Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I'm just wondering if anyone who has more technical knowledge than I might be able to help answer why this seemingly very simple thing has not been added yet?

I would also like to bring up the fact that I think it's extremely unprofessional of EvE's developers to increase the difficulty in managing drones (new drone aggro ai) without first fixing this glaring hole in the "Shortcuts" menu... not to mention simple things as being able to see the drone's health while it is in the hold... I remember trying the trial for EvE many moons ago and I can not fathom how a triple A title like this let's such a fundamental thing do under the radar for so long.

This isn't just a cosmetic little thing, this is one whole weapon system that requires awkward wrangling to function properly.

Not to mention that I have every single one of my EvE functions hotkeyed. I love hotkeys. I live and die by them. Of course, I have to always make an exception every single time I want to launch my drones. I have to not only right click in a small centimeter wide line, I then have to move my mouse downwards and click on another small centimeter wide line to do what? Launch some drones?

EvE's developers should be ashamed! I'm not saying they are evil or bad people, just that this is such a fundamental thing... and it really kills me that EvE is the MMO that provides so many functions as compared to other MMO's that it seems silly that it cannot fix this one thing.

Well it's more of a question to the "General" EvE public than it is a suggestion... imho

But if the mods decide you're right, then so be it.

I don't think it would be too complicated, I mean the interface already allows for you to create disparate "groups" for drones... but I get your point.

Still, if EvE can program incursions/wormholes/industry/practically the rest of the whole game...

You'd think they'd be able to figure out how to hotkey "Launch Drone Group 1" or something to that effect?

Sigh... I guess I'm just overly sensitive? I sometimes think I might have OCD because it really bothers me that I have everything hotkeyed (shift = ab/mwd; space = turret group; R and F activate my defensive modules; QWEASD are the default eve navigation commands, ZXC = drone engage,return/orbit,return/bay; etc...)

The ONLY function I am forced to awkwardly "Right click; move mouse down, right click again" to activate is Launch drones.

Fine, but then for some reason the devs decided to make you recall your drones a LOT because of new AI aggression.

Doesn't that seem silly? Now I am fighting the interface, instead of enemy ships... :(

I don't buy this argument, though...

Simply put, there already is a "Launch Drones" button... It's just not "hotkeyable"...which is really what drives me crazy. It's like it's right there in front of my face taunting me... "haha, I am here, and I am a clickable button, but you shall never ever hotkey me! Muhahaha!"

I think most people just want CCP to let us hotkey that same button you click in that dropdown menu. I could be wrong.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I also think this is made worse by the fact that CCP enhanced anti-drone aggression by NPC's... Why did they do this before fixing drone usability? I can't even see which of my drones in my hold is damaged and which one is "fresh" so I can release the good ones!

DOuble EDIT: I also am not sure why you said "not the best attitude"? What is the best attitude? Are human beings not allowed to express frustration from time to time?

…and the reason is that, like he said, it isn't “a launch drones button” — it's a context-sensivite option for individual drones and drone groups, which will vary with the ship and fittings. So depending on how you're set up, it could be a couple of hundred launch drone buttons, with different availabilities depending on the ship you're in. So if handled that way, you'd have to remap every time you changed ship, and scroll through however many groups you've defined every time, which would get tedious very quickly.

So the launch drones hotkey doesn't exist for much the same reason as the research blueprint hotkey doesn't exist.

Going by the UI concept images shown last year, though, they're working on being able to drag groups onto the HUD and assign them that way.

Because the “I haven't thought through any use cases beyond the most trivial one, so it must be simple to do” attitude is a rather bad one.

Well I can see your point... I just hope they stop dragging their feet on this! It really is one of those things that a newbie player will see and go, "Why the heck didn't they put this in?" I know it was one of the first questions I was asking. Of course, EvE is awesome enough that I'm willing to look past this.

I really do think that idea about dragging groups onto the hud (i'm guessing like weapon groups, etc?) would be a great way to make this work...

Even still, you gotta admit it's kind of mean to not fix the UI first and then buffing anti-drone aggression... Seems almost like a troll attempt!

It would be trivial to agree that drones in a certain group, say "Quicklaunch", would automagically be launched if you hit SHIFT-F, just as an example. Coding for that would be simple.

…and above all, you were pretty clear about not having looked at the problem since, no, there is no such button, and since it means you are just assuming things will be simple because you haven't understood them. Why this is has already been explained.

Again, your not being familiar with any other use case than the most trivial one does not make the problem simple. Quite the opposite.

You mention your OCD, and how you have (everything) hotkeyed, but yet you neglect to bring up an outstanding issue, that is far more needy of a hotkey: Open (or loot) selected target container, or preferably, open all containers within range. If you've ever salvaged a mission site, anomaly, or anything similar in your time in eve, then you know the pain of select container, open container, select container, open container, select container, open container. loot. loot. loot. loot. loot. loot. loot. Etc. On and on and on. 50+ times for one site sometimes a little less sometimes more.

However, considering there is a "features and ideas discussion" subforum, and considering this is "Discussion of an idea", it VERY obviously belongs there.

Edit: As a final note, I -would- like to have a hotkey option to launch drone groups (and open/loot cans), but I can see the hurdles involved with hotkeys to open different groups of drones, making the game differentiate between them could be quite challenging.

If the planned changes to the UI re drones go ahead then the drone window will probably be a thing of the past in the near future. I couldn't be bothered to find the original video showing the mock up, but managed to find an image from an old thread which is actually not to disimilar from the one showcased.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v677/zorbuz/EVE/EVE_DroneUI_v3.png