Ships & Modules

As a drone user myself, I wholeheartedly support ANY AND ALL suggestions! Yes, even including ones that suggest drones be scrapped completely and SP refunded. In their current state, anything done to drones will be an improvement because frankly I feel they can't possibly get any worse, compared to other weapon systems.

What I worry about, and badly, is that during the ship rebalance, they will do nothing to address the drone problem. And then, after the rebalance, any drone fixes will require additional rebalance of drone boats, and that's just too much work and blah blah blah, and it'll never get done. Now would be a perfect time to look at drones, during ship rebalancing. Considering how many ships have respectable drone bays these days, to change drones later would require retuning all these ships' drone bays, probably. Don't create more work for yourselves, CCP, by taking the easy way out and ignoring the drones now.

That is an interesting point. What do you think about my point of leveling all combat drones except for damage type as per the OP? It seems that would be a relatively easy first step for CCP. Bottom line, all combat drones perform equally except for damage type. I'm curious about what the community would feel about this.

I have flown droneboats for a while and i think they are ok. As somebody said before:

1--> Your damage its inmune to electronic warfare. No ecm, tracking disruption, neutralicing or whatever will affect it.

2-->Inmune to retaliation. Send your drones to the target and mwd to 50km away, when primary its done, change to secondary without going into point range. If thing go wrong, just abandon them and get out.

This two points make them balanced imho. Also you can boost drones without affecting ship balance, as almost every ship get some dps from them. (Think on Geddon and Typhoon).

Apart from this it would be cool if Ewar drones where a viable alternative to damage drones, maybe being dual purpose drones (some damage and some ewar in the same drone) or maybe giving them more effect.

If you are 50km (75km in an ishtar) away from the enemy you can simply warp out when they break your tank, being already alingned, you have to get alfaed to get killed. Do you think that is a small thing?.

Geddon and Typhoon can field 5 ogre t2, thats a lot of dps even unbonused.

I don't know, drones are very situational.

It's a good think CCP don't nerf boats for being versatile, because then a lot of Gallente drone platforms would be in danger.

I just got back from a small WH eviction (no easy access for Dreads so dmg from subcaps was important) and I made top dmg on both short range (POCOS/POS mods) and on the tower.

Using the same ship I was able to spot a new sig in system (whormholers know how important this is) and be of use while guarding WHs.

When getting there, I had no trouble with "not putting to much mass on the WH", traveling trough C1s or lowsec to get there.

This in a ship that probably was cheaper then most on field.

The ship? Ishtar.

And yes, I was the only one flying it.

Yeah, but I don't agree with it.

Without overheat, Drones need to be used en masse to maximize their potential damage output. I don't 1100-1900 DPS is too much to ask for with a few dozen drones.

A) Your damage is not immune to electronic warfare. If you are ecm jammed or sensor damped down to the point where you cannot lock an enemy and get your drones set to attack your intended target then your screwed. If your in the same situation but you get your drones auto agressed onto an enemy then you have lost your ability to direct your drones onto the target of your choice and you in a situation somewhat similar to someone using FoF missiles. Though individual drones may as a practical matter be immune to ewar (they aren't really, just no one bothers to do so), viewed as a weapon system they can be degraded or nuetralized by ewar.

B) Your position is illogical. If you are 50km away from your target and and you need to GTFO the *LAST* thing you want to be using is drones. If you abandon your drones and warp away you have basically lost your primary weapon system for the rest of the fight (combat drones on a drone ship). If your flying a gun or missile based ship and you warp out you still have your primary weapon system intact and available for immediate use again.

Thats not surprising. As currently designed drones ships are best suited for PvE, and that is where you will find them. The dev's seem to view drones overall in a PvP encounter as (A) supplemental dps and (B) added utility (ewar/cc drones). While thats a nice addition to your gun/missile centric ship, flying a ship based around something that is considered an add on system usually means your fighting at a serious disadvantage in PvP.

I've been playing since 2004. Dont tell me I dont understand FoF missles. I said having to rely on auto agression to direct your drones "puts you in a situation SOMEWHAT SIMILAR to someone using FoF missiles". And it does, ie: your not in direct control of what your weapon system is attacking at any given moment. And FoF missiles attacking random structures and friendly players is a known bug acknowledged by CCP but they can't be bother to fix them after all these years (which gives u and idea of where drones rank on their top 100 list of things to fix), so please don't use bugs to justify your position.

FoF missiles and smartbombs are both designed to be resistant to ECM and damps and have built in safeguards to maintain firing (as well as drones). You are actually incorrect when you say that nothing is 100% resistant to ewar because smartbombs are in fact just that. So perhaps you should not compare other weapon systems to drones, since it shows you haven't used them extensively.

As far as it taking 1/2 second to get your drones out and its your own fault if you don't: ok.... I guess there are no falcons decloaking or black ops ships cynoing around where you fly. In my experience it is not unknown for people to get jammed/damped out before they realize they are under attack. And then there is the problem of being jammed/damped AFTER you have had your drones out and auto agressed: your now back to being without direct control of your drone's target.

Using guard/assist commands to try to get more control over what your drones are attacking is a handy trick in a fleet situation. But I think you will have to admit that trying to figure out which fleet member doesnt already have drones out of their own, is actually engaged by a target you would like your drones to attack, is withing drone control range, all while you are trying to fight with your own ship, is often a challenge.

In summary we both agree that drones, when viewed as a weapon system, are affected by and sometimes completely nulified by ewar. If you don't agree that the problem is as severe as I do thats fine, I'm not trying to make a federal case about it. I was talking to the guy who said drones are IMMUNE to ewar, and I think we can both agree that just isnt true.

I still think we are lacking a ranged drone boat, maybe increasing the carriers lock range to over 1,000 km would do the trick.