I keep losing mining drones to Trig Fleets

Industry Gameplay Center Mining & Extraction
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OK firstly I want to make it clear, I am NOT afk mining, No way. I do look away from the screen for a few seconds at a time maybe but I feel like that is reasonable.

Now the problem I am having is that these trig fleets, not the invasion fleets but the scout fleets that spawn everywhere, are seemingly killing my mining drones literally the MILLISECOND they drop on grid. I don’t mean that they start shooting at my drones immediately, I mean the INSTANT I see them on my overview I lose a mining drone. I have my finger literally hovering over the recall button, and still in the time it takes between ordering a recall, and the drones getting the message, the Trigs kill one. Also I am sitting within 1500 meters of my drones, not some crazy distance away, and I still can get them back fast enough. That’s a little ridiculous I think.

I’m not even saying get rid of trig scout fleets! They drop great loot and are a fun challenge for my otherwise bored hammerhead 2’s lol. I’m just asking for some changes to the drone aggro logic. Maybe they only aggro the combat drones (which are better defended and can fight back)? Or maybe just give us a few more (say 5 more) seconds beofre they start firing to recall my vulnerable mining drones?

To be fair I can usually call back the rest of my mining drones, and I only lose one normally, but I lose one EVERYTIME a scout fleet lands! After I get my mining drones recalled, I launch my T2 Hammerheads and they usually wipe the floor with them, and the trig fire is focused on my Orca which can tank it all day.

It is getting really expensive to replace numerous drones after every mining op!

Please I’m begging for any advice on how to somehow tank my mining drones more, or recall them faster somehow? I have perfect applicable drone skills (not bragging just being thorough).

I don’t complain about the full invasions, I don’t complain about the FOB fleets which are brutal btw (at least you know they are in system by checking the agency). I don’t complain about the million other little annoyances of mining. But this drone insta - kill stuff has me SO frustrated.

TL/DR; Dear CCP- PLEASE consider changing how the Trigs aggro mining drones. If not doing away with it entirely, perhaps a few more seconds of delay between landing on grid and starting to fire at mining drones? Get me at least a fair CHANCE to recall them.

2 Likes
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So long story short, don’t use mining drones in highsec.

3 Likes
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tbh everytime I encounter them they only go after the drones after a while of me not dying to their assault (same for other rats) haven’t lost a single mining drone on my skiff, and I’m only using t1s.

I’m curious what’s the difference in here between me and OP, since I’m definitelly sure that there is a deterministic factor in behavioral patterns of triglavians aggro.

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  1. Developp the skill “Drone Durability” so your drones will be able to take more hits before being destroyed. It might make the difference because it can survive the flight back to the drone bay.

  2. Mine smart. Come close to an asteroid and mine it only with your drones. Use the mining lasers on farther asteroids. By doing this, your mining drones will be very close to your ship and it will takes them less time to fly back to your ship when you recall them… Those small thing are quite slow…

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What ship are you using?

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I’m curious too as well now. I wonder what a Skiff has that pulls aggro off a mining drone that a Orca doesn’t.

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I’m using an Orca with augmented mining drones.

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It varies, I multibox a mining fleet, Orca and 3 Hulks, each one with mining drones out.
A Triglavian scout party lands and starts assaulting my Hulks ignoring my drones.
Its happened multiple occasions.
Im also using T1 mining drones.

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Find the patrol, kill them all but the repping one, let it be.
Use dscan from time to time to check if there is someone who killed it, in which case repeat and rinse.

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I always stay near the asteroids I’m mining, <5km. I recall the drones when the Triglavians appear, and launch combat drones. And, I have not lost any mining drones, yet.

The mining drones do get a little roughed up. And, need repairs, sometimes.
I haven’t risked using Augmented mining drones since the Triglavians started, just sticking to T2 drones.

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Hmmm… I multibox with a porpoise and three procurers. Porp uses mining drone IIs, procs sit with full flight of hornet ECs.

If a trig squad drops on site, I recall the Miner IIs from my porp and release Warrior IIs. All my procs then stow their EC drones and release their flights of Warrior IIs. Then I focus the flights on one Damavik at a time, focusing on renewing damaviks first.

My squad is highly skilled for combat drones. The Damaviks just dissolve.

I’ve done this somewhere between 10 and 20 times now. I’ve never lost a drone. Not even one of the hammerheads or the warriors. But not any of my porp’s miners either.

That could be a function of flying with a crew and flying with hammerheads out. If the Damaviks target the hammerheads, they may just be fast enough to not get hit before the trigs go down.

EDIT: I just re-read, and I see you’re using Hammerheads. If your main agressors are Damaviks, you’ll probably be better off with light drones rather than medium drones, because light drones are supposed to be the drones you use against frigats because of subwarp and tracking speed concerns. And you’ll probably be better off with Minmatar drones than Gallente, because Minmatar drones deal explosive damage, and the Damaviks’ armor tank is weakest to explosive damage. Warriors are the way to go against Damaviks IMHO.

1 Like
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I also use Warrior II’s, they have better tracking speed for hitting small, fast frigates.

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Put shieldbooster on them, I dont know how trigs Work but somebody told me they act more like drifters.

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Skiff, with a flight of T1 mining drones, everything attacks skiff first, and switches to drones only if I slack with pulling them back to launch combat ones.

hmmmmm :thinking: either skiff has higher targetting priority than orca for rats, or maybe the case is grade of drones?

oh and btw, since someone in thread mentioned medium drones - I can confirm that mediums completely utterly sucks against triglavian roaming squads from barge/exhumer perspective - pulls aggro way faster, dies way faster, and is lucky to hit even once.

2 Likes
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drones.

Rats have a minimal signature radius for targets. Anything that is below, is never attacked. Anything above, can be attacked. Then I guess they select a random target, depending on its impact on the grid and its signature radius.

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Sounds somewhat reasonable, although if I leave mining drones out and ignore attackers they will after a while switch to mining drones.

That could be interesting notion - mining barge/exhumer actively can “impact the grid” of asteroid belt by firing strip miners at the roids. and it definitelly outmines every single of it’s drones.

Orca on the other hands for most of usages only uses command bursts, and - drones and I’d guess it wouldn’t be that hard to have orca drones mine sufficiently alot to “outdo” the calculation side of the “impact on the grid”

That’s assuming such system to calculate that actually does exist, which I am unsure if it does. It would fit the evidence gathered in this thread so far nicely tho.

(I do recall “threat” generation for AI aggro taking into account damage/dps of ships on grid, maybe mining is considered form of that into those calculations as well?)

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rats AI have a delay after which they can switch target.

It’s very obvious when you make the same burner missions (base serpentis) : the same rats aggro you, and your drone, in the same set of time, every time.
First they agggro you all, becasue you are alone. Then when you have launched drones and are moving with MWD they ALL aggro the drone the next period. Then when you are close enough, two periods after, orbiting the talos, the one closest and the one furthest from you ( so 6km and 300 km) target you while the one middle (200km) targets you drone. After that your drone start doing damage, so depending on your own rate of crits, it can change. Typically after a while the three target your drones, this is the moment you kar it, then two (including the closest) start targeting you again (because you are idle in front of it ?), and then it’s dead and you loot it.
Of course when a drone dies on a random crit, the targeting restarts. So the later in the mission, the more random it is.

You can also make several missions in which you notice the aggro switch very noticeably. eg I did a ded5 blood for a friend, the moment its gila entered the site everything aggroed it instead of my dominix which was 100km away and idle. Then when it was aligning and moving, some rats started aggroing me again - or my sentries.

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Well but that aggro switch shouldn’t apply when drones were already out when rat has entered the grid, right?

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why ?

Every X seconds the rats can switch target.
The game checks if there is a better target. If there is, they switch. As a group when they have a group IA(some missions, trigs) , alone when they don’t (base serpentis).

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well I meant this scenario:

In all cases where I noticed them attacking my drones drones were present at grid when rats warped in. They still went for my barge, and only switched to drones after a while under assumption that I didn’t recall them to switch for combat ones.

OP also seems to be in situation where drones were on grid predeployed and rats warping onto such case - except in his case rats are going for drones right away :thinking: