Some drone ships need one but not drones themselfs. Definitely not one on that level
I left the door open for how much buffing, if theyâre not as useful you could add a lil more ehp, donât have to turn them into mini svipuls.
A thought I just had regarding these drones that could help them become more useful would be to have them act differently.
Combat drones orbit their targets, Sentry drones sit in place.
What if EW drones had a decently long application range and would use their abilities on their targets while still orbiting, or remaining close to their owners ship? In the case of the target being out of the drones effective range they could then move into range while staying close to their owners ship?
Naturally their projected effects could remain small, however while larger drones would only have minimally increased effects, their range would drastically increase.
Since Ewar is generally a kiting ability, design the drones for kiting, rather than making them vulnerable by getting close to their targets. This would also mean that increasing the tracking range for drones would be more useful as it could apply for more than just sentries.
This could maybe even be turned into a standard behavior switch for all drones. Just like active/passive you could add orbit tight, orbit far, remain close.
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For most EWAR drones, thatâs a cool idea. It would certainly add to their useability and survival without having to buff their EHP. Web and neuts should be kept short range as the more offensive variety, but everything else would be truer to how EWAR works if they had longer range and stayed further away.
Does it fuck, itâs less than a quarter, and after that each drone does basically nothing. Even without stacking penalties it would take over 15 medium web drones to match just 2 web II mods, which would be quite an opportunity cost in damage.
Just get rid of stacking penalties for drones. They are already subject to diminishing returns via the inherant maths.
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I donât see why this is complicated. All these suggestions to change mechanics around or make drastic changes to EVE Online code simply arenât gonna happen.
Make them bigger. Use more m^3 and bandwidth. Change their values accordingly.
Instead of it taking 5 web drones that are 5 mb/s to apply the equivalent of half a webifier, make the drones 25 mb/s and apply the strength of 1 web each. In theory a frigate could use its whole drone bay just for webbing, but most of the time theyâll opt for damage. That said, battleships or ships with unbonused utility drone bandwidth might consider using up all their bandwidth for webifier drones or target painter drones etc if they actually did something.
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Probably only because there is no DR on that type of EWAR like ECM.
Make them bigger. Use more m^3 and bandwidth. Change their values accordingly.
Instead of it taking 5 web drones that are 5 mb/s to apply the equivalent of half a webifier, make the drones 25 mb/s and apply the strength of 1 web each. In theory a frigate could use its whole drone bay just for webbing, but most of the time theyâll opt for damage. That said, battleships or ships with unbonused utility drone bandwidth might consider using up all their bandwidth for webifier drones or target painter drones etc if they actually did something.
There already are large 25 mb/s drone versions of each of these. Or do you mean make them 25 mb/s but still keep them small like 5m^3?
Making each large drone apply the equivalent of a module is likely a little too strong, but bringing them up to be equal to 1/2-2/3 of a module could be within the tolerable range. This would mean (with depreciating returns) a full flight of heavy web drones could be equal to 2-3 standard webs, which I think could be a good range of application. Currently they apply a 20% reduction and with 5 drones out the total speed reduction should be down to 32.768%, whereas 2 standard webs should bring it to 25%, and less with meta and T2
-correction, it looks 5 heavy web drones, with stacking penalties would instead reduce you to 43.42% speed (I think)
After checking the stacking penalties, I think the formula comes out like such:
100-20-(20*.869)-(20*.571)-(20*.283)-(20*.106)
Why does no one remember stacking penalties?
Five heavy drones have the web power round about that of a t1 web. Which is why it would be nice to have a 50mb drone that does 30-40% webbing.
What about making large (volume) drones that use low bandwidth use? You could use them by sacrificing your bay size even if you have low bandwidth. I mean, is there even a decent use case for the lights with a 5% web effect with stacking penalty?
The issue with making them heavy bandwidth is how you then have to use a real drone boat to use them. When you have to use dedicated platforms, you might as well go with the dedicated ship that skip the drone hassle. Why use a Vexor/Ishtar to web when you could just field a HuginnâŚ
Not just 50mb,
Either 10,25,50 or 25,50,75.
Wonât need gallente ships to use them.
What about making large (volume) drones that use low bandwidth use? You could use them by sacrificing your bay size even if you have low bandwidth. I mean, is there even a decent use case for the lights with a 5% web effect with stacking penalty?
While I brought up the suggestion for up-sized drones and ability, I think the better option may be if the bandwidth, along with itâs ability, was increased, rather than the size.
Drones are good because you can swap them out to suit your needs, but if they are bigger, then you have less options to play around with. Putting a drone out with a large bandwidth will still decrease your projected capability, but it gives much more flexibility to a pilot.
-of course this may result in some mixing of drone flights which everyone knows is bad karma, lol
ECM drones do not appear to be affected by stacking penalties. This is why they are so much more useful than all the other utility drones. Combined with utility dronesâ generally weak effectiveness, they are severely under powered.
The heavy EWAR drones like web/TD/damps are actually fairly effective. But on top of being stacking penalized, they are ridiculously slow. So they take forever to get to the target.
The best options at large drone size is either dps or rep bots.
The reason why ECM-drones work is due to how ECM itself works. Itâs a binary thing, either it works or it doesnât. As each drone attempts to jam the target, you have usually 5 chances to jam someone. While the jam-strength of the drones is low, it doesnât matter as itâs just a coin-toss does it work or not.
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