Missions & Complexes

So I've been flying an Ishtar for level 4 mission running for awhile and decided to move to a rattlesnake because I enjoy bigger ships. When flying the Ishtar I would use Sentry drones to pull enemy aggro, and when they started to take damage I would pull them in, wait a few seconds, and send out the heavies or lights depending on what needed killing. NPC aggro usually stayed on my after that, with a few exceptions but at worst I'd pull them in one more time and that would be that. Then I switched to the Rattlesnake.... No matter what I do, NPCs switch to my drones INSTANTLY. I send them out, all the NPCs instantly go silent for a second, then all weapons on drones. Feels pointless to even fly the Rattlesnake and I feel like I wasted all the ISK I spent on it. This happens when I try flying the Gila, and the Worm too. Anyone know why they hate the drones on Gurista pirate ships, but leave my drones alone when I'm flying Gallente ships?

Pretty sure the same thing comes up fairly often. NPC drone agro is a mysterious thing, some times they have a hard on for drones, some times not.

I have used a Snake for several LS DEDs and I cant say agro was too much of an issue.
Gila drones only take agro from Small/medium ships but they are easily killed before its too much of an issue (I try and only agro a few at a time in bigger sites like a 6/10).
Worm is a non issue, only elites (or non aggroed NPCs) ever even look at its drones and with rockets and 220 DPS in drones they don't last long.

That being said I always use missiles along with the drone so that helps keep agro and in most case I focus the Missiles on NPCs that tend to aggro drones to remove that hassle.

I'll echo Andrew Indy - nobody truly understands drone aggro. It can be fine one day and not the next. Did you test the Rattlesnake over multiple days? The Snake was my first true ship love, so I've flown it a lot in every kind of space and I've never noticed any particular issue with drone aggro that was specific to the ship.

Of course I use a Gecko almost exclusively and it can soak up a lot of aggro before I have to pull it (and then I swap it for a spare Gecko). I almost never put any other drones out. Though I've also been playing with a Gila a lot lately with Vespas and Hammerheads and haven't seen an issue there either.

I'd try a range of drone types over multiple days. My bet is the excessive aggro will mysteriously disappear.

Thanks for the replies, after some testing it's only the medium ships that were pulling aggro immediately, the small ships would take awhile and the large ships didn't care about the drones. I just had a few rat groups in a row that were all TONS of medium ships so the drones died instantly from being launched. Ship is doing about 300 dps with cruise missiles and drones are doing 829 with 2 Ogre II's, which i'm guessing wasn't helping either. I do love the ship, because drones and shields are my favorite. Just a shame there are not many ships that those 2 work together with.

NPC aggro is also based on size of Drones being deployed.

NPC small hull class ships target Light Drones and larger.
NPC medium hull class ships target Medium Drones and larger.
NPC large hull class ships target Heavy Drones and larger.

In my experience I've found it's better to take out the small hull class NPC's first before launching Light or Medium Drones. If the need arises for launching Light or Medium Drones before all NPC small / medium hull class ships are destroyed, such as destroying Ewar NPC's in close orbit of your ship, just quickly remove that threat and then recall Drones asap. Continue taking out the small / medium hull class NPC's and then launch your Drones for alpha strike on the large hull class NPC's.


DMC