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As it has been said may times previously, releasing a 'broken AI' just screams another Incarna. I fore see bad things soon in EVE's future.
NPC AI touches almost every aspect of EVE, this is even bigger than Trinity.

Why Devs continue to do stupid things baffles me. I would think they learned their lesson with Incarna...

I have seen many changes come in on EVE and heard "EVE is dieing" many times, but when I stepped back and look at the changes as a whole I was "No it's not"
Now tho, I believe this just might kill EVE, not outright kill it but put it on the path to the servers going dark.

I have been debating all summer whether to keep playing or let my accounts run out and with this one change I feel EVE will no longer be fun for me.
I don't know if I'll be back but before anyone asks, no, you cant have my stuff.

I was going to say Myrm, sincs that's also usable in PvE somewhat, as a preemtive strike against a followup question, but ok, you win.
The reason I don't mind my SP in drones is because of those two sexy beasts.
...
Not that I'll fly any of them soon, sticking to destroyers or battlecruisers for PvP like I have before.

Well, first off, EVE doesn't really have PvE content. Missions are just empty rooms with large groups, and often spawns based on triggers, which you cannot identify at a glance. This is, to put it mildly, idiotic. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but I think everyone realizes this on some level. For a newbie to have to go to a third party site to find out what the aggro chain for the groups is like, and to identify the triggers just so he doesn't die in a fire trying to do the mission is dumb. It's not content, it's fodder. Or "trash mobs" as they are referred to in other MMOs.

So when it comes to rewriting PvE content in EVE, there's A) no actual content to rewrite, and B) what there is, definitely should be scrapped and re-done from the ground up. It was antiquated back in 2003. It is laughable now.

Consider PvE in just about any other MMO out there. In just about all of them, in simple solo PvE, in 1v1, 1v2 or 1v3 scenario if you screw up a few times too often, you can and will die. And 1v5 or higher is certain death, unless you "outlevel" the content heavily (think battleship doing L1s). And while some MMOs are more forgiving than others, or punish you less for dying, the basic principle is there. From WoW to Darkfall (full loot FFA PvP MMO), PvE can and will get you killed. In EVE, beyond a certain point, that is not so. Within 5-6 months of training, depending what you train, you can have a ship that will tank the DPS of the entire room. As in, it will be mathematically impossible for you to die, because your ship's defenses outmatch the total incoming DPS. Case in point - ludicrously overtanked Rattlesnake.

Conversely, before that point is reached (this is also the area where EVE loses most of its new players, the first 0-6 months), it is all too easy to get popped in a mission, simply because of dumb design. There's some missions where enemy begins to spawn as soon as you accept it. If you have to warp out, or simply have to delay doing the mission for 30 minutes, you can't do it at all as a newbie, the amount of DPS you will face will splatter you all over the skybox. So you have to read every mission, work hard to identify the trigger (which is not always easy, as often there's 3 identical, identically named ships in a small group, and any one can be a trigger), and still screw up and die. Or something weird happens, like drone aggro from 100+ km away that results in room aggro you are not prepared for.

Bottom line PvE in EVE is abysmal. Arguably one of the worst I've seen in an MMO in the past decade. What is should be, is individual or very small group combat, with no triggers. If the mission must have waves, they should only come after the last ship is killed, regardless of what ship it was. Or, trigger should be immediately and easily identifiable, by name or rank or ship type or some other means. The AI should fight better, but not unfairly (never run out of cap). In other words, when it comes to PvE, it should be quality over quantity. Currently, it's a wave of 30 ships (quantity) with near-zero quality.

BUT, bottom line in all of this, unless CCP is ready to commit to all of these changes and work on them, right now, they shouldn't be fiddling with the AI in the first place.

People can and do already spend quite a bit of training time which can be used on PvE already. Capital ship escalations in WH sites come to mind there. The use of logistics ships in high end DED sites is another example. The only difference is that the preparation occurs offline for the most part.

PvE as punishment is a horrendous mechanic. End of story. There is absolutely no reason it should be designed with the intention of being bad and especially not punitive. The excitement of PvP coming from loss doesn't require bad PvE to sting. Loss is loss regardless of how you recoup it.

Loss is meaningful because it's actual loss. Comparing loss here to WoW doesn't really work either. In WoW you have degradation that is a fraction of the cost to replace than the gear being used. Here you have total loss of the ship and rigs and partial loss of fitted mods and cargo, all of which may be lost to you personally if you fail to recover it.

In WoW the basic gameplay earns you well above what you need to repair, as such no one ever does PvE to recoup something. Here, people actually do have things they must do to recoup loss, because things are lost in ways that don't allow players to near instantaneously get them back to where they were and beyond.

Those facts aside if a person enjoys how they earn isk by your logic they cannot have meaningful loss inflicted on them. They are playing submarine WoW in space already.

It's punitive to begin with because it takes something you had and removes it from you and, should you want/need it back causes you to consume resources that could have gone to progress in other areas. The act you use to earn and/or recoup doesn't need to be further punitive by being just plain bad.

The problem with that "CURRENTLY" is, that it's misleading.
Creates a (quite possibly false) hope that maybe, at some point in the hopefully not that far future, CCP will get off their collective... and fix drones to work as a primary weapon system.
Till then, us drone users need to live with the new AI and who knows what else until then, and more importantly, the way drones work (and at times don't).

Would need a total overhaul for them, while not making them TOO good in PvP.
Until then, we will continue to have ships like the Algos, Vexor, Domi, that have a drone and a hardpoint damage bonus. Yes, they are drone boats, no you still need full gunnery skills to get the most dps out of them.

In fact, lately I'm somewhat questioning how drones as a primary weapon system would work.

One limitation of theirs is that they can be shot down. Increased drone bays would help, but for PvP, you could stuff it full of ECM drones (that are currently "balanced" by the fact that they are vulnerable), and we know how that would end up.

They can be shot at, at which point you can either recall them, repair them, or let them die and unleash a new one. Recalling is viable if they are nearby. Repairing is viable only if they are nearby (or you are in a carrier) but you need to target them. Letting them die costs quite a bit. If there was a drone module that can repair them at longer ranges, without the need of locking first and thus taking up valuable (re)locking time and max target count? Well, for one it would scream of being just a band-aid instead of a well thought out gamedesign for me (why would drones work differently? Why can't it rep frigates?). A module that repairs drones (and ALL of them at the same time) while they are in the drone bay would make somewhat more sense, but then we have the recall them difficulty. Which ain't that bad come to think of it, as only drone boats have the luxury of fielding several flights, and sacrifice a module and cap for this, but still, all those travel times would still hurt dps, and someone will still find a way to exploit it in PvP.

Could still rant on travel time, how some frigs cannot be shot down with anything but a sentry at range, or how in weird cases the drone with worse tracking has a better time against a frigate, or how according to some, in some cases, the best defence against a drone swarm in a frig is to STAND STILL, as thus their orbiting will be the same all the time, and won't have a part where it orbits you the same way you fly, creating a paralel flightpath resulting in minimal transversal...

Drones are drones, not pilots. The combat mechanics (such as the transversal, optimal, ect) are meant to be taken advantage of by a human player, to make the AI be able to mimic it makes either for an "autopilot mode" (which would be bad), or the current "dumb pilot" which is natural, but inefficient.

End of Rant (part one?)

I agree with parts of your post, and did not see it as a rant. ;)

The drones are drones part at the end though I don't really agree with that much. Players do not take any advantage of drones AI in regards to transversal, etc, other than to just 'go fast'. The game's basic tenant on weapons seems to be, the smaller the weapon, the faster the tracking. So in particular with regards to light drones (but all drones in general need a tracking buff imho), tracking should never be much of an issue.

Drones being able to be shot down. They should, agreed. Although it should be harder than it currently is, and with bonused Hulls, they should be MUCH harder to kill however, either be by tanking the damage or harder to target / hit. Missiles can be shot down / smart bombed (granted, the current anti-missile system is not working very well), turrets can be TD'd, Damped, Optimal'd. It only makes sense. (I remember a post where someone recommended giving missiles and drones reduced damage and / or ability to 'dodge' AOE damage somewhere. This would make them not quite so instantly and completely useless anytime a SB was in the area).

I saw an idea by another player posted a while back in a thread, which I will plagiarize here: They brought up the idea (they wanted it specifically for drone boats however) of an AI toggle. When you turned it on, any drone that got through shields into armor would return to your ship, and if you have another drone of the same type, it would launch once the damage one returned. This was an interesting idea and way of dealing with having to micromanage 5 drones on top of your weapon systems, and other things you would be spamming during pvp. It would not guarantee you don't lose drones, but it would help immensely, and also makes decent AI sense.

Your repairing drone bay is another great idea, I like that. No other weapon system (other than overheating) needs repairs, and this would put drones on par with that issue.

Allowing overheating of drone modules, or some way to OH drones themselves would be beneficial (maybe give them more damage, but they lose the ability to be recalled, and take minor damage over time while being overheated).

Travel time.... ALL drones need a massive travel time buff. They need in-combat speed bonus as well, but travel time is currently brutal. They need to be at least 25% faster, if not more. I was in awe of how long it took my heavy drones to reach a target 60k out the first time I used them, never mind the return trip.

There is no doubt that drones need a heavy overhaul of some type. In performance, survivability, speed, AI, and UI.

Algos, Vexor, Domi, Ishtar, Myrm, Dragoon, Curse, Pilgrim, Arbitrator, Tristan, Prophecy (soon), and maybe a couple of others that I missed. If they keep increasing the ships that are drone bonused, they need to make plans on supporting these ships, and soon.

In the dev blog about upcoming changes:
http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=73530

They did say the following,

"Dominix: still remains a popular ship. It is fairly good, except for the drone mechanics themselves, which are terribly outdated. While we are not certain when this can be tackled, it definitely has high priority on our to-do list."

I also saw another comment about it somewhere. They have not always delivered in the way that I have been happiest, and they definitely are not always quick about it, but they do eventually get to things. I am staying hopeful, and trying to remain optimistic. ;)

~Z

Rant thing was me beeing sleepy, edited out.
So basically you agree that drones as a primary weaponsystem is not ideal?
Dominix is viable because it has fitting options and damage bonus to make it a beast regardless..
The rest of the droneboats can usually be countered by more popular ships of similar class and price..
So the reason for them not beeing the most popular remains..

This really does not relate in any way to the central point..
That the AI change is useless at best, and breaks more than it fixes or brings to the game..

Hence the sleepy bit.
But you are making sense tho, allso I love the elves in space part touche!

What has the world become to!?