Grouping identical drones into one unit for the server's better performance

The drones that are launched from one ship have the same characteristics, but are calculated as separate objects. You can reduce the load on the server, when you enable the option of attacking one target: combining drones into one object - (as if folding them into one box) “squad drones”. Squad drones are described by the characteristics of one of drone: location, accuracy and speed, XP, etc. all except damage, which is multiplied by 5. (if drones are five)
Then the server will perform calculations of one strengthened drones, instead of five conventional ones.

Attempting to lock on target “box with drones” leads to the fact, that we pulling out of the ‘box’ a definite drone and begin to lock at him and leaving the squad alone. Drone under lock begins to move independently. and can be destroed or onlocked and if its parameters are equal to the parameters of the squad, join in squad.
Additional bonus: decrease the number of objects in the overview panel.

When getting the first damage from smartbomb or something similar, the all drones in squad is either instantly destroyed (damage> EXP of the drone) or the squad breaks up into separate drones (damage <EXP of the drone) further calculations are carried out as now separately for each drone.

I did not use fighters on capital ships, but maybe this approach is applicable to them. The joining of several squad into one large “super-squad” will help to reduce the load on server in mass battles.

While writing the post, thought that this approach is also possible to ships with absolutely identical parameters located nearby, at a distance from other objects (to avoid bumps), and not locked as target. Ideal for sniper ships - a whole sniper fleet can ‘synchronize with the commander ship’ and in fact be a simple multiplier of the damage to his ship and removing excess calculations of the same type of ships from the server. if it start locked - one of ships: “desync” disconnected from the group and locked as normal ship. Maybe it will result at 100 one-click-alt’s in the Stealth Bombers or similar tricks.

The important facts
Identical drones are combined after launch.
The pilot has the ability to have 2 or 3 squad at a same time.
They fly and hit others, until they are taken in the field of view or deal damage.

What if I want to send them to individual targets? The server would constantly have to check whether drones are on one target or several targets.

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Drone squadrons have been asked about since the new fighter mechanics and we could just treat all sub caps as having one ‘tube’. Personally i feel the benefits outway the drawbacks.

Would gladly sacrifice this ability in favour of lower server strain and drones that are easier to find, lock and kill.

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You maybe but I don’t want to for PVE, if nothing else. Drone splitting with the Rattle or Ishtar in DEDs is important.

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You would gladly do so but I’m pretty sure most droneboat pilots wouldn’t. I always use drones on indidual targets when running PvE sites for instance.

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I run a rattler with a domi alt for missions. I AM the drone pilot in pve. But the bigger picture here is server performance, un-clusterfucking of the overview, a buff to e-war drones and a buff to dealing with drones.

Yours and mine isk/hour is not important.

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This would only help server performance in large fleet battles, and the fleets involved would simply cram more pilots in to take up the freed resources.

This idea removes an important function of drone boat use with no gain for anyone.

How does a drone “collect experience”??

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Wouldn’t that basically become a Sentient Rogue Drone? I blame the Gallente…

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Me too! Of all the sentient drones I disassembled, none of them dropped a sentient module for me :frowning:

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More pilots in a fight without crashing or tidi is a good thing.

There are fights where both sides have brought their full weight but are in tidi.

There is a lot of benefit for just about everyone with this. Splitting drones is not really an important function. It’s uncommon (outside of mining) at best.

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I am mixing drones to maximize bandwidth on more than one ship so this idea is about as horrible it can get.

Drone squads shouldn’t stop you from mixing drones. Shouldn’t even stop you from mixing drone types.

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Than I missed OP point completely hi wanted 5 drones to act as one and share same stats how that apply if I launch one omni drone(gecko) one thermal(ogre) one explo medium one em medium and one light drone?

As I understand it, unless you fire squadron of the same drones, drones will function as normal. Only when you launch same type of drones and probably check an option in drone window it will behave as OP wants.

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If that’s the case heck yeah make em squad make em cool looking in space,

As long as it is optional as to not change options or gameplay choices.

It could be approached a number of ways.

  • it could be done such that you have split squads. This still condenses most drone set-ups.

  • Or squads could behave where the sig radius and speed are determined by largest and slowest drone still alive. A squad can still fire different ‘guns’ with varying ranges, damage and tracking. And the drone with the largest hp pool takes damage first (tanking for the smaller drones). And as you kill off drones they get smaller and faster.

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Yea could approach it like grouping of gun’s, we have the option to un-group our guns, but we keep our guns grouped 98% of the time except when we are using arties or something. The same option for drones would be great, if it did actually help on performance and wasn’t a QOL thing.

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So I’m up close and personal in a VNI neuting and using heavies. I see a drone take hits and recall it singly. I then launch a fresh drone. In that time I lose 20% dps because I managd my drones properly.

With grouped drones I cannot recall that drone. I either lose drones from the group or recall the whole group and lose 100% dps for the duration of the recall/launch cycle.

This is an important function for drone management. Grouping drones this way would require a rebalance of every drone carrying ship to compensate for the change in dps and survivability. Anything else would simply be neutering drone boats especially, and all drone use in general.

Yes. Take the hit! Drones are very powrful at the moment and the chance of them getting shot is supposed to be their drawback. Preventing circumvention of that drawback would be a good thing in my opinion.

It wasn’t that important for carriers. It isn’t for a VNI.

If we needed to rebalance around that you’d rebalance the drones, not every drone carrying ship.

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