EVE General Discussion

Mission runners are good for mission running, not so good for pvp?

Drones are used in almost all smaller engagements in New Eden, and unlike missioners, combat pilots use only things that work, instead of something a fellow NPC corpie found on Battleclinic.

Drones kill.

Drones are an interesting and versatile supplemental weapon system on a handful of Gallente and Amarr ships. On Gallente, they increase your operational range significantly, as you are mostly using blasters with short range. Drones are the main weapon of just a few ships in game, most of Gallente so-called drone boats do half of their total damage with drones.

Gallente is generally a race best suited for solo and small gang combat, and drone boats are very good in this area. High damage output, wide engagement envelope and versatility. Even tough drones can be destroyed, it is not trivial in case of HP-bonused ships, and your enemies are not shooting you when they shoot drones. Drones will continue working even when your ship is neuted dry, permajammed, damped and tackled immobile.

Because you need to train two weapon systems, and the primary attributes are different for turrets and drones, reaching the full potential of drone boats takes marginally more time than ships with a single weapon system.

Drones require micromanagement, and this adds yet another moving part to your combat controls, but I find it engaging and even emphasizing player skill a bit.



Another awesomely detailed comment, and naturally BS. I've used only drones in WHs for over a year.

I'm a drone specialist. And if I knew back then what I know now, I would never, ever, not in a billion years have trained drones! Ever!

This is not to say I would not have trained drones at all. No, they're practically mandatory as backup systems and many (most?) ships in EVE have some drone capability, however minor. But this is light and medium drones. I definitely would not have trained T2 heavies and T2 sentries and the rest. Eventually I would get even the heavies and sentries, there are ships that rely on them, but they would not have been a priority. In retrospect, it was a HUGE mistake for me to train them and I wish I could have taken it all back.

Let me paint you a quick picture if you decide to follow the life of a droner:

1. Drones can and will be destroyed. As a drone boat captain, bulk of your DPS, or at least half, will come from drones. When you face another ship, it'll kill your drones, probably using his own drones, which while unbonused still do enough damage to kill yours. And for him, drones will be a small percentage of his overall DPS, which he'll use to blow you up. And you cannot shoot off his turrets, or missile launchers. But he can take out your drones no problem. EDIT: Even in PVE you will lose drones sometimes. A surprise spawn, they web your heavy drone and pop it before it gets even 10km. Congrats, you just lost 500,000 ISK!

2. Drones are slow. They are by far the slowest weapon system in the game. All turrets do instant damage. Even when you fire at something 200km away, the damage happens instantly. Boom, Pop. Instant. Missiles are worse off, they fly to target. But drones are slower, especially if you want to do most damage with them (Gallente drones). And the bigger you go, the slower they are. The only exception is sentries, their damage is instant, but they don't move either, you have to babysit them from 2.5km away, or leave them to die.

3. Drones can't overheat. Consider a Catalyst, a Gallente destroyer. Seven turrets. Without overheating, it'll do, say 560 DPS with Null ammo. Now overheat the turrets, and you get 650 DPS. That's right, a 15% DPS increase. Can you do the same with drones? No, you cannot. Why? Your answer is as good as mine.

4. Drone UI is bad. Do you know how many buttons you have to push to LAUNCH drones? Let's see. Assume your drone window is open, otherwise add 1 click to open it. Left-click on drones in bay. Left-click group you want to launch. Right-click to get contextual menu. Left-click on launch drones. There, congrats. It took you 4 clicks to launch drones. Make that 5 clicks if your drone window wasn't open. Make that 6 clicks if you wanted to see drones inside the group before you launched them. And do you know how many clicks it takes to fire those 7 turrets on a Catalyst? One. Just one. EDIT: Maybe make it one less click, I think you can launch without selecting a group. But still, 3-4 clicks minimum. Compared to just 1 for other weapons.

5. Drone AI is bad. Not much to explain here. You tell them "Focus Fire", they say "Sir, yes, sir!" Then one goes for a target 2km away, two more for a target 20km away, and the remaining two go for a target 40km away. Yes, a three-way split. Very rare, but I've seen it. More often you get a two-way split, but it still means they would not break their targets' tanks, most likely.

If, after all this, you want drones as your primary weapon, you are a better, braver man than I.

Having said all that, there is perhaps some light at the end of the tunnel. Currently we have no drone boats in T1 frigates. That is going to change. We have no drone boats among T1 destroyers. This is going to change as well, it is rumored both Gallente and Amarr will get drone boat destroyers. How badly they will suck still remains to be seen, but at least there's a chance. In further review, some things about current boats might change as well. For example Vexor will apparently stay as is, but Myrmidon might bet more bandwidth and lose a gun. For better or worse.

Further light at the end of the tunnel is the possibility of new and better drone UI. That is, it will no longer take you 4-6 clicks to do what everyone else can do with a single click. They showed a mock-up of it at FanFest, and it was mentioned in recent CSM minutes. But it is one of those things that could happen by this winter's expansion. Or next year. Or never.

Bottom line, as a primarily drone user I'll tell you one thing - if I knew then what I know now, I would have trained turrets and been much happier right now, instead of trying to convince Devs in charge of ship rebalancing not to do horrible things and give Gallente ships bandwidth to release 4 drones, but give them only enough space to carry 6.

For PvE, drones are OK. Not good, not great, but OK. They're decent if you want to AFK run L4 missions in high sec. Get yourself a big fat Rattlesnake, tank the hell out of it, aggro the entire room, release drones. Come back in 20-30 mins, and room is clear. It's relatively easy and painless, and I PLEXed my account for a year from doing just that. For everything else? From my experience, it sucks. Plain and simple. There are a few exceptions, but as a general rule turrets are VASTLY superior as a primary weapon system. Drones are a support system at best. Nowhere near good enough to be called a primary - too flawed, too fragile, too prone to AI screwups, slow due to bad UI, etc.

That's my 0.01 ISK.

These are the posts I was looking for. Thanks for helping to refine my game plan a bit

Read up on drones, make your own mind up.

As someone who is maxed drones and uses them very effectively in combat, you have to see beyond the spewing of noobs.

Drone rock in pvp, and pve, but are not the endall, and nor should they be.

But having said that, breaking drakes shield tanks with neuts, having falcon in your pocket (ecm), having effective hot keys for drone commands, ie: using drones as they should be, as an integral part of the ship setup you are going to use.

I cannot tell you how many times I have been threatened with cheating, when it was the drones I was using that gave me the advantage.

People say drones suck. Those people don't know how to play.

And who am I to say that? Just one of the proud few 2003 gallant players who have stuck with drones since the beginning.

ECM drones in pvp can save not only your ship but someone else's too, well worth training. Chances are that you'll lose a lot of drones in pvp, either leaving them behind when you bug out or having them shot out from under you. If they're shooting your drones, they aren't shooting you.

More important things to train at 2 months I would think. Would max out drones (the lvl 1 skill) so you can use 5 and get some drone support skills to like 3 but please don't waste months on them at this point. You have tons of different skills to train that will add more benefit and get you into bigger ships.

Very strong pve but just a nice bonus pvp.

Your original comment holds zero value without any justifications.

And no.

Dear Tippia, please be kind enough to ignore any post I may make.

Drones are like a swarm of kids-soldiers. They can be great and devastating but mostly the will play around and do what they see fit.

Only the Ishtar and Gila have drones as "primary weapon", and that means about 2/3 of total dps. Maybe the Rattler as well? Not sure, anyway drones can't be considered a primary weapon system and you should tailor your training to accommodate both drone and turret/launcher skills.

Gallente is not supposed to be the drone race, we just have more and better options for using drones- Gallente is the brawler race.