These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Tractor Drones (aka wreck tugboats drones)

Author
kardjaval
Curtana Joyeuse and Durendal Security
#1 - 2013-05-28 21:45:51 UTC
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

Tractor Drone 2

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

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)

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
DeLindsay
Galaxies Fall
#2 - 2013-05-28 23:55:58 UTC
+1

The Operative: "There are a lot of innocent people being killed in the air right now".

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: "You have no idea how true that is".

Rayzilla Zaraki
Yin Jian Enterprises
#3 - 2013-05-29 02:28:25 UTC
This makes a lot of sense. But it also seems sort of easy-buttonyish. I am conflicted.

Gate campers are just Carebears with anger issues.

Makoto Priano
Kirkinen-Arataka Transhuman Zenith Consulting Ltd.
Arataka Research Consortium
#4 - 2013-05-29 02:46:12 UTC
With Rayzilla on this one. On one hand, SO AWESOME.

On the other hand, it does somewhat negate the utility of a Noctis if I can just have a droneboat run around doing the same...?

Itsukame-Zainou Hyperspatial Inquiries: exploring the edge of the known, advancing the state of the art. Would you like to know more?

Astroniomix
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#5 - 2013-05-29 03:34:01 UTC
Makoto Priano wrote:
With Rayzilla on this one. On one hand, SO AWESOME.

On the other hand, it does somewhat negate the utility of a Noctis if I can just have a droneboat run around doing the same...?

Not any more than salvage drones do. The noctis would still be better at it.
Maximus Aerelius
PROPHET OF ENIGMA
#6 - 2013-05-29 11:41:42 UTC  |  Edited by: Maximus Aerelius
+1 I like this. An example I see this being used for is:

Marauders (Read as Golem for me) on L4 Mission where you can kill everything you see but with a speed of 113m\s and a can 59km away (that just happens to contain the mission objective) it's going to take some time to slowboat there. Drone Control with DLA active give a range of 74km = Tractor Drone for those sensitive Documents you need to finish the mission and roll in the Noctis for clearing up everything else lightning fast.

For this to work though those Tractoring speeds really need to be increased. Hell, I could get a Probe in there with a Tractor Beam on faster than that Drone. Drones shouldn't be as fast as a Noctis is but should be faster than 150-200m\s. Whats the matter with 500-1200m\s (L1-L5 skill on the Tractor Drones)? Currently a TB will come in with a wreck\can at 500ms on any ship and >4kms on a Noctis.

L1 = 500m\s
L2 = 600m\s (+100m\s)
L3 = 750m\s (+150m\s)
L4 = 950m\s (+200m\s)
L5 = 1200m\s (+250m\s)

Apart from that one niggle nice idea.
Hopelesshobo
Hoboland
#7 - 2013-05-29 14:12:18 UTC
Maximus Aerelius wrote:
+1 I like this. An example I see this being used for is:

Marauders (Read as Golem for me) on L4 Mission where you can kill everything you see but with a speed of 113m\s and a can 59km away (that just happens to contain the mission objective) it's going to take some time to slowboat there. Drone Control with DLA active give a range of 74km = Tractor Drone for those sensitive Documents you need to finish the mission and roll in the Noctis for clearing up everything else lightning fast.

For this to work though those Tractoring speeds really need to be increased. Hell, I could get a Probe in there with a Tractor Beam on faster than that Drone. Drones shouldn't be as fast as a Noctis is but should be faster than 150-200m\s. Whats the matter with 500-1200m\s (L1-L5 skill on the Tractor Drones)? Currently a TB will come in with a wreck\can at 500ms on any ship and >4kms on a Noctis.

L1 = 500m\s
L2 = 600m\s (+100m\s)
L3 = 750m\s (+150m\s)
L4 = 950m\s (+200m\s)
L5 = 1200m\s (+250m\s)

Apart from that one niggle nice idea.


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.

Lowering the average to make you look better since 2012.

Kardaval Scheinder
Curtana Joyeuse and Durendal Security
#8 - 2013-05-30 19:11:51 UTC
Makoto Priano wrote:
With Rayzilla on this one. On one hand, SO AWESOME. On the other hand, it does somewhat negate the utility of a Noctis if I can just have a droneboat run around doing the same...?
I agree, it does seems easy-like... thats the buatry of it, a tractor beam tracks at 500 ms, aand has a range of 20-204 km (the noctis can bump the range from 20-56km) and the tractor beam speed on a noctis is nearly 3km per second. these are VASTLY slower than the noctis's tractor, even with the skil speeds, the only place this shines at, (or where it's spose to shine at) is for the solo ded plex runner and deadspacer, to consoldate looting for slow moving battlecruisers, or battleships, in places that may be 40 jumps removed from a station where a noctis may be docked, i personally have my combat pilot, (kardjaval) with the skills to fly both the drake and noctis, and i enjoy deadspace complex, but i take my drake in to a 4/10, kill everything relatively slowly, if the mobs respawn fast enough, bringin my noctis back would be suicide..this is for players willing to go the extra to provide some extra sp into some advanc
kardjaval
Curtana Joyeuse and Durendal Security
#9 - 2013-05-30 19:51:03 UTC
Hopelesshobo wrote:
Maximus Aerelius wrote:
+1 I like this. An example I see this being used for is:

Marauders (Read as Golem for me) on L4 Mission where you can kill everything you see but with a speed of 113m\s and a can 59km away (that just happens to contain the mission objective) it's going to take some time to slowboat there. Drone Control with DLA active give a range of 74km = Tractor Drone for those sensitive Documents you need to finish the mission and roll in the Noctis for clearing up everything else lightning fast.

For this to work though those Tractoring speeds really need to be increased. Hell, I could get a Probe in there with a Tractor Beam on faster than that Drone. Drones shouldn't be as fast as a Noctis is but should be faster than 150-200m\s. Whats the matter with 500-1200m\s (L1-L5 skill on the Tractor Drones)? Currently a TB will come in with a wreck\can at 500ms on any ship and >4kms on a Noctis.

L1 = 500m\s
L2 = 600m\s (+100m\s)
L3 = 750m\s (+150m\s)
L4 = 950m\s (+200m\s)
L5 = 1200m\s (+250m\s)

Apart from that one niggle nice idea.


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...
kardjaval
Curtana Joyeuse and Durendal Security
#10 - 2013-05-30 19:54:21 UTC
Maximus Aerelius wrote:
+1 I like this. An example I see this being used for is:

Marauders (Read as Golem for me) on L4 Mission where you can kill everything you see but with a speed of 113m\s and a can 59km away (that just happens to contain the mission objective) it's going to take some time to slowboat there. Drone Control with DLA active give a range of 74km = Tractor Drone for those sensitive Documents you need to finish the mission and roll in the Noctis for clearing up everything else lightning fast.

For this to work though those Tractoring speeds really need to be increased. Hell, I could get a Probe in there with a Tractor Beam on faster than that Drone. Drones shouldn't be as fast as a Noctis is but should be faster than 150-200m\s. Whats the matter with 500-1200m\s (L1-L5 skill on the Tractor Drones)? Currently a TB will come in with a wreck\can at 500ms on any ship and >4kms on a Noctis.

L1 = 500m\s
L2 = 600m\s (+100m\s)
L3 = 750m\s (+150m\s)
L4 = 950m\s (+200m\s)
L5 = 1200m\s (+250m\s)

Apart from that one niggle nice idea.



in reference to your speed, i chose the speeds of the drones carefully, namely, i wanted them to outpace the larger ships, battleships and battlecruisers, without outpacing frigs, i wanted the speed to be where it's a significant benefit to the larger ships who inherenetly have the slow movement speed, then it would be to teh smaller ships who don't have such deficiencies. the drone is there to help in loot consoldation, not do it all better then a devote ship with tractors
ExAstra
Echoes of Silence
#11 - 2013-05-30 19:54:50 UTC
Worth considering by CCP when they finally start living up to their name, "Game of Drones" and giving us better UI too.

Save the drones!

Kardaval Scheinder
Curtana Joyeuse and Durendal Security
#12 - 2013-06-01 20:12:34 UTC  |  Edited by: Kardaval Scheinder
ExAstra wrote:
Worth considering by CCP when they finally start living up to their name, "Game of Drones" and giving us better UI too.



? why shouldn't drones be able to perform task that a pilot can perform, albeit to a far less effecient degree?