Missions & Complexes

I was lucky to experience the new "NPC AI" which basicaly makes drones usless on "harder" missions. You put them out and rats go after them right away. if there are around 8 frigates they will gang your drones and you cant do anything about it.
If you were used to tank the whole room and if necessary to do a quick kill on the scrambling frigate (just in case you wont be able to alt tab back to the game and warp out) ... well .. it was easy. Now you will loose your ship due to the fact that drones wont last 30 seconds to kill that scrambler (if there are 4+ of them .. you are doomed).
The only thing this change has made is that drones are irelevant and for things you used drones, you will need another pilot.

I'm wondering if we could see something like battlecruiser support in system bouncing back and forth between solo sites and ratting to take out frigs and cruisers. This might end up being the optimal arrangement.

Maybe interceptor then for fast warping between sites? The longer it would be on grid the more likely it would be to get a battlship tick or two.

Disagree. The HP on my EMP Large projectile ammo is pretty low too. Whenever it hits stuff it goes *poof*.

If you compare the isk/base(nonskilled)damage ratio of EMP L to berserker Is:
EMP L: 48 HP damage, sells at ~250 isk= 5.2 isk/HP damage
Berserker I: 48HPx1.3=62.4 HP damage, sells at ~75k isk= 1200 isk/damage

Lets assume your Berserkers are only hitting at 75% of the efficiency of their max base damage:
[1200 isk/damage -DRONE-]/[5.2 isk/damage]/[.75(drone efficiency penalty)]= ~300 (times drone must hit to have equal 'cost effectiveness' of standard projectile ammo)

300 drone damage cycles (assuming no modifiers)= ~20min of drone use.

In other words, if your T1 heavy drones can last more than 20 minutes in battle then they are paying off. If you are using T2 drones for missions and sites, this may not be possible any more. But a lot of T2 ammo just wasn't worth it against a lot of NPCs anyway.

Conceptually, we don't want to think of drones as 'consumable' because you think of them more like modules or little support ships. However they are your source of damage and most other damage sources are consumable, non-refundable, and/or non-renewable. I'm sure the increasingly self aware NPC drones and other bionically enhanced factions would appreciate your anthropomorphizing of their brethren, but you should think of drones more like limited use ammo, in my opinion.

The problem is, if they become too consumable and you burn through them too fast you can be SOL pretty quick, but also, lost of drone losses equals higher drone prices.

You might as well compare an Iteron V's cargo to that of a Viator without looking at the bonuses and fittings, and come to the conclusion the later one is useless.

Let's say a Mach let's say does some 900 dps ~2.7k volley every 3 seconds, 140 ammo used up at most a minute.
And a flight of Berserkers 450 dps, 1800 volley, every 4 seconds, 5 drones used on a drone ship.

And I'm still comparing apples to oranges and it's still meaningless.
*cough*
One has all the issues of drones, the other has none of it, and twice the dps above the ease of use?
So the ammo costs more over time if you take care of your drones?
Guess what!
You also make twice the isk from bounties!
Subtract the cost of ammo, and you still make much-much more a tick.
So an ISK investment into Berzerkers pays off after X mins compared to ammo.
What about the time I invest into farming PvE content, does it pay off there as well, compared to the Mach's ammo?
No.

I liked the starter joke though.

Shock horror, a missioner might take along a buddy in a destroyer.

Meanwhile, wormholers point and chuckle.

I'm going to look when I get home, but I feel like in my limited experience with drones that there could be better hotkey management , especially if you are going to have to juggle them more.

Or just T2 drones getting T2 resist profiles (or in fact just buffed overall, though it's the same result-ish, but leaving a resist "hole", exlosive for gallente, EM for Caldari would be still cool, not as much with Amarr doing laser damage but being explosive resist buffed, and the same the other way with minmatar),
along with better travel and no/less sig bloom on MWD, maybe immunity to (npc?) scram/web.

Of course, how can everyone be that stupid that only your magnificent intellect can see a solution.

1. With new NPC AI that destroyer would die very fast. So perhaps you need a logi to rep your dessy that kills NPC frigs. Everyone flies with 3 PCs, 6 clients and 5 displays anyway, right?

2. For all the whining, for was majority of carebears highsec L4 missions produce a rather modest amount of isk and dualboxing it (or having a friend along, like that ever ever happens in EVE) would destroy ISK/hr.