Auto-Targeting System module useful? last remembered most of the time it does not target back.
Is there a way after release the drone, drones auto-attack hostile in range by themself? just clarify.
what I do now is just warp in and release drones, then sit there waiting them to come, is it efficient?
Basically, Shift-F, leave sit, back to sit, Shift-R, warp away. (I had inflight target back option on, does it contribute a thing?)
Well you can set your drones to aggressive and they will kill a bunch of things as long as they are in drone control range. If you are sensor damped and can’t target them, the drones can still attack them as long as they are in drone control range. Horray! Also don’t warp away, you’ll just lose your drones.
But there is a big problem. NPCs hate drones. So unless the mission is so easy that a Battlecrusier with t2 guns (for hulls with turret bonuses) or t2 drones and medium blasters (if it is a droneboat) at your keyboard, then they are likely to be strong enough to kill your drones if you don’t rotate them. And if you’re rotating them, you might as well just put guns on and be done with it.
I kind of wish they did make the AFK droneboat viable. First of all, it would make the super expensive “Subverted” medium drone useful. It’s too expensive for fleet PVP and this would give it a PVE niche. It seems to be a vanity item to be honest. Also, the more human AFK ratters that are out there (as opposed to bots), the more targets I have. The AFK ratter might be a target I can finally get solo kills on.
Just to show you how problematic this is, I was doing the event sites and 1/30 of the time I was roting my drones. That doesn’t sound like a lot until you realize if I was AFK, the drones would be dead, and then my ship would be destroyed. And if I had used the expensive subverted drone…
I remember someone getting banned for using a drone boat battleship with remote armor repairers into an asteroid field, loose sentry drones and put repairers in all of them, then go AFK. This was considered an exploit.
Also, what the op is talking about is drone “aggressive” mode, which is setup in the drone window; in this mode, the drones will attack any hostile that gets into their range automatically, which is convenient, but often dangerous.
Remember that drones keep getting nerfed against NPC by drawing aggro, specially the small frigates, which causes the NPCs to shoot at the drones and it is getting to a point where its impossible to launch the drones randomly hopping they do the job while you are AFK since they will die in a few minutes if left unattended.
Thats probably just a rumor or urban legend, or he has done it despite a GM warning in a specific area continiously (like COSMOS anomalies) basically preventing others accessing that content.
Besides that, it is not part of the official exploit list and why should it be? There is not much profit to make with it and you can be killed anytime anyway by another player if he finds you sitting afk there.