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Drones and NPC agro

Author
Decaneos
Casalt Corp
CAStabouts
#1 - 2014-02-10 03:01:28 UTC
So I've been out in null for a few days and popped back to do some missions, however i have done 3 missions now and i have noticed the same thing happen in every single one....

I pop out my drones, aggro with the guns, the NPC as they always did targeted me, then about 3-5 secs later then switch to multiple drones, not just a single drone like they used to either. Before (only a few days ago) most of the time they would stay on my Domi, now they will not attack me if there is a drone out, i can't help wondering if they changed something more with NPC aggro in the last few small patches and this is intended.

With the drone mod nerf and the NPC changes making Heavy drones Useless (especially with the shield rep changes) is this now the death of the drone?

oh funny thing is i didn't see this behavior in the NPCS while ratting in belts in Null which i thought a bit odd. Has anyone else noticed this problem?
Sabriz Adoudel
Move along there is nothing here
#2 - 2014-02-10 03:11:47 UTC
The NPCs had absolutely ridiculously dumb AI that has been somewhat fixed to prevent players exploiting* it by dropping drones, turning on an active tank, then having a shower and returning to a completed mission pocket.


* I use this term in the sense of "taking advantage of" not the sense of "cheating".

I support the New Order and CODE. alliance. www.minerbumping.com

Decaneos
Casalt Corp
CAStabouts
#3 - 2014-02-10 03:13:55 UTC
Yes i understood that and was fine with them sometimes switching to my drones, but now they simply will not shoot at me at all if a drone is out, its insane.
Worn Xeno
One over Zero
#4 - 2014-02-10 22:50:50 UTC  |  Edited by: Worn Xeno
I get the feeling that NPCs are especially aggressive against drones bigger than them (and often tend to ignore drones smaller than them), e.g. medium drones seem to easily draw the attention of Frigs, while Cruisers seem content to continue pounding my ship while my light or medium drones kill them.
This assumes that you got their attention first (though it's also funny to see NPC Battleships pew-pewing at scout drones - they are about as effective as you might guess)

It basically seems to boil down to using the right size of drones to counter the smallest NPC ships in the battle, and to watch if the drones draw aggro, recalling them as necessary.
Iyokus Patrouette
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#5 - 2014-02-10 23:17:59 UTC
Heavy drones really haven't been useful in missions for a long time. and sentry drones take a surprising amount of punishment. Drones aren't dead or dying, they just need a greater level of micro management now. . and even still i have no problems when i go missioning.

At the very least, try and get aggro on your ship before you drop out drones. and if you're using heavy drones. . . stop and start using sentries. If you're still having trouble consider a remote repper to repair the drones. You shouldn't need it. but it's another option.

I haven't found myself needing to do any of these things. I simply warp to the site, start locking up targets and set my sentries on the npcs. Occasionally i'll pull a sentry back into my drone bay if it starts taking to much damage, wait a few seconds and drop it into space again.

---- Advocate for the initiation of purple coloured wormholes----

Lister Vindaloo
5 Tons of Flax
#6 - 2014-02-11 02:41:38 UTC
Once they aggrieved the drones just pull them back to your bay and let them out again once they start shooting your ship, sentries are easier for this as you can sit within return range and cycle them quickly
Gh0stBust3rs
Templars HIghsec
Stellar Fusion
#7 - 2014-02-11 07:25:47 UTC
Missions have a tendency to slaughter drones. Anomolies and complexes tend to ignore them.
Decaneos
Casalt Corp
CAStabouts
#8 - 2014-02-11 14:10:28 UTC
To understand what is going on i shall explain step by step whats happening.

I warp in, get to range(MJD) shoot to pull agro and then drop drones when they are red to me, once drones are dropped, with in about 5-6 secs all of the previously red are now yellow to me and are on various drones.

I pull my drones in and they go back to being red on me, drop them and once again within a few secs they select the drones.

It may be that i will have to drop my guns all togther and just have remote reppers on cause there does not seem to be a way to gain agro anymore.

also to the person that mentioned anomolies, one of my corp memebers reported having the same problems.
Neiberus Prime
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#9 - 2014-02-11 22:17:40 UTC
Elite frigates = death of light drones.

In all honesty I feel punished for a balance fix that had nothing to do with how I play the game. Drones are my primary source of damage and drone aggro is the same in my opinion as allowing npcs to target turrets and launchers that are firing on them.

If drone aggressive setting was being abused, then remove drone aggressive setting. How drone aggro works right now, it is easier to kill a BC or even a BS compared to fighting elite frigates at close range. The BC/BS ignore my drones while the elite frigates will wreck my drones in 3 volleys.

No aggressive setting would make it impossible to afk drones just like all other methods of dealing damage with the exceptions of smart bombs I think, which don't have the range to be effective to afk with.

If drone aggro stays then allow remote reps to work on turrets/launchers and let npcs be able attack them and see how much everyone else enjoys their source of damage repeatedly being hammered into the ground and unable to do anything about it.

Disable drone aggressive mode.
Change drone aggro so that they will only be attacked if the commanding ship is not within the npcs attack range.

Drone ships actually have to be piloted with active tank and selecting targets and drones won't die if the ship is the one drawing fire. What is the issue with this simple solution?

Or could give all drone ships the Nestor remote rep range/amount bonus and that would help ever so slightly.
IIshira
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#10 - 2014-02-11 22:41:13 UTC
After the drone AI changes drones aren't useful for missions with a few exceptions. For some reason CCP didn't want to remove the "Aggressive" option on drones so they decided this was the answer to fix AFK missioning and ratting.


Sentry drones can be used because you can instantly pull them in.

Light drones can be used out to about 15 km. You send them out too much further and there's a good chance they won't return. I guess you can use medium and heavy drones close in as well but since they're slower you better keep them close! I miss running missions with heavy drones in my Dominix....

Dorian Wylde
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#11 - 2014-02-13 01:32:18 UTC
IIshira wrote:
After the drone AI changes drones aren't useful for missions with a few exceptions. For some reason CCP didn't want to remove the "Aggressive" option on drones so they decided this was the answer to fix AFK missioning and ratting.


Sentry drones can be used because you can instantly pull them in.

Light drones can be used out to about 15 km. You send them out too much further and there's a good chance they won't return. I guess you can use medium and heavy drones close in as well but since they're slower you better keep them close! I miss running missions with heavy drones in my Dominix....




So essentially you use drones exactly the same way you did before. Sentries for everything past point blank range, and lights for frigates that make it in close. The only thing that has changed is you have to pay attention now.

If people are actually losing drones to NPCs, that's just sad. Even sleepers don't do enough damage to kill a sentry before you can react.
IIshira
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#12 - 2014-02-13 01:50:23 UTC
Dorian Wylde wrote:
IIshira wrote:
After the drone AI changes drones aren't useful for missions with a few exceptions. For some reason CCP didn't want to remove the "Aggressive" option on drones so they decided this was the answer to fix AFK missioning and ratting.


Sentry drones can be used because you can instantly pull them in.

Light drones can be used out to about 15 km. You send them out too much further and there's a good chance they won't return. I guess you can use medium and heavy drones close in as well but since they're slower you better keep them close! I miss running missions with heavy drones in my Dominix....




So essentially you use drones exactly the same way you did before. Sentries for everything past point blank range, and lights for frigates that make it in close. The only thing that has changed is you have to pay attention now.

If people are actually losing drones to NPCs, that's just sad. Even sleepers don't do enough damage to kill a sentry before you can react.


Obviously you didn't read the very post you quoted LOL.. Maybe you use them exactly the same way as before but not me. I actually used more than just two types of drones lol.

Besides the changes making all other drones useless for PVE it cut DPS of drone ships. Think of it this way. If you had to constantly turn off and on one of your guns it would cut your DPS. Drone ships have only five "guns" so every time this happens DPS goes down 20%
Tauranon
Weeesearch
CAStabouts
#13 - 2014-02-13 01:54:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Tauranon
Decaneos wrote:
To understand what is going on i shall explain step by step whats happening.

I warp in, get to range(MJD) shoot to pull agro and then drop drones when they are red to me, once drones are dropped, with in about 5-6 secs all of the previously red are now yellow to me and are on various drones.

I pull my drones in and they go back to being red on me, drop them and once again within a few secs they select the drones.

It may be that i will have to drop my guns all togther and just have remote reppers on cause there does not seem to be a way to gain agro anymore.

also to the person that mentioned anomolies, one of my corp memebers reported having the same problems.


Here are observations about drone aggro.

(a) When you go to an encounter the encounter appears to roll a random number for how frequent drone aggro is going to be. Somewhere between none and automatically swapping every 45 seconds for the whole pocket of aggressed NPCs. The same encounter type can roll it differently on subsequent encounters. ie I can do 2 gurista ded 7s in a day, one with drone aggro every 45 seconds, and one with no drone aggro for the entire 5 pockets and more than 80 minutes of shooting.

(b) NPCs can also make individual decisions about swapping. It is generally easier to get the individual to swap out to a sentry drone on a dominix (400 sig vs 125 sig), than it is to have same occur for an ishtar. In this case you'll see the classes that hate the particular size of drone swap first. Amusingly, anomolies have both a default, aggro on the first object rule, which causes them to shoot my ship first even if I have aggressive drones, but they may subsequently switch, or one class (particularly elite cruisers may override the first object rule) and that happens more often to the domi, than it does to the ishtar.

(c) things that the are external to the ship affect drone aggro. In my experience the combination of gunnery + web is entirely reliable at sticking NPCs to my ships, -even if the gunnery is missing the target 100% of the time-

I tested this 2 times in the last week. I entered the gurista ded 10 - the maze, got to the last pocket, fielded 5 light drones, and 1 was destroyed before it could even get back to the bay, and before they had destroyed a single frigate. I then completed the entire pockets 20+ elite frigates with the 4 remaining light drones, by webbing and shooting each target, even though I rarely or never hit the target with gunnery. So long as guns shoot + web, drones are ignored.

I also tried a similar thing with pockets of the highsec sansha ded 4, using a fleet stabber (which is a far less drone oriented ship). I killed 1 frigate before drone aggro put a hammerhead into armor. I retracted them, and then ensured that I kept the webifier in action - I just webbed 1 frigate and orbited whilst I killed other stuff, and no further drone aggro occurred.

If I was silly enough to MJD a dominix, I'd consider 2 omnis + target painter + mjd + cap booster as my standard middle rack (and put an ionic rig on. (or whatever combo of sebo, and drone optimal rig you prefer).

Gardes aren't going to reach to 100 anymore anyway, so there is no pressing overwhelming reason for absolutely must have 3 omnis anymore.
snake03
#14 - 2014-02-15 00:38:08 UTC
Sabriz Adoudel wrote:
The NPCs had absolutely ridiculously dumb AI that has been somewhat fixed to prevent players exploiting* it by dropping drones, turning on an active tank, then having a shower and returning to a completed mission pocket.


* I use this term in the sense of "taking advantage of" not the sense of "cheating".




passive tank rattler comes to mind.....

I'm just a modern day caveman in search of a bigger club.

snake03
#15 - 2014-02-15 00:45:16 UTC
IIshira wrote:
Dorian Wylde wrote:
IIshira wrote:
After the drone AI changes drones aren't useful for missions with a few exceptions. For some reason CCP didn't want to remove the "Aggressive" option on drones so they decided this was the answer to fix AFK missioning and ratting.


Sentry drones can be used because you can instantly pull them in.

Light drones can be used out to about 15 km. You send them out too much further and there's a good chance they won't return. I guess you can use medium and heavy drones close in as well but since they're slower you better keep them close! I miss running missions with heavy drones in my Dominix....




So essentially you use drones exactly the same way you did before. Sentries for everything past point blank range, and lights for frigates that make it in close. The only thing that has changed is you have to pay attention now.

If people are actually losing drones to NPCs, that's just sad. Even sleepers don't do enough damage to kill a sentry before you can react.


Obviously you didn't read the very post you quoted LOL.. Maybe you use them exactly the same way as before but not me. I actually used more than just two types of drones lol.

Besides the changes making all other drones useless for PVE it cut DPS of drone ships. Think of it this way. If you had to constantly turn off and on one of your guns it would cut your DPS. Drone ships have only five "guns" so every time this happens DPS goes down 20%



Price you pay for having no ammo costs and also being able to apply DPS while being jammed when set to agressive.

I'm just a modern day caveman in search of a bigger club.

IIshira
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#16 - 2014-02-15 14:45:16 UTC
snake03 wrote:
IIshira wrote:
Dorian Wylde wrote:
IIshira wrote:
After the drone AI changes drones aren't useful for missions with a few exceptions. For some reason CCP didn't want to remove the "Aggressive" option on drones so they decided this was the answer to fix AFK missioning and ratting.


Sentry drones can be used because you can instantly pull them in.

Light drones can be used out to about 15 km. You send them out too much further and there's a good chance they won't return. I guess you can use medium and heavy drones close in as well but since they're slower you better keep them close! I miss running missions with heavy drones in my Dominix....




So essentially you use drones exactly the same way you did before. Sentries for everything past point blank range, and lights for frigates that make it in close. The only thing that has changed is you have to pay attention now.

If people are actually losing drones to NPCs, that's just sad. Even sleepers don't do enough damage to kill a sentry before you can react.


Obviously you didn't read the very post you quoted LOL.. Maybe you use them exactly the same way as before but not me. I actually used more than just two types of drones lol.

Besides the changes making all other drones useless for PVE it cut DPS of drone ships. Think of it this way. If you had to constantly turn off and on one of your guns it would cut your DPS. Drone ships have only five "guns" so every time this happens DPS goes down 20%



Price you pay for having no ammo costs and also being able to apply DPS while being jammed when set to agressive.


Yea umm no. I'm not sure if you're just trolling but that argument doesn't hold up. Ammo doesn't cost much at all and by this argument Marauder turrets should be attackable.
Gendari Kallinen
Gold Stem Industrial
#17 - 2014-03-17 22:31:10 UTC
I am in total agreement with IIshira. After the latest patch, I'm ready to ask for my 58M Skill Points in drones back. I don't know if there is supposed to be timers for NPC drone aggro, but if there are, they are NOT working. Every single time I have dropped drones since the patch, they are INSTANTLY attacked, and I mean ZERO lockup time - half the time I look up from clicking "engage", and they are already taking heavy damage.
A drone can never survive against heavy weapons. Their advantages are long lockup times and being hard to hit. If the new drone aggro is the new normal, I am advising everyone I know NOT to train any drone skills, because they are useless as it now stands.
I can understand if an enemy starts locking them up right away. I can understand if they shift aggro randomly. But after 2 seconds? There is a bug, I guarantee it.
Dato Koppla
Spaghetti Militia
#18 - 2014-03-18 00:34:24 UTC
Whine whine whine, I used a Domi for 2 months after drone aggro was implemented (after they fixed the initial whole-room-aggro issues) with no problems at all. I lost maybe 1 drone every 10-15missions, no exaggerations. All I see in this thread is a bunch of people whining about not being able to afk farm missions anymore or are simply too lazy to micro their drones. This is of course with sentries, heavies are definitely crappy in missions, but they have been crappy even before the NPC aggro changes. People have to get into their head that heavies are brawling drones, yes you can send them out to over 50km but this is not a good idea, in both PvP and PvE.
Vlad Vaviloff
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#19 - 2014-03-27 19:32:31 UTC
It's not whining if it hasn't happened to you.

Drones are simply unusable now. I coundn't get them to kill one lousy frigate without losing two or three medium drones out of five. The range? 12 kilometers. This is ufkced up.

It's not that I want to do missions afk. I'd just like not to lose several tech 2 drones each L4 mission. It's just not interesting.

Some of the answers in the thread are "oooh, you have to pay attention". Yeah, right. You could hardly pay more attention watching as your medium drone is eliminated in 10 seconds after launch.