EVE New Citizens Q&A

First of all, I am not an expert in drones nor do I have all my drone skills to level 5, but I can see the great value in them for missions and pvp combat.

Drones are skill intensive, so if you are going to use them as your primary offensive weapons, focus on the drone skills or it’s going to take a long time to become good with them . You do not have to train for heavy or sentry drones for level 1,2,3 missions but BC’s die fast on level 3 missions with heavy drones, even if you only have heavy drone skill to level 3. Level 4,5 missions you need to have good heavy and sentry drones skills. But with all mission levels you don’t really need to train up to tech 2 drones, but it really speeds up the mission when you have tech 2 drones.

Pick the right ship for your drones. Anything with some type of drone bonus. Remember you’re drones are your primary offensive weapon not the turrets. Fit your ship to support your drones not your turrets. I like to use Projectile turrets even though the ship might have bonuses for another type of turret. Projectile turrets use no cap. That means you can use it for other things like active armor tank and still be cap. stable.

Drone discipline is a must. Drones can be an unruly lot if left unattended and in active mode especially in missions. There is nothing like having your drones fly in all directions and agro the whole room. So keep them in passive mode for missions or you are going to waste a lot of time warping in and out of rooms to repair your armor. Active mode is good when your targeting is jammed and you need to kill something, like pvp combat.

It is time to kill something. First thing, jetcan something cheap. Start to orbit the jetcan. This will help to negate some damage from the npc’s. Target one ship only, shoot that ship, wait for all the ships in that group to agro you, then target them. Deploy your drones only after the group has agroed you, not before. This will keep the npc’s from killing your drones. Kill the ships from smallest to largest. Return your drones to the drone bay, agro the next group, deploy drones again. Keep doing this until the room is clear. Also deploy the right size drone for the size of ship you are attacking. Kill ships first, then turrets then structures. Some time if you shoot structures first it will agro the whole room.

I hope this will help you in your drone endeavors. Please feel free to leave suggestions and comments or questions if you have them.

Lets see.....

Use the right drone for the right job: Rule of thumb is Minmatar drones for Angel rats, Gallente drones for everything else.

Important drone modules are:
Drone Link augmentor gives you 20 km more drone control range.
Omnidirectional tracking link gives your drones more tracking (especially important for sentries)
Sentry damage augmentor (rig) gives you 10% damage bonus for sentries.

Those modules are probably only necessary for missions L3 and up, but then become increasingly important for (sentry) drone users.

I strongly disagree on that. Any ship with drone bay can benefit from drones, if used properly. It's true if you're going to base your fight on drones mainly and for that purpose we have drone boats.


In short: keep an eye on your drones and do it often. The best tactic is to take aggro on your ship first, then unleash the drones in active-offensive-metal-eating-fury mode (does not work on Sleepers! Those buggers switch aggro!). Drones like to attack ships targeted by you and free roam only when you are out of targets (i.e. you are outside the targeting range and drones are not or you are gone to eat cheese sandwich or something and you are AFK - bad idea). In that case, the only thing you need to do is call them off and order them to hug your vessel or go to sleep in a drone bay. You still need to discipline them from time to time. Drones behave much like children. Leave them unattended and after few hours Amarr Empire will be located in nullsec... with stations covered in tooth paste and lipstick monster pictures. Keep your finger on a "F" key all the time.


Yes... and no. ECM dudes should be taken out first along with rocket lovers. Quite often NOT killing a turret (sentry gun) in the first place can end with "where the hell is my armor?!" epiphany. Depends on your resistance, location and life insurance.