentioned do. Oh ya... have Galente cruiser at IV.

Thoughts?

What was said above.

Trigger all the waves, make sure you can tank it permanently, then release drones to kill everything in the pocket.

If you are not watching them drones will ALWAYS shoot the trigger.

So either you watch them or make sure you blow up all the triggers and have full aggro of all waves before going AFK. Big tank is your friend.

Also make sure you use the right drones for the right targets - it's not going to be always the drone which hits the biggest hole or the drone which does the most damage either. Rule of thumb:

for heavies, mediums and light drones:

vs Guristas and Serpentis -> Use caldari drones
vs Angels -> Use minmatar drones
vs Blood Raiders / Sansha / Drones -> Use gallente drones

With sentry drones you need to also take range into account. I always have Gardes and add another flight of sentry drones as follows:

Guristas and Serpentis -> Add wardens
Angels -> Add Bouncers
Blood Raiders/Sansha -> Add Curators


Oh and a final tip - if you have 125 bandwidth you don't ever need medium drones - use sentries (preferred) or heavies and light drones for the annoying frigs your other drones cannot get.