What drones you use depends on how you are trying to fight. There really isn’t a single easy answer to say that one type of drone is always better than another type of drone, it really depends on how you plan to use them. It’s also generally better to carry several different types of drones until you have more experience with them and how you want to use them.
The T1 Domnix is particularly good for sentry drones because the Dominix has a special bonus for drones that improves their ability to track targets. There is an improved version of the Dominix, the Federation Navy Dominix, which has overall better stats in general, but the Navy Dominix does not have the drone target tracking bonus the T1 Dominix has.
So, getting back to the first point, which drones you use depends on how you plan to use them. I use drones a lot in PVE, and if I’m doing level 4 missions I have two main ships I use, a Dominix and an Amarr Armageddon, which also has special bonuses for drones, but I don’t use those two ships in the same way.
My Dominix is set up for “sniping” with sentry drones. When I enter a mission pocket, I’ll move my ship to a position where the NPC’s are around 100 - 110 km away, deploy some sentry drones, lock the NPC ships as targets and start blapping them with the sentry drones. I actually shoot the smallest NPC ships first and work my way up in size to the biggest NPC ships last. Since the NPC’s are so far away from me when I start shooting them, they all fly towards me in a fairly straight line, and that makes them easy to hit at long range. Depending on how many NPC ships there are, I may have to pick up my sentry drones and run away for a bit to open up some space between the NPC’s and my ship, then I deploy the sentries and shoot some more.
The bigger NPC ships are slower so they take longer to get to me. The faster I pop the small NPC ships, the more time I have before I need to re-position my ship. Shoot the smallest ships for as long as I can, then move to a new position, shoot some more, repeat. It’s a fairly easy strategy to perform, but it’s a slow strategy in terms of how long it takes to pop all the NPC ships If you want to collect the most bounties. This is not a high isk/hour method.
The Armageddon is not set up to fight the same way. I do use sentries with it but I back those sentries up with Rapid Heavy Missile Launchers as well as medium and heavy drones. I typically start a mission in the same way as I do with a Dominix. Set myself about 100-110 km from the NPC ships, launch the sentries, start shooting the smallest NPC ships first. The missiles have a range of around 65 km and depending on how many NPC frigates and destroyers there are, I might relocate my ship like I do with the Dominix until the small ships have been popped (because heavy missiles don’t work all that well against small ships).
Once the only NPC ships left are cruiser size or larger, I swap the sentries for medium drones and use those on the NPC cruisers/battlecruisers while I get to work on any NPC battleships with the missiles. If I clear out the cruisers/battlecruisers first, I pull the medium drones back and swap them for heavy drones, then go to town on the battleships that are still there. With the right skills and fit, a T1 Armageddon with Rapid Heavy Missiles and Gallente heavy drones can put out 1000+ DPS with T1 Meta and T2 modules and faction heavy missiles (there’s a ship CPU issue with the Geddon if I use T2 Rapid Heavy Missile Launchers).
So, the Dominix is set up to shoot at long range and move to keep the NPC’s at long range. The Armageddon can also shoot at long range but can move in and fight at much closer range once the most troublesome NPC’s have been dealt with. The Dominix could be set up to do something similar but the Dominix cannot fit missile launchers, the Armageddon can fit any kind of weapon in it’s high slots. The down side to the Armageddon setup I use is that it requires a lot more micro-management of the drones, especially knowing when to switch from one type of drone to another type, and Rapid Heavy Missile Launchers have a long reload time when they run out of missiles, so that 1000+ DPS is not possible for the entire fight, there will be noticeable periods when only the drones are shooting while the missile launchers are reloading.
Another couple of points to be aware of concerning sentry drones.
First: They do not fly around. When you launch them from your ship, they stay where they were launched. If you fly your ship away from them, they cannot follow you, you have to fly back to them to pick them up. They’re kind of like loot from a wrecked ship, you have to get within a certain distance from the sentries to bring them back into your ship.
Second: Different sentry drones have different ranged weapons and target tracking speeds.
Gallente sentries have the shortest weapon range. It can be hard for them to hit a target that is more than 65 km away, but they do have the fastest tracking speed. Even so, there are limits on how well they can track a small fast target that has gotten closer than 20 km to them.
Amarr sentries are a step up for weapon range, up to 80 km, but they tracking speed is slower than the Gallente sentries.
Minmatar sentries are another step up for weapon range, a little over 110 km is possible with the right skills and ship modules, but their tracking speed is worse than the Amarr sentries.
Caldari sentries are the kings for weapon range, 120+ km is possible, but they have the worst tracking speed. One other up-side to the Caldari sentries is their damage type. Kinetic damage is one of the most common weaknesses for NPC’s in the game. Hitting an NPC with a damage type they are weak against helps pop them faster. The only damage weakness more common than kinetic is Thermal, and the Gallente sentries do Thermal damage, but Gallente sentries don’t have the weapon range for long range shooting.
