Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The most annoying thing about sentry drones is having to travel back and pick them up and in a game where mobility is king whilst they are good i can't think of a single situation where they are equal or better than any other weapon system, i think sentry drones should orbit your ship and you should be able to put them on a button like turrets, in fact i'd like all drones to be able to be put on a button like turrets or missiles so i can easily make a single drone attack a single target, if orbiting sentry drones is too much at least make it simple to make a single drone target a certain target as it would promote activity for drone users beyond watching your guns dying and having to constantly recall them, make it so!

Although I agree the entirety of Drones needs some lovin from CCP (and they agree also) Sentry Drones are pretty much in line with what they actually are, that is they are basically Railguns/Artillery deployed in space. Now from the stand point of the game, Sentry Drones are no different than Station/POS Batteries, they function the same. The only part of them that is actually a "Drone" is the A.I. built into the Gun that allows them to defend your ship and attack targets on their own (although like any Drone they're stupid and don't concentrate fire).

I'm still against the idea of allowing Sentries to return to your ship from farther away than say 5km but if CCP is to implement this it should be of the idea that they cannot fire while returning to ship, and can only be deployed next to the ship's current location. So it's drop em where you are, have them return to bay not firing the entire time and "dock up" from w/e distance (no faster than Heavies speed), say the max Drone Control range of that particular ship, including DLA's.

As for the damage performance compared to other weapon systems this is a mixed bag. If you compare them properly, that is Sentry Drones versus Railguns/Artillery then they do have the capability to FAR out DPS (not alpha) said guns. They also have better tracking that Railguns/Artillery and therefore can apply that DPS faster. Although, when Drones are deployed from True Drone Boats like the Dominix, Vexor, Ishtar, etc, the damage should be increased to be more in line with the primary weapon systems of non-Drone boats. If you can push out 1000 DPS (Guns/Missiles) + 250 DPS (Drones) in a non-Drone ship then it should be 1000 DPS (Drones) + 250 DPS (Guns/Missiles) in True Drone Boats. At current we are limited to 800/825 DPS max for Drones in a True Drone Boat, which is low. Yes this means removing even more Turret hardpoints, but that's in line with these ships.

However CCP would have to be careful in the balancing if they increased the Primary Drone ship bonus of +10% dmg/HP per lvl to say +15% because that would make Cruiser type ships (Vexor/Ishtar/Gila/etc) do so damn much DPS they'd be OP in comparison to other Cruiser sized ships. So the increase would almost have to only effect BS class Drone ships.

Because drones aren't ammo, they're drones(destructable guns with infinite ammo, if you insist on an analogy). The limit is there for balancing reasons and is extremely unlikely to be changed to do what you ask for, since it would throw the current balance right out the window.

It isn't though because if in an emergency i have to gtfo i leave behind either 30-40% of my frigate ammo or 80% of my cruiser and up ammo and i have to fly to a station to swap what is in my cargo hold into my drone bay. People in other ships dont have to fly to a station to reload their guns and you cant shoot a missile launcher.