Have drones been nerfed significantly?

PvE Gameplay Center PvE Ships & Modules
1

So, I am mining rocks in my covetor. It has a full flight of 5 x Valk 2s. These are tech 2 medium sized drones.

In warps 3 rats, 2 frigates and 1 battlecruiser. Fine, I think. It is the smallest spawn, I can deal with this because I have 5 x t2 drones.

My drones can’t track the frigates, but that’s fine. I will take out the battle cruiser and then deal with them.

My full flight of t2 medium sized drones are unable to break the tank of a single, solitary rat battlecruiser.

So i have to warp out, get a deeps ship, warp back, kill the rats, warp out, change ship, warp back.

This has happened more than once. I now know, if ANY rats enter belt, leave at once. 5 x tech 2 drones are utterly useless. Can’t track the small stuff, can’t break the tank of a single BC that is of optimal size for this weapon platform.

Why?

Is they idea to make the drones a joke on the player? Haha, we tricked you!

Or, is it simply that mining is not enough of a grind, and we NEED to swap ships and waste time?

I could understand if the covetor, a t1 barge, was not able to withstand every spawn in the belts on its own. But think about this, this was the smallest possible spawn. And a full set of t2 medium drones could not break the active tank of a SOLITARY RAT. Not even a battleship.

Well done, CCP. Well played. You got me. Again.

2

I haven’t had a single issue with my drones yet,

What space are you in? Their defense might be higher to explosive damage.

And what are your drone skills like?

3

Near perfect. But i now learn my corp mate kills BCs with hobs. So i think the explosive resists must be crazy.

Death to minmitar drones.

4

Incursion rats maybe? Did incursion chat popup?
Greenish lights everywhere?

5

Or it may be your buddy is in a Procurer / Skiff and enjoying what having a +50% drone damage role bonus and maybe a T2 DDA in the lows does. Because I know a Covetor is lucky to be pulling ~100 DPS with drones while a Procurer can just turn around and do over 180 DPS with just a flight of lights because of that role bonus to drone damage.

6

So as an aside, this particular moon spawn is one of the new “special” spawns. It throws up “glistening” ores, and these are very good business. They have roughly double the yield of normal moon rocks, making them yugely lucrative. There must be over a billion isk in the one field, and it is the smallest possible drill time of 6 days.

I’m optimistic about the new mining mechanics.

7

were you trying to kill non angel rats with valkaries because that doesn’t work so well

8

One thing I’ve noticed is that my drones don’t always aggress when they should, especially if set on aggressive, they just wait for me to command them.

9

ANyone know if they were FOB rats from a nearby pirate base? I hear they tank / shoot like a bad player.

10

FOB rats actually rate better than a bad player for DPS and damage application. Believe me, even a player in a Procurer should be paying attention when those idiots land on grid with them. Each of the FOB patrol frigates puts out between 110-125 DPS. Gets even worse if you get any of the cruiser or battleship types out of the FOB.

And no, it wasn’t FOB rats. If they had been that covetor would have been looking like a piece of swiss cheese if it attempted to fight for a bit instead of warping out as soon as possible. Also FOB rats actively blap drones pretty quickly.

11

As others have suggested one of a few things happened, as valk II’s have absolutely no issues both tracking normal rat frigates nor killing “most” npcs battlecruisers.

  1. You were trying to kill blood raider or sansha npcs with valks, which have massive explosive resists, still even then they are quite low hp usually.

  2. You were fighting incursion rats or FOB rats, which are in an entirely higher tier of “tough rats”. Incursion rats would have been obvious given the giant shader placed in all incursion systems with the spooky chatter sounds. But FOB rats are only apparent from the diamond next to their names, and you get no warning till they are on top of you. Both are deadly npcs and tough as nails for a unprepared combat vessel, let alone a mining barge.

  3. Since you couldn’t track the frigates, it’s likely they were not normal belt rats.

12

Most probably elites of not corresponding type, those can tank 5 heavis on a domi sometimes :slight_smile:

13

If you mean a rat with this symbol in its name :diamonds: then its no wonder you couldn´t kill it. Those are the new rats with the new AI either from a mining spawn or from a FOB. Your normal drones don´t do ■■■■ against them.

14

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