So, drones supposed to return to your ship if their target is out of your drone control range. I’m sure they disabled this when targeting structures, due to the large orbit. I have seen players take advantage of this and deploy drones on structure then MWD out to 350k. Drones still engaging the structure. Is this working as intended?
I’m pretty sure my drones would stop listening to new commands (except recall) when they get out of drone control range. But they will continue doing whatever they were doing when they got out of range, such as chasing the frigate or shooting the structure.
Nothing new.
The wiki says “Once you’ve ordered them to attack a target, your drones will pursue that target anywhere within your drone control range, whether or not you continue to have that target locked. If the target leaves your drone control range, your drones will start to travel back towards you. However, they will not use their MWDs, so they will do this very slowly.” I guess i could just test it my selves . I thought maybe there was an exception only for structures due to the large orbit
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As Gerard said, I’ve seen drones continue to attack things outside of my drone control range, but I’ve also seen them stop and slowboat back to me as well. I had always just assumed that this happened because I got too far out of drone control range, but I really don’t know. I suppose it could also have to do with aggressive setting and who has agro, and there perhaps could even be another factor that I haven’t even considered.
Now you have me curious as to how this works.
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Hmm, maybe I’m confusing target range and drone control range, but I was pretty sure drones continue to fight outside control range. Guess I’ll have to test it sometime.
Either that, or the wiki is wrong.
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You are correct. They indeed to attack outside of control range until the target is gone. then they will slow boat back to you to get back in range and you can’t control them until they are in range again.
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As far as i know there is a drone control range and a max distance to drones you can have (arround 300km?)
Within the drone control range you can give commands when the target is inside your control range
Within the max distance to drones the drones can still attack the target that you called to attack
If the drones are outside your max distance to drones they can be jammed and get abandoned.
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Remember this drone control range is only the range at which you can give orders, and that drones operate semi-autonomously. If for some reason your drones do become further away than your drone control range, they will happily continue doing what they are doing autonomously. For example, if you set your drones to attack a target that subsequently moves away, your drones will continue attacking that target even if it moves out of your drone control range.
https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Drones_101#Drone_Control_Range
Just seems broken against structures. Deploy drones then MWD past structure locking range. I consider my self a decent station gunner. I should be able to defend against a fleet thats worth lless then 200mill.
You could shoot the drones? If the pilots are 300km away there’s not much they can do to stop you.
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In th I s case its about 500 warriors. They use over 100 tristens at the cost of less then 2mill each. And they have about 100 more in a bowhead. Taking the brutally slow locking time of the station . Even if I killed 100 drones. It would have little effect . We have yet to find a counter to this 150mil isk fleet. 100 tristens at 350k range from station all at a random orbit. Not 2 of them withonv 50nor 6 k of each other. They have developed a unique tactic amd are gettinb good at it.
I think with 100 pilots against you alone, you shouldn’t worry about tactics anymore.
Sounds like a decent strategy against a solo structure.
Downsides of the strategy are that you require 100 pilots instead of only a couple, and that you cannot warp off without losing your drones.
So counterplay on your part is to have pilots to chase the defenceless Tristans so they need to warp off. If they recall their drones to fight they cannot shoot the structure, recalling takes ages at those ranges, so most likely they need to warp off, wchich means that to continue bashing they need to warp back to 0, reconnect and burn out of range again.
I think a couple pilots chasing the Tristans will make their strategy a lot less effective.
Lol. Yes. There is no saving the structure. We have had defence fleets too. Dont help much. And honestly I think they could do the same with 30 or 40. They are so cheap they can re shipp several times over. Anyway. Getting away from the original question. Should you be able to shoot at a structure out of its range (350) with drones , should the attacker have to bring more then 150mill worth of assets to kill sole defended structures?. I have soloed 20 man fleets successful before where 1 kill was worth 5 times of. the tristan fleet. Is using drones at structures from 350k working as intended.
They have a protection squad ready to warp out to any tristen that we jump on. We managed to kill 30 one fight. But they reshipp right away. So it wouldn’t matter if you wiped the whole fleet. 3 minutes later there be 100 more . I actually think this tactic could work with less then half of what they got. They are so cheap they can reship forever. They orbit at over 300n/s so by the time you get a warp in they are out of range. As soon as you burn towards one they warp across the station.
Sounds like they are prepared well and have a lot of people, with that fleet of tristans and a response squad. Maybe you shouldn’t be able to deal with that with just a station and maybe a couple of players.
Try a larger defence fleet and prepare pings all around the station so you can warp to the tristans whenever they warp off to the pings they apparently made in advance?
Well. You not going to beat 100man fleet in HS. Lol. Just wasn’t sure if their tactics was working as intended. If you want to observe this in person. Not going to mention what group this is. But if you do a little research . Check out zkill for tristan kills . Insure you can figure it out. They have a new pending war. They been known to attack as soon as it goes live . And yes. We are the bad guys .
Found it 
I can imagine it’s hard to fight something like this, unless you bring a blob of your own. They even fit sensor damps to their tristans, so if you bring only a couple of ships to stop them they will be rendered ineffective by the blob.
But yes, drones continuing to fight outside range is working as intended.
Maybe if emergent gameplay like this is uncounterable, CCP could do something, but it seems this strategy has it’s own weaknesses and is counterable - the most obvious way to stop this is to bring numbers of your own.
Good luck!
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This should be the maximum range at which the drones are abandoned (350km). Various drone booshers like to take advantage of this to collect the drones. The problem is the size of the structure perimeter I suppose. The range of the weapons should actually take this into account. That would be the right approach.
Looking at your ZK, the other easy option to save your structures would be to quit declaring war on EVE University over and over again.
When I saw that I couldn’t help but think you referencing their ‘wiki’ as to why it was wrong had an interesting irony.
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