EVE General Discussion

REDUCE signature radius of ALL drones, like by alot. Here's why.

Let's first look at the current drone signature radius in game.
Light drones: 25 m3
Medium drones: 50 m3
Heavy drones: 100 m3

Now lets take a look at the smallest eve pilotable ship, the shuttle, with a signature radius of 25 m3. Yet the size of the shuttle is 5000 m3, and the size of a light drone is 5 m3. Who decided that the signature radius of a drone that is 1/1000th the volume of a shuttle should have the exact same signature radius? This makes no logical sense whatsoever.

This also makes no sense in that a size of 5 m3 means that your average light drone is approximately 1.7 meters long (1.7x1.7x1.7 = ~ 5 m3). How is it that a machine 1.7 meters long has the same signature radius of a ship that is approximately 16-20 meters long? I also have difficulty understanding how a heavy drone, with size of 25 m3, has sig. radius larger than a destroyer.

The new AI also makes no sense given alot of amarr ships are now drone ships, making a whole new fleet of ships very difficult to use.

Reducing drone signature radius could be done quite easily with a single patch and would let drones survive much longer while under attack instead of being instapopped as they are now. If we go comparatively by length, perhaps reducing it by 1/4, or even 1/3 would help. Lets say take sig. radius of light drone down to 8-10 m3, medium to 15, and heavy to 25-30. Or reduce sig. radius of, for example, your light drones to the same sig. of your average npc spider drone, which is far more realistic.

The only downside would be that if applied evenly to npc's and player ships, regular npc light drones would be alot harder to take down, although with multiple examples, CCP doesnt appear to apply the same rules of warfare to npc's as with players anyway (see NPC's jamming from 150km away). However, for most ships, lets face it, you were using a fleet of your own drones to kill spider drones anyway before the update. But the current instapop issue with current drones is simply not acceptable, IMO, and needs to be resolved.

Heavy drones would still have alot of issues given the amount of time it takes them to travel back once under attack, so maybe also increase their hp's or speed or both. All of these could still be done with a single patch. The result would still be imperfect and would likely still require drone recalls but it would be better than what we have now and be alot more realistic.

For missioners, another thought would be since most ships have a spare upper slot, maybe fill that with a remote rep mod for medium and heavy drone users since now you aren't getting instapopped. Other ideas that have been mentioned are an improved UI that informs you quickly when your drones are under attack, although that would take more work and time. Thoughts?

Reading the post, they don't really appear to be talking about reducing signature radius, which is the big problem. I hope they do fix the problem, but I am just offering a possible solution which might be the easiest fix of them all.

Reducing drone sig would obviously help using them in PVP as well, it's far too easy to kill drones as they are.

Looking after isn't really related to the fact they are too fast to lock, and too easy to pop.

yea, the drones are fine, idk why some people can't adapt to certain things, hell i'd rather the rats didn't switch targets at all (so I could use my 2nd BS as a DPS machine instead of having to tank it too) but they do, you must adapt your play style around this, you must tank 2 ships, no one feels sorry for me. I don't feel sorry for you. I've explained this many times on these forums: because using drones effectively has changed, the strategy has changed, yet players refuse to adapt to it..

"oh look, some frigs just entered my drone command control range, GO GO GO!"

a short time later

"WTF!? only 3 of my poor hammerheads even made it to the target?"

an even shorter time later

"i'll just head over to the eve forums, shitpost looks rational and thought out! hit post... annnnnd that oughta do it"

or you could just wait until the frigs are on you... gee it might be easier to pull back your drones if they're 5000m away instead of 60km dontcha think? lather rinse and repeat until the frigs are toast, and then feel free to send your drones anywhere, the BS' won't hit em.

I feel like my method, which I used in RL to keep my forum trolling to topics with more potential lolz, works better than yours.

EAFs are fun. I have a Kitsune fit which applies 28 jam strength to any race unheated from 60km - I really don't get why everyone says they're bad. ECM tank is second only to station tank.

like i already said CCP totally screwed drones
they don't know what to do with them :(

signature radius of destroyers , speed of BS , dps of frigate , survability of shuttle ...


but they say .. work as intended...

…if by “ship-sized" you mean they are half as small as the ships they're going after. If they get killed in missions, it's less due to signature and more due to their propensity for MWDing in a straight line towards the ships in the field.

The fact of the matter is that it's still easy to keep your drones alive. Just manage them properly and keep the aggro off of them.

Oh, and OP, a shuttle does not take up 5k m³.

No, by ship-sized I mean heavy drones are as big as cruisers to the sensors and tracking formula, and yes, MWD bloom is relevant and only emphasizes this.

I don't run missions so wouldn't know about them.

…in other words, less than half the ships they're going after. It's not particularly difficult to imagine that a remote-controlled (and heavily constrained in terms of local and independent decision-making capabilities, lets they go rogue) combat platform would emit a massive amount of transmission signals, thus making them easier to pick-up than if they were self-contained ships. They are engines, hot guns, a reactor, a computer, an active sensor array and an active transmitter in a bear-bones chassis. No wonder they light up the sky…

Not really. It's the zero transversal that screw them up — MWD bloom (and indeed signature radius as a whole) becomes pretty much irrelevant at that point.