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How about a little drone love?
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m3talc0re X
The Motley Crew of Disorder
The Gorram Shiney Alliance
#1 - 2012-07-17 13:35:56 UTC
Amarr drones are pretty much useless right now. And Minmatar drones aren't used all that much either. Also, sentries should have at least some propulsion... Make them move like 200ms and orbit you when deployed and keep orbit while engaged. That way they could follow their controller ships as the moved and would be able to return to the ship rather than having to fly to them to get 'em. Just an idea anyway...
leviticus ander
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#2 - 2012-07-17 16:32:13 UTC
warriors are used quite a bit since they do respectable damage and are faster than anything else.
+∞ on the sentry thing. that is one thing that really kills the usability of sentries.
Nikk Narrel
Moonlit Bonsai
#3 - 2012-07-17 17:05:38 UTC
+1 for the sentry drones following the host ship.

This would be easily balanced, since a smart bombing craft could close to zero and take them out, so they would have risk.

Upgrading Local to Eliminate All AFK Influence What if Local Chat changed, Hunting the Cloaked...
m3talc0re X
The Motley Crew of Disorder
The Gorram Shiney Alliance
#4 - 2012-07-17 17:07:39 UTC
Minmatar drones aren't used much outside of pvp. How about that? :P
Mr Beardsley
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#5 - 2012-07-18 16:48:33 UTC  |  Edited by: Mr Beardsley
I kind of like the idea of sentries having slow propulsion. If they added such an ability, I would suggest a "match speed to fastest drone" command for your ship. Frankly, though, I think drones need a lot more than this to make them a viable main offensive option.

How about NOT totally reloading my drone display every time I launch drones? Their hard enough to manage without having to rejigger my view of the various groups so I can see if their taking damage, etc.

How about showing their conditions while their in the drone bay as well as while in space?

How about allowing us to group combat and ECM drones together?

How about having drones slowly repair their armor while in their bay, at least in ships that get drone bonuses? The rate could be based on your repair skill. Drones are the only ship weapons that can be destroyed, leaving a pilot that depends on them at a huge disadvantage. With such limited capacity for carrying and deploying them, allowing them to repair armor seems perfectly fair..they still require far more micromanagement than anything else. No, using remote reppers is not a viable option in 90% of scenarios. Drones being 100% reliant on shield tanking is NOT an "acceptable risk" because to make them effective you must devote multiple slots to drone boosting modules. That's more than enough drawback.

How about introducing drone control modules for non-capitols? They could be usable solely on drone boats and/or limited to one active at a time to prohibit abuse. I don't see six drones as being unreasonable - at that point a true drone carrier might actually be a practical choice for missions and even PvP. Wouldn't that be something? Gallente was supposedly all-powerful until the Caldari invented the manned space fighter (later becoming a drone itself) so it would definitely make sense from a story perspective.
Griffin Omanid
Knights of the Zodiac
#6 - 2012-07-18 21:51:21 UTC
To solve the weakness of the ammar drones they should just switch the damage modifier for Minmatar and Amarr drones, so that the order is Gallente>Caldari>Amarr >Minmatar for the Damage modifier, and vice versa for Speed and tracking speed.

But i agree that drones need a lot more love from the developers.
There is also the small issue, that mining drones don´t react on the 'F'-key as command for attacking or mining. Ok they are no Combat drones, but the few times i use mining drones they should be able to use the Attack command on Astroids.

Proposal T2 BS Class Juggernaut
Mr Beardsley
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#7 - 2012-07-18 23:59:37 UTC
Griffin Omanid wrote:
To solve the weakness of the ammar drones they should just switch the damage modifier for Minmatar and Amarr drones, so that the order is Gallente>Caldari>Amarr >Minmatar for the Damage modifier, and vice versa for Speed and tracking speed.

But i agree that drones need a lot more love from the developers.
There is also the small issue, that mining drones don´t react on the 'F'-key as command for attacking or mining. Ok they are no Combat drones, but the few times i use mining drones they should be able to use the Attack command on Astroids.


I'm not quite sure about the first idea just because I rarely use anything but Gallente drones, but the F key/atack thing makes completel sense. It shuld be child's play to implement (in the context of MMO game programming).
Zanzbar
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#8 - 2012-07-19 00:52:11 UTC
Mr Beardsley wrote:

How about introducing drone control modules for non-capitols? They could be usable solely on drone boats and/or limited to one active at a time to prohibit abuse. I don't see six drones as being unreasonable - at that point a true drone carrier might actually be a practical choice for missions and even PvP. Wouldn't that be something?


Nope, the drone interfacing skill used to allow an aditional drone per level and some galente ship bonuses did as well, this resulted in way too many drones in space causeing a ton of unnecesary server load and lag. Drone boats are powerful do to their ability to fill their highslots with support equip without loosing out on main dps, however a few ships with a low number of highslots in exchange for heavy drone dmg bonuses wouldn't be a horrible idea
Astroniomix
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#9 - 2012-07-19 01:00:03 UTC
Zanzbar wrote:
Mr Beardsley wrote:

How about introducing drone control modules for non-capitols? They could be usable solely on drone boats and/or limited to one active at a time to prohibit abuse. I don't see six drones as being unreasonable - at that point a true drone carrier might actually be a practical choice for missions and even PvP. Wouldn't that be something?


Nope, the drone interfacing skill used to allow an aditional drone per level and some galente ship bonuses did as well, this resulted in way too many drones in space causeing a ton of unnecesary server load and lag. Drone boats are powerful do to their ability to fill their highslots with support equip without loosing out on main dps, however a few ships with a low number of highslots in exchange for heavy drone dmg bonuses wouldn't be a horrible idea

The servers are also much more powerful than they were back then. The issue I am seeing however, is that you would have to re-re-balance the dominix and a few other ships that got tweaked after the 5 drones per subcap hard limit was implemented.
Paikis
Vapour Holdings
#10 - 2012-07-19 01:16:50 UTC
Whats the difference between having 10 drones, and having 5 drones with a 100% damage bonus? It'd be nice to have our very own cloud of damage drones, but the effect of a damage bonus is the same as having extra drones, its just easier on the servers.
Acac Sunflyier
The Ascended Academy
#11 - 2012-07-19 02:33:09 UTC  |  Edited by: Acac Sunflyier
Also, if I hover my mouse over a drone in the drone window, I'd like to be able to see its shield, armor and structure percentages.
Griffin Omanid
Knights of the Zodiac
#12 - 2012-07-19 09:22:27 UTC
Mr Beardsley wrote:

I'm not quite sure about the first idea just because I rarely use anything but Gallente drones, but the F key/atack thing makes completel sense. It shuld be child's play to implement (in the context of MMO game programming).


At the moment the Minmatar drones are overpowered becaus of their good damage/speed ratio. And Gallente Drones are the best for PVE cause, all you need in PVE is the high damage modifier.
When the damage modifier of Amarr and Minmatar are switched, Minmatar drones would be faster but deal less DPS then Amarr, but Caldari drones are still stronger but slower then the Amarr drones.
Probably the high speed of Minmatar drones will still be a reason to only use Minmatar drones in PVP-combat, but at least it would be a little more balanced, and because of their explosiv damage type they would be quit useless against T2-Amarr-ships.

Proposal T2 BS Class Juggernaut
Gerrick Palivorn
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#13 - 2012-07-19 09:47:20 UTC
+1 to limited sentry drone movement

MMOs come and go, but Eve remains.  -Garresh-
m3talc0re X
The Motley Crew of Disorder
The Gorram Shiney Alliance
#14 - 2012-07-31 23:05:43 UTC
Bump! Come on ccp
Mr Beardsley
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#15 - 2012-08-03 03:36:43 UTC  |  Edited by: Mr Beardsley
Just for old time's sake, and because its still a great idea:

* Salvage drones

And because I just now thought of it:

* Medium Mining Drones: with full skill they would about 75% as good as a Miner I in efficiency.
* Heavy mining drones: with full skill they would be around 75% as good as a Miner II. (It might make more sense to have advanced mediums rather than heavies, not sure..)

Nice for ships with few turrets (Drake, etc) and for those silly mining missions where you have to mine with enemies around. This way you don't have to wait till you've killed them all, or have to go get a different ship or change loadout. Of course it might be considered OP for someone in a mining BS with drones like that..they could probably challenge the small barge in efficiency, but I don't really see a problem with that. Not everybody wants to be a mining specialist and just needs to grab a little ore now and then without it taking hours, and the real miners who also fight could use a BS when there's a high chance of getting ganked. These drones also might be tempting for miners in the newly enhanced barges, if they dared...

I also think the medium types should look sort of bird-like with grabber talons. If they had heavy ones I'd make them like mecha with fat arms.
Warde Guildencrantz
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#16 - 2012-09-12 00:25:19 UTC
I dont think it would be that fair to boost amarr drones. Every race had good and bad damage types. For example, gallente can't particularly output EXP or EM damage with blasters/rails, minmatar has no (powerful) way to emit kinetic DPS, amarr is mostly EM/Therm, and although missile boats can shoot any damage type, they primarily suck in terms of damage unless kinetic is used for 3/4 caldari missile boats. The same is with drones. You can get great DPS with therm/kin, and to a lesser extent explosive, but have a hard time doing EM. I think that's a fair tradeoff. Perhaps amarr drones could have their speed buffed a bit in order to not be so horrible, but I don't think buffing their damage is really fair.

However, having sentries able to move with a ship, but not approach another enemy ship to move to a combat position sounds like a great idea. It would add an interesting level to a sentry drone fight where the drone could fly past the enemy while leaving sentries behind, then call them to approach their ship, sort of trapping the enemy in between.

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Alx Warlord
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#17 - 2012-09-12 00:34:35 UTC  |  Edited by: Alx Warlord
m3talc0re X wrote:
Minmatar drones aren't used much outside of pvp. How about that? :P

They are perfect against Angel ships

About the other aspects of drones,,, yes they need allot of love...

Drone boats need some drone damage amplifier on Hi-slot or some other drone related thing there.... Maybe something to increase the drone bandwidth... 3 different sizes (small + 5) (med + 10) (large +25) so lesser drone boats could get some more firepower...

Also something to increase drone cargo space would be usefull....

Please read these!

New POS system New SOV system
cheese monkey
Chilil-out
#18 - 2012-09-12 08:52:02 UTC
SENTRIES ARE FINE. You are using them wrong.

Sentries if anything simply need a SMALL damage boost.

warp to a belt/gate/planet/station...

make a 60km cube around you ship with sentry drones (should be 8, but do the best with 5 drones)

drone = y+60km:z+60km drone= x-60km:z-60km drone= x+60km:y+60km drone=x-60km:z-60km drones=y+60km:z-60km

if you spend some time and actually do something like this this then it pays off!!

(play with distances, you might find somehing more effiencent)

this way you have cross fire from nearly every direction and transversal doesnt matter... frigates.... no problem ;)

Sentry drones atm are not used as sentry drones!



--

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Gypsio III
State War Academy
Caldari State
#19 - 2012-09-12 09:42:56 UTC
Gerrick Palivorn wrote:
+1 to limited sentry drone movement


Already exists.




(Emphasis on "small") Big smile
Alayna Le'line
#20 - 2012-09-12 11:40:43 UTC
They could start by fixing the horrible horrible horrible (I can keep going like this for a while...) drone UI. Would have been a much better investment of their time than messing up the inventory window, imnsho.

It would also be really nice to be able to see when your drones are getting locked, you know, so you can respond to enemies targeting them before they're halfway through armor...

And it would be nice to be able to see the armor/shields of drones in your bay, nothing as much fun as pulling back a few drones only to have to play Russian roulette when you want to send them out again (hmm, one of them was in structure, but which one....?).

Those two things would already make flying a drone boat already a lot less annoying and are of course seriously related to the fist point: the terribad drone UI.

Of course, a lot more needs to be done and there are some nice suggestions in the thread already, but these points imho cover some of the really basic annoyances of dealing with drones.
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