How do I engage and dock my drones?

New Citizens Q&A
1

I know I can engage my drones by pressing F, but is there a engage button somewhere I can click?

And also, how do I dock a deployed drone when I’m done using it?

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2

I don’t remember the default keybind, but I like to set “All Drones: Return to Drone Bay” to Ctrl-T, that way I can quickly and easily reload guns and recall drones.

You can right click on the drone group and tell them to engage targets, and a button might appear in the selected item window when a drone is selected (I honestly can’t remember), but this is extremely slow. I highly, highly encourage you to make use of your hotkeys. It does take a little bit of effort to learn, but it will all become muscle memory with a little bit of practice, and it will dramatically improve your execution. I know if you open up the hotkey menu, you’ll see 800 hotkeys. But most of them are incredibly niche (like, do we really need hotkeys for player creation?). So, don’t let that intimidate you. Most players only need to learn the 13 most commonly used ones.

  1. Stop Ship: Ctrl + Space
  2. Lock Target: Ctrl + Left Click
  3. Unlock Target: Ctrl + Shift + Left Click
  4. Activate Top Row Module: F1-F8 (note that you can put mid and lowslot active mods into the top row of your hud)
  5. Overheat Module: Shift + Left Click
  6. Align: Q
  7. Orbit: W
  8. Keep at Range: E
  9. Dock/Jump/Activate Gate: D
  10. Launch Drones: T (My Custom Keybind)
  11. Engage Drones: F
  12. Recall Drones: Ctrl + T (My Custom Keybind)
  13. Reload: Ctrl + R
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3

Probably the best help here is the Eve University article and the section on controlling Drones:

Shift-R is the default for Return to Drone Bay. Remember though that they need time to fly back to you. Make sure they are safely home before warping out!

I normally control drones with Right Click on the in space group of the drone control window and just use the F key for quickly pushing them onto my current target.

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This! Dear @CCP_Devs, it absolutely wouldn’t hurt to have just 3 (three) click buttons in the drone control pane: launch, engage, and return. Using keyboard shortcuts (which are great in their own way) can be messy in a rapidly unfolding situation for inconceivable number of reasons!

5

Shift + f recalls drones.
CTRL + f reloads ammo
I use to apply both after every ratting pocket.

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