Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I did not expect so many people to suggest grouping drones into stacks, this is interesting. Are most people who want to do this thinking about piloting capital ships with 10 drones? Because with 5 drones I personally don't see the need. I can hit 'F' to make them all attack a single target, or juggle drones across multiple targets with F1-F5... I'm not sure I would personally have much use for say... one stack of 3 drones and one stack of 2 drones. Though I guess pressing F1 on a target 1 and F2 on target 2 is a little bit easier compared to pressing F1-F3 on target 1, and F4-F5 on target 2.

But yeah as I said earlier I don't see why it wouldn't work just like guns - stacking same drone types together. CCP would just have to deal with the health of stacked drones somehow. Calvyr Travonis' suggestion of adding all their bars on top of the icon would work I suppose, but I think it wouldn't look very attractive. And my previous idea of only showing the health of the most damaged drone of the group isn't ideal. Perhaps grouped drones could get a combined health pool? So if one drone in a group of 3 drones receives an attack worth 30 damage then it gets split among all 3 drones - 10 damage per drone. Thus only one health bar is needed. No... this would be pretty bad now that I think about it. Gilas would group their 2 drones together and all of a sudden it would take twice as long to kill one of their already super-tough drones. lol. Not sure if that would be game breaking or not. It would be harder to cut a Gila's DPS in half, but easier to make them recall both drones I guess.


You mean 10 top-slots right? F1-F10? Yeah, it stops at F8. So there is a problem for capital ships. I guess CCP could add 2 more slots, but then they would need to remap F9 and F10 shortcuts to something else. F10 currently opens the map. F9 isn't used for anything at the moment I think. Just CTRL-F9 to toggle UI. So just F10 to remap. Maybe not so bad. Or rework capitals so that they can not control so many drones individually. Maybe after 5 drones, they start becoming groups. So you end up with 5 groups of 2 to control individually.


You mouse over any empty drone slot icon to have the drones list pop up. Then they could have you click and drag into space as normal, but personally I'd prefer to just click on a group/drone to launch. Holding the mouse button down and dragging is just unnecessary strain.


Yeah, that's why I gave the mouse-over controls for a single drone the ability to recall all drones. So if you're not drone centric and don't want to micromanage, you use 'F' key to attack a target with all drones. And if you don't want to use the complicated shortcuts to Return&Orbit or ReturnToBay, then you can mouse over any drone icon and give a return command to all drones (the icon with the 3 dots). No need to recall each drone individually. Non-drone centric players/ships would also probably leave the drone slots to the left of the ship controls rather than eat up their F1-F8 slots with them.


I like this idea. Then the options button can be removed or replaced with something else...

Like a disconnect button. I forgot about the need to disconnect from drones sometimes. Oh geeze. And usually you'd want to disconnect all launched drones not just one, so there would need to be 2 disconnect buttons. Ugh. Maybe we can use the right click function on the menu buttons as well? So there is only one recall to bay button, one recall and orbit button, and one disconnect button. Left-click to issue command to that specific drone, right-click to issue that command to all drones in space...



I like this idea too, since a drone returning to bay is basically its version of a reload timer.

+1 but seriously **** drones >:(

Burhtun

Thank you for the explanation of starting them to the left of the hud. I see your point and I will amend my suggestion.
I still think starting them on the right side is better and would suggest a 4th row to accommodate the drones. From top to bottom I would suggest guns/missiles, then drones, then the remainder as they are in the 3rd and 4th rows.

So this is clear I am basing this next part on my experiences with PvE and make no attempt to determine how drones are best used for PvP. Generally in PvE it is best to use all drones on a single target as the increased killing speed of the combined fire allows you to kill and move on more quickly than independent targets. This is especially true for the BS and BC class rats.

The health display of the drones.
With them un-stacked I like your proposal from the OP.
When they are stacked I think and average would best, if the pilot wants to see individual drones condition there is always the drones window. this is less than optimal but given the restrictions of space it may be the best we can get.

I am not for the spreading damage between all of the drones in a group. While it would be a huge help to PvE pilots I think it would be a bad thing for the PvP crowd as you suggest.

But you can see which drones are damaged, and release only ones that are not damaged. You mouse over the grey launcher icon thing, you get the drone list to pop up, and as long as your cursor is over the list of drones it is not going to go away. So you can take all the time you want opening groups, left clicking on drones to assign to groups, and launching whatever drones/groups you want. It is the exact same list with the same functionality, it just tucks away when it isn't needed. Sort of like the notifications widget. If you click on a group of drones to launch, they fill up all the empty gray launcher icons. You don't need to load each launcher individually.

However, if left-clicking on a drone launches it like I want, then yes, you would not be able to click and drag drones into different groups as you can now. Oops.

Several possible solutions.

1. Add launch buttons to the right side of the drones list, for each drone/group. So launching drones can still be a simple left-click and not a click+drag or right-click+left-click. All other functionality with regards to moving drones and setting them up in groups is the same as the current drone list.

2. Make the window function and look exactly the same as it does currently in-game, in all regards, and add a close-delay of a few seconds to give you time to drag out multiple drones/groups, before it tucks back into the launcher icon. (Just like the notifications widget)

3. Trash the whole gray drone launcher button and pop-up drones list idea, and retain the drones window exactly as it is now. Just add a button/option on it to convert the in-space portion of the list into the graphical buttons. Personally I think the drones list is ugly and I'm not fond of it always being open. EVE has too many windows/lists eating up screen space already.

On the whole I like this, I assume you would form drone groups much as you group weapons which would be interesting.

Just came to say that it looks like OP tried his best and came up with a result that is impressive.

Supported.

Edited OP with new revision of the mockup, bringing in some of the suggestions and some new ideas I've come up with.

This mock-up looks utterly fantastic and it keeps getting better. If anything is in need of an overhaul, it's the drone UI. I have a few notes. (sorry if redundant, I'm the lazy)

* Based on the current layout of the in-flight UI, we'd probably need another hotkey group to actually allow this since some of the larger drone boats will simply be out of space. Fortunately, there's plenty of room to the left of the UI - even on the lowest resolution, - where you could throw passive modules or stuff that you really don't need hotkeyed.

* This looks a little complicated and might go against CCP's trend of streamlining things. I rather like what you've done, since it's all very clean and compact. Having to learn a little added complexity will almost certainly be worth it in the long run, and I hope others would agree.

* Radial menus for module slots paves the way for a lot of really neat features and optimizations, not just for drones, but other modules as well. Not having to navigate a textual menu to reload/overheat/showinfo would be swell.

I'll be watching this thread like a hawk :D

+1

Many +++++++++++++++++++++++++++

very nice idea, i really would like to group and use drones like weapons.

The avarage damage for damaged drones is a good solution and if you go with mouse over it (with a adjustable time delay) can displays them solo or something.
The drone menu and controll feels like 10 years ago. To change it I would like to add some things:

- more modes then just aggressive and passive, maybe normal for if u are attacked that the drones do strike back and agressive that they are like pittbulls on crack and just shoot on everythink in lockrange

- to orbit a target (without engaging) in a ajustable orbit

- send drone/drones in a directon (i guess for pvp with cloacked that would be nice and realistic to send drones wherever you want. even there is not many useful situations, but why shouldnt my drones fly with me in a phalanx

- to make it possible to activate manually the mwd of the drones

Absolutely brilliant. +1