Drone ship pve in highsec l4 not viable anymore.. fix suggestion included

and a ship with no gun is also analogous with a ship with no drone.

ague semantic all you want.

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I haven’t done an L4 for a couple of months, but that’s how I used to do them - with a Dominix & MJD at 200 Km.

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You are incorrect. Since NPCs can’t make you lose ammo, there is no way they can reduce your combat capability on a turret/launcher ship. You can always bring more than enough ammo for a fight and be 100% certain your ammo supply will not limit your full combat potential .

As Anderson said, the only way mounted weapons can be analogous to drones (in this context) is if NPCs have a direct method of taking them out of the fight.

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This is a fallacious argument. There are many ways rats can render your guns ineffective many of which don’t apply to drones which will continue fighting so long as their engaged state has been triggered through many situations where guns and missiles have been rendered ineffective even when they have plenty of ammunition.

So if you wanna go through all those scenarios one by one then go ahead.

If you wanted the play style of guns pick a gunship. You know how drones work going in. You know that drone management minimises the risk of loss. Risk of loss is essential to drone gameplay. If drone ships aren’t suitable for your activity pick another activity or another ship.

There is no argument for drones having the reliability of guns without the ongoing cost of guns. The ongoing cost of drones is drone loss. The mitigation is picking the right ship and managing your weapon system.

It’s not true that drones are always immediately primaried. Target priority, supporting and managing your drones is effective in minimising losses. Leaving a mission with some damaged drones is entirely acceptable. Leaving a mission with some lost drones is entirely acceptable. All weapon systems have a consumables cost.

If someone can demonstrate that their drones are targeted 100% of the time in all situations and immediately destroyed then sure that would be a problem but nobody has presented that evidence.

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OR, we tell you that the cost of drones is too expensive and that made them not viable in some missions/circumstances.

Just because it is how it is, is not a reason to discard the complain.
Yes, we KNOW that non-drones boats are not affected by drone boat issues. Thank you for that stroke of genius, I wonder how long you had to think about to to realize it.

It can happen. It happened to me already, so I know that when someone tells you the drones can be insta targeted and insta shot by the whole room, it’s a possibility. And in that situation there is no ā€œdrone managementā€ that can help you. Before it happened to me (several times) I believed people who said this could happen were doing something wrong. And then one day you lose your drones 10s after releasing them. And you can’t do anything, they get chewed as soon as they exit your drone bay.

Unrelated.

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I use only drone boats for level 4s (Domi and Rattlesnake mostly), my drones do sometimes take some damage, but I very rarely lose any.

2 Mistakes I see people make,

1: Their ship doesn’t have weapons (or they aren’t using them)
2: They don’t eliminate the smaller NPCs first

You want your ship to be a threat, it makes the NPCs more likely to keep aggro on you, and the small rats love to switch to your drones if you don’t get rid of them.

Keeping a couple of sentries handy will usually allow you to blap frigates and destroyers while they burn towards you, if you do this properly you’ll rarely even need to launch light drones, which helps because the light drones are… well… light.

Overall I think that the AI being a bit more proactive about drones is a good thing, it makes the game a little more interesting. To say that it makes drone ships in level 4s ā€œnot viableā€ is just ridiculous. If you REALLY can’t handle the aggro just use sentries, they never have to move away from your ship and thus can be recalled pretty much instantly.

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CCP I make stink in patented gaming diaper chair©

Please make hole and bucket for gaming diaper chair© and also add absorbance to diaper.

Public at internet cafe starts giving me bad looks

Thx

I was going to welcome you back Alistair, but I’m not sure how I feel about this post of yours.

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It’s all in good jest. I have no real rivalry with anyone except scoots whom is well…scoots

I don’t know you can still do this, but here’s a Gnosis taking down a Burner Ashimmu mission using cheap T1 drones as both ammo and tank.

do you mean warping away to repair?
cause i clearly just tested on a bling drone ship and it failed to finish world collide without warping away.

didn’t ccp allow repairing overheat damage modules with nanite paste already? without any additional module?

already argued that guristas ship line is not ā€œDroneā€ ship due their missile deal more damage then drone. beside 125m3 drone boat with 2 gecko, 2 medium and 1 light combination dish out more dps then rattlesnake with gecko.
clearly you didn’t read the entire post as well (can’t blame you due to the many flame and troll post) but i tested it with bling ship full with durability rig and implants to increase drone HP.

you didn’t read the entire post as well… and can’t blame you.

i suggest you try out a ā€œdroneā€ ship in singularity on world collide and watch how everything ignore you and go after your drone no matter how many times you relaunch them.

sentry domi? and rattlesnake is not a drone boat. it’s more of a missile boat.

it’s dated 2015… i started playing 2016 and drone was great at that time cause rats don’t target them yet.

ok, clearly there is many repeated constructive arguments. can’t blame you all for repeating it cause not many would like to read through 200+ flame or troll (mostly).
i’ll edit my first post and include some of the crucial repeated arguments so it doesn’t get repetitive.

again, thanks for the constructive arguments whether you agree or disagree. also again, you are free to flame and troll the post as well as it is your rights. but i’ll appreciate it if you don’t. thanks.

The drones were taking fire and absorbing some of the DPS. He was sitting next to a mobile depot, replacing them as they were shot down. Burners and their escorts in Anomic missions have always attacked drones. This pilot is taking advantage of that to use his cheap T1 drones to tank some of the DPS.

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You are crap at fitting that’s why and trying to put square in a triangle hole.

But what I’m referring to is brawlers take more damage, so have to allocate more mods to tank or manage aggro better and have to spend time travelling between targets.

They just take longer. It’s the nature of brawling in missions.

Try a blaster Astarte in the same missions. You’ll see similar issues.


ā€œarguedā€ā€¦uh…yeah…well, you did say that…whether that qualifies as an ā€œargumentā€ … If someone says ā€œgrass is purpleā€ is that any sort of valid ā€œargumentā€?

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ok, i didn’t watch the video, just check for the date. anyway, still it’s not the problem due to the ā€œnewerā€ update. beside, as you said, he use it to ā€œtankā€ dps. as a sacrificial drone. not really a drone ship then.

the EOS is doing fine tanking the damage due to bling fit. the problem is the drone dying. i posted my fit on the first post in case you want to check it out. easy access now instead of scrolling through 200 post.

no idea what you conveying but let’s just agree to disagree on whether rattlesnake is a drone ship or not. this is the same arguments as whether you believe god exist or not.

That’s just the nature of drones exacerbated by trying to brawl with them.

I wonder, how far are you sending drones out? I don’t send my drones out more than 25km. And even at 25km, it’s usually under certain conditions.

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i’m brawling with my ship as well. i orbit my drone with afterburner on at more then 400 speed. i doubt i’m more then 25km from my drone. my weapon range is at 14km falloff.

Modules aren’t somewhat autonomous killing machines with shields, armour, hull and propulsion systems; drones on the other hand are exactly that, they’re basically RC spaceships

Specifically when i run worlds collide and i get to that second pocket, i wait until the drone hating npc’s are right on top of me and take them out. So they won’t go further than 10km.

However, your drones should move faster than mine and tank more, so you may be able to send them out a bit further.

Btw, if the EOS is tanking just fine, why are you warping away for repair?

what does that have anything to do with drone repairing in drone bay? unless you are saying drone can still dish out damage while in drone bay? or it’s not realism that an aircraft is NOT allowed to be repair in their aircraft carrier?

and yes… weapon modules are automatically cycling killing machines protected by ship shield, armor, hull and carried by ship propulsion system.