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Idea to improve drone ships that use sentry drones.
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monkfish2345
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#21 - 2013-03-15 16:23:21 UTC
Sinigr Shadowsong wrote:
monkfish2345 wrote:

- if drones could orbit outside of smartbombs you are make a item which it's main purpose is to counter drone obselete
- ewar drones should not be particularly effective, the 20 second lock break they can give is invaluable I don;t know what the situation is now, but 5 small ewar drones use to completely lock down ships in some fights.
- surviveability is only a major issue with PVE. but this goes back to the point of the aggressiveness of npc ai.
- drone target selection is poor, but should be managed by the player anyway, i'd prefer they went idea after each target.
- apart from t2 sentries the skill requirements for drones is actually relatively low, especially when you consider all of the supporting skills needed for effective guns of missiles.


- Smartboms also counter frigs. I don't see a lot of harm with using a special drone module (OTL) in valuable med-slot to protect your drones. Imagine that you could burn all your target's ammo with a smartbomb when it start to shoot you - it's the same for drone-based ships.
- There are other ewar drones beside ECM ones. ECM drones are frustratingly random but useful. I suggest their reworking or removing. Rest of ewar drones just plain terrible and should never be used.
- Drone survivability is a huge problem in PvP fro drone-oriented ships. Sentries are somewhat durable but they make you a sitting duck which is bearable only for carriers.
- Worst part of drone skills is memory as a primary stat.


- drone boats have a huge amount of room for ewar and utility. these can easily be used to help combat things like smartbombs
- I agree the other ewar drones are poor and probably shouldn't be in game. As i said before drone ships tend to be armor based hence have plenty of room for ewar if they want it already. for other ships these should rightfully be liited in their effectiveness, however probably not as much as they are now.
- there are plenty of ways you can work around drone surviveability, by pulling, repping, neuting, td's, ecm.
- you are not tied to your sentry drones.

you seem to be completely avoiding the benefit that drones give you, they allow you to separate your dmg projection and your ship positioning. missiles also have this at the expense of dmg.

sadly you cannot have your cake and eat it.

Rynnik
Evasion Gaming
The Ancients.
#22 - 2013-03-15 16:24:46 UTC
In priority the drone changes I would personally love to see would be:

Drone UI Overhaul >>> Drone Mechanics Adjustment (things like drone MWD overshoot etc.) > Drone re-balance (Amarr and non-ECM EWAR drones come to mind) > and once that is all done some Drone buffs provided fixing all those existing issues hasn’t made them OP (in-bay drone repair, over-heat-ability, sentry remote recall or whatever else)

And all that with a healthy re-evaluation done at each and every step along the way.

I am pretty sure CCP wouldn’t be adverse to that either given infinite time and resources, but with the current path they are taking I am at least confident that it will happen someday – just not sure when.
monkfish2345
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#23 - 2013-03-15 16:31:39 UTC
Rynnik wrote:
In priority the drone changes I would personally love to see would be:

Drone UI Overhaul >>> Drone Mechanics Adjustment (things like drone MWD overshoot etc.) > Drone re-balance (Amarr and non-ECM EWAR drones come to mind) > and once that is all done some Drone buffs provided fixing all those existing issues hasn’t made them OP (in-bay drone repair, over-heat-ability, sentry remote recall or whatever else)

And all that with a healthy re-evaluation done at each and every step along the way.

I am pretty sure CCP wouldn't be adverse to that either given infinite time and resources, but with the current path they are taking I am at least confident that it will happen someday – just not sure when.


I could quite happily get behind, this.

i'd say that any buffs made to drones would need to be fairly minor, with the introduction of the DDA they have already received a massive buff.
Mike Voidstar
Voidstar Free Flight Foundation
#24 - 2013-03-15 19:19:49 UTC
Just out of morbid curiosity...

What midslot items do you suggest already counter smartbombs?

The only counters to smartbombs I know might be Neuts to shut them off, guns to kill the offending ship, and reps to keep the drones healthy.


I am not claiming that drones are useless. They took a massive hit with the AI change for PvE, for PvP they pretty much have the issues they always had.


If you consider drones a secondary weapons system, such as smartbombs or many Ewar modules, then their skill requirements are stupid. If you consider them a primary weapons system, like turrets or missles, then it's not so bad, but they have major issues mostly stemming from survivability, especially in PvE. True, much of that is an AI problem, but the AI change is needed along with a whole host of other PvE centric upgrades that have been ignored for ages.

The drone AI problems are probably a UI thing. Even when set to aggressive they won't attack anything that does not start attacking you where they can see it. This means if you get ECM put on you before you launch drones, or have to recall them because they are being destroyed, they just sit there and watch you die. The other problem is they tend to not focus fire even when set to do so. These two items need looking into and adjusted. They also tend to have an amazing propensity for choosing the trigger to the next spawn wave in missions, but that's not really something I would see changed.


Survivability would be improved if they were given the HP to survive recall, and passive regen on all 3 bars, even if only while in the bay. Ideally, some balance between reducing sig and improving HP is probably easiest to balance, though making them like missles and only vunerable to smartbombs and defenders would be great too. I would Not think it a good idea to make them untargetable and then have them adjust their orbit based on improvments to their range from Omni Tracking Links.

It might also be cool if there was a module, perhaps that uses nanopaste, that would repair the armor and structure of drones in the bay, and drones left wrecks in space that could be scooped into the bay and repaired. Not very practical for PvP, but it would help offset the depredations of the rat AI.

As an aside, I think the damage augmentors should have been midslot items as well as the Navigation computers and Omni Tracking Links. Both overdrives and tracking enhancers are lowslot items that match the drone modules, DDA should have followed the same pattern. The drone damage rigs should be opened up to all drone types as well, not just sentries.
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