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I am entertained by your willingness to go to an EverQuest® or WOW® aggro management system. I laughed so hard at how you think aggro mechanics makes things HARDER. EVE is not a hard game at all to master other than keeping up with constant needless changes, I had played harder MUDS. In fact aggro mechanics are very predictable and boring.
There will never be an AI that will make PVE equal to PVP, never in this lifetime at least. I thought we were suppose to be doing PVP not PVE if that was the push, but as mentioned some ninja and pirate work will go down with this too.

Sure lets go to an agrro management system so we can sit around for hours looking for a tank or a healer (repper) like we did 15 years ago. So if your tired of sitting on a gate, listening to your FC, or a rage from your corp about how you don't spend ever waking hour serving them, you can't even escape to high-sec or solo PVP because you now have to have a group to do anything.
Its a free country here but only the way "we want you to live it" and this sandbox is slowly becoming "its a sandbox, but your going to play it how we want you to".

Another ISK nerf.

Apparently some posters post before thinking.
They 'think' that it's some nerf ( deserved or not ) to hisec missioning making them harder to farm.

What are the most popular ships for L4 missions?
- Caldari Missile Boats ( Drake, Tengu, CNR and SNI )
- Pirate Battleships ( Machariel and Nightmare )
- Marauders
- Dominix ( Sentries + Rails )
- Rattlesnake ( Sentries + Cruise )
- AFK Dominix ( Sentries + remote reps )

Will those AI changes influence the most popular boats used for missioning?
No. Nothing will change here.

Missile Boats - unaffected
Pirate Battleships - unaffected
Marauders - unaffected
Sentry Dominix - unaffected
Sentry Rattlesnake - unaffected
AFK Dominix - probably unaffected ( depends on how many rats can target your drones at the same time )

What will it affect :
- pvp in pve environment ( hunting ratters and plexers, makes bombers ( and probably recons ) useless for this kind of pvp )
- mobile drone boats ( if your drones can be webbed then it will make those ships practically useless in pve, you will be forced to use only sentries )
- nullsec group plexing ( high end DEDs, we all know nullsec needs a nerf in that area )

It appears that you are labouring under the mistaken impression that Dominix mission runners do not use Hammers, Hobs and Ogres.

If there are suggestion i would make, a custom AI rule template for each and every mission would be great, so as to allow for individual mission tweaking.
If that is not possible (I can guess that it will take a LOT of work) is to make a sort of 'AI Sub-Level Difficulty' for each group of missions.
Mission Agent-given 'Combat' missions - NPC aggression profiles

Level 1's are left either untouched or have far lower chances of NPCs switching targets.

Apply these to level 2 and higher missions: (adjust percentages as appropriate for other things such as DED Complex Threat Levels, anoms, etc.)
60-70% priority in targeting player ships that first appear, as well as any that directly shoot, damage or any EWAR used on them
REPEAT ABOVE for any ship that appears afterward
15-25% will target anyone else on field - limit this as stated below
5-20% will target any drones


In addition, the aggression percentages must be based on whether the ships in question have offensive modules or not. Obviously, the player ships that are fully packed with guns get highest aggression priority.

There's also the issue with logistics ships suddenly getting yellowboxed by every other rat - a special aggression priority monitor should be put for ships with remote repper mods and repper drones alike, allowing for less rats than what would go after a ship fitted for dealing damage - and optimally, they also get damaged though not as much as offense-armed ships.
The goal is to make flying logistics more than just fly in and rep fleet members - has to be with the addition of flying transversal, running hardeners and reppers(or broadcasting for reps), and not taking too much damage in a short period of time that they have to warp out every minute. Yes, there are players multiboxing two alts, and one of them flies a barebones-just-got-there logistics ship - and ideally, what one would want is to make it challenging as to pay attention to what you are doing, but not make it useless to even fly a logistics ship in the first place - at least on intermediate difficulty levels - which is usually some L3s and most L4s.
(if you are a bittervet, have more than 15 million skillpoints or just hate the new players, or players working for their ISK (to PLEX their accounts) the way they want to AND actively doing so, or players not adhering to the playstyle you are trying to impose on them in the sandbox, don't waste your time making a negative, nonconstructive reply to this, as your post will be ignored)
Also, optimally, NPCs should be looking to find a target of the same size as they are, but with variance. This comes into play when there is more than one ship doing the mission. And yes, unwelcome guests get to be primaried by rats - they deserve it, both for being uninvited and for barging in hoping to make a quick killmail or grab some other player's hard earned lootdrops. But of course it shouldn't be all of them - it be best to keep a ratio of number of rats per additional player on grid, with an equal spread of ships across but modified for the incoming player's ship class (repeating the finding something their own size part here).

Ideally, L1 should be good for introduction to missioning without the complications, L2 and L3 are more of adding progressive strategies and ways of adapting to increased difficulty, and a few L3s and most L4s are either a challenge to solo or have to be done with a friend or two to complete them efficiently, or to at least not lose their ship in the process.
Same thing with other NPC-based combat activities.


I also agree with a revamp to the drone UI - can always add a (Launch Drone Group>[dropdown list of drone groups]) to the context menu as well as making the drone launch hotkey assignable to launching a prespecified drone group.


One of the problems I myself have had to deal with in the past 5 months or so have had to do with mission difficulty as well as ship performance-related skill levels needed to do higher level missions than what i could do solo. Part of it was having to deal with the difficulty of getting better npc corp standings boosts with lower level missions i can barely solo without losing a ship to rats - and have thus adapted with an alt squadron.

But we all know not everyone has the capability to fund said squad and thus have to either wait a month or so skilling up tank, gunnery etc. if they hope to have a ghost of a chance, ask a friend or two (none here where i am) or perhaps a corp member - most players are either antisocial, embarrassed or otherwise don't like the idea of having to either split mission rewards or owe a favor to someone else just to complete a Blockade they lose a ship to every time - this applies to NPC corporations only though, but that is where the majority of new, casual or otherwise solo kind of players are.

you better do dronreg balance.

Do not spoil the hard life and so those who like drones.

I'd like to add in here that loot drops in the DED 10/10 plexes aren't always that great and sometimes only result in rat bounties and an overseer's tag, <200M.

That barely covers the cost of a well-fit logistics ship and the pod piloting it should either or both be lost.

Split that ~200M, say, 3 ways and it isn't worth the time and risk to pimped ships to run the complex.

As I have written before, the rewards from these ultimate, end-game complexes need to be consistently better should a NPC AI improvement be implemented.

i know this is an improvement, but i do love clocking lvl4's in two domi's.

qft.

This change must be made very carefully:
- Ninja salvaging oder harassment of missionrunners should still be possible.
- 0.0 complexes should still be doable without everyone having to be able to tank 3k dps.
- FW missions should still be doable in frig-sized ships, anything else is just not valid when you have to do your PvE in lowsec in a beacon everyone can see.


edit: Drones are hella annoying to use in PvE even now. Either they die in a fire whenever a respawn comes in or you have to stand around and babysit your sentrys when that Machariel/Tengu can approach the next gate at the same time without losing damage. Don't make this even worse.

I must say, I'm a bit confused about all these “onoz, drone boat!” complaints.

Drones can be (and are being) used just fine against the new AI — it's just a different type of aggro management than before. Drones are employed in w-space and in incursions as we speak and they're doing fine.

Also, why on earth would anyone ever use heavies (except maybe 'zerkers) in missions? They are useless as it is and this change does not affect that in any way whatsoever. Hell, even medium drones are often quite unnecessary, so the only (slight) worry is light drones to kill off ewar frigates, but even then, they can be kept alive by the aforementioned aggro management.

Yes, people, you will have to learn one new tactic. It is not the end of the world, nor is it the end of your drone ships.
They did that ages ago (and even then, tests had shown that it wasn't as broken as people thought it was).