Missions & Complexes

Cross-posting this for much joy. :P

If you are interested in testing the NPC changes see this post for details: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2058105#post2058105

I wonder if any miners will test the 'roid rat AIs on duality or if they'll all be surprised come December 4th when thier drones start dieing in droves whilethey are AFK

I think the idea behind this change is great. I personally look forward to the additional challenge this will add to missions.

However while this will make afk mining and missioning much more difficult has anyone considered how much difficulty it will add to normal mission running and ratting game play?

I only ask because I know how important agro management is to an avid mission runner or ratter. If this change makes it impossible to manage agro it could be game breaking. I believe the mission runners and ratters will be hit as hard if not harder than the miners.

most belt rats already target drones, and most non afk miners target and destroy these frig rats long before they can even kill a drone. Resulting in little to no effect on ATK miners and a mild PITA for AFK miners.

It is the mission and null sec rats where this change will hit the hardest. These rats actually do damage unlike the little frigate rats in high sec belts.

There are many level 4 missions that can not be completed by a solo pilot without good agro management. A level 4 mission runner needs to rely on their drones to do a certain job. Namely killing the web/scram frigates. Will this make using drones in level 4 missions significantly more difficult? If so many lvl 4 mission runners will not be happy.

What about level 5 missions that require logistics support to be completed effectively? How can you protect your logi's if you can not control agro?

What about incursions? Will the primary tankers in incursion fleets no longer be able to keep agro off the logistics? If so this change may very well be game breaking.

I really hope CCP did not drop the ball on this one by not thinking in thru like they did with the unified inventory.

Will be interesting to see what this does to AFK miners: if they can no longer tank the rats with drones out this may cause a significant reduction in mineral resources in Eve which will initially be credited to 'bots being nerfed but the ore's added expense will make ships alot more expensive.
TBH if I could not AFK mine I would not mine at all. It would be no loss to me to others though: Idon't know

Did you test that on Duality? With what skill level drone durability?

Did a test on second room of Worlds Coll, Serpentis room.
Well....holy crap. Usual method was to take aggro and let drones kill webbing frigates.
Not gonna work any more, since frigates get a raging hardon for drones so they get webbed and killed in a short order.

Ok, lets try this, kill all BC and BS and then let drones kill frigs, anyway, went in with 25 light drones, aborted mission with 3 remaining.
Launch drones, primary a damaged frigate, wait for drones to shoot 1-2 salvos and recall, it takes 1 sec to get full shield and armor dmg on a drone (Durability L4, Navigationl L4 and so on, got pretty good drone skills on this char anyway.). So its a constant hassle to manage drones, and this was in orbit around my ship, 1.9-2km range.
Sending drones to attack anything farther is suicide..for drones.

AI for drones is as ******** as it gets (have no doubts CCP can make them even more stupid, they will probably say "challenge accepted" ), they kill the 1st frigate and then they ignore 4 still orbiting me and go to attack a 45km distant BS...?!?! Before they usually targeted frigates, then cruisers and upwards in ship size/class.
Now even if focus fire is checked, they decide that 1 shooting a BS is better then focusing fire on anything. Still managed to see 5 drones attacking 3 targets at the same time....focus fire my ass.

Kinda afraid to test a drone boat (rattler) since a (impending) drone massacre of 2012 is showing its colors.

I think I'll try this when I get home tonite.

Any chance bigger rats are in order for high sec belts? (Cruiser and BC sized)

Edit: didn't see how old this thread was, so tweaked slightly.

Why not use Sentries?

I've already had to plan 3 months reskilling from a Tengu into a Mach for my main in anticipation for the Heavy Missile changes. If the World's Collide story is any indication of what I have to look forward to on my Ishtar and Ishkur pilots, it looks like I need to spend another 3 months reskilling into something useful there too.

I know I should wait to see how the changes actually play out before I panic, but these kinds of drastic changes to gameplay really make me hate the nature of long skill queues for things I regret training later.

Duality is back open for testing. NPC AI is on it. Come test and give feedback! https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2099233#post2099233