Player Features and Ideas Discussion

comes in two flavors, tarctor drone I / tractor drone II
OBJECTIVE
To consoldate wreckage to a single point, without the use of a tractor beam

skills requirement,
Tractor Drone 1

Tractor Drone Operation level 1
Salvage Drone Operation lvl 4
Drones level 4

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Tractor Drone 2

Tractor Drone Specialist 1
Tractor Drone Operation level 5
Salvage Drone operation lvl 4
Drones level 4

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NEW SKILLS
Tractor Drone Operation
(Allows the use of tractor drones, and improve tractor drones speed while tractoring loot by 10% per level)

Tractor Drone Specialization
(allows the use of tech 2 tractor drones, imrpoves a tractor dornes base speed by 10% while NOT tractoring a wreck)

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THE DRONES
Tractor Drone 1

Small: 5 m3 in size, 5 MB/second bandwidth use.
Speed: 400 m/s without tractor active -- 200 m/s while tractor beam is active
Tractor Range: 1000 m
Tractor beam range 500m
Limitations-
Tractor drones are able to be ordered to tractor everything within drone control range, similer to a salvage drone, however they will only tractor, personnal, fleet and corperation owned wrecks, they will not, and cannot tractor abandoned or non owned wrecks, nor can they tractor any wreck within 2500 m range of any player controled ships. when auto tractoring, they will always select the closest wreck outside of 2500 meters, and will tractor that wreck to within 1000m of the drone owner, they will stop tracktoring and go and select a different target, Tractor drones one CAN ONLY tractor medium and small wrecks.

Tractor Drone 2
Small: 10 m3 in size, 10 MB/second bandwidth use.
Speed: 300 m/s without tractor active --150 m/s while tractor beam is active
Tractor Range: 1000 m
Tractor beam range 500m

Limitations-
Tractor drones are able to be ordered to tractor everything within drone control range, similer to a salvage drone, however they will only tractor, personnal, fleet and corperation owned wrecks, they will not, and cannot tractor abandoned or non owned wrecks, nor can they tractor any wreck within 2500 m range of any player controled ships. when auto tractoring, they will always select the closest wreck outside of 2500 meters, and will tractor that wreck to within 1000m of the drone owner's ship, they will stop tracktoring and go and select a different target, Tractor drones 2two can tractor all wreck sizes

This makes a lot of sense. But it also seems sort of easy-buttonyish. I am conflicted.

Not any more than salvage drones do. The noctis would still be better at it.

The problem with your example using a Maurader is that they get a tractor beam bonus, and they have 3 utility high slots. With a T2 tractor beam they can reach out to 48 km. So these drones would bring an overall nerf to the Maurader because it would devalue their role bonus which can make it harder for people to justify their cost.

I am conflicted on this because on one hand we already do have salvage drones now, but do we want to bring in the tractor drones as well and allow people to not worry about skilling for a Maurader or a Noctis.

One big balance issue would be can each drone tractor in it's own can at 1200m/s that you used in your example, or would that 1200 m/s be attained as a stacking deal when all 5 drones are on the can? It should be a stacking deal that would ramp up to the 1200 m/s or people would just carry around 1 tractor drone with them when missioning.

the speed, and devalueing some specalist ships is something i was worried about.

thats why there a few key things about my drones.
1. they only tractor wreck with the auto tractor, they have to be ordered to specificaly tractor a can
2. the speeds of both their base flight, andtractor flight is slow enough, that a ships with tractor beam bonus will out tractor these EASILY (for example the noctis has a tracktor range of 60 km, ((estimate)) and and a tractor speed of nearly 1500 m/s, a single tractor is better then all 5 drones, (and if in lvl 4, or 5/10 plex with bs recks, the tractor is even more beneficial then the drones since you need a large drone hold and bandwidth)


the purpose of this, isn't to make certain ships obsolete, like maruader and teh noctis, the purpose is to improve all the other ships abilities without sacrifcing their combat ablities.

for example, i fly a drake, and farm lvl 3 missions near my corps homebase, they are easy, tonnes of enemies, i fly around with your standard passive drake fit, minus, i have a tractor equipped, and 2 salvage drones in my hold, i obliterate everything with my missiles and thhen fly around at 180 m/s to loot while tractoring wrecks for 20 km closer to me, these drones would help me significantly, yes i have the skills to fly a noctis, i even have one, riight at the mission hub, and clearing the deadspace pocket, warping back to station, switching to my noctis and warping back to teh mission objective i can loot and salvage every wreck within 5-10 minutes, and then warp out and still complete the missions before the bonus timer, but having the ability to obliterate everything and send drones of to consoldate the loot to me, would help me alot, and would just be a improvement to marauder and other tractor ships...

Worth considering by CCP when they finally start living up to their name, "Game of Drones" and giving us better UI too.