Is the remote repair module useful for a solo pilot running missions? Seems like it is just for fixing other ships if traveling in a pack (aka The Healer).
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Yup, Remote Armor Repair/Shield Booster are meant for Logistic ships, the “Healers”.
However, if you like to keep your drones healthy I suppose you could use them… Saw a Russian streamer the other day flying an Orca for PvP against a few fleets, he had remote shield boosters to use them on the drones since they were the only weapons he had.
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Wow another great discovery, I could use the remote repair/shield booster for my drones. Didn’t know it would work on them to. Will the drones need to be close to my ship for the remote repair to work?
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Not necessarily, like most modules the Remote modules have Range.
If you ever plan on doing that on PvE, do keep in mind that only specific rats, most noticeably the “elite” of them (for instance a DireGurista), will target the drones, and that only happens in more difficult missions (about L3 or L4 missions)
And another thing to note, the smaller they are compared to your ship, the longer it will take to lock onto, yes, that includes friendlies and owned drones, you need to have a friendly target locked in order to heal.
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Okay, so the drone, like the ship, must be targeted for the remote repair module to do its thing. It does not have an auto setting.
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Correct, Remote modules are just like any turret you use, you need to manually activate on a target.
This is the video of the streamer I mentioned before, starting at 11:30 you can see him deploy drones and locking them down in order to boost their shields.
Needless to say that, since drones do not tank much, the shield booster only helps make them last a few seconds longer.
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A pvp orca should be named “the spanish inquisition”, because, you know…nobody expects the spanish inquisition.
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That got dark quickly.
The thing to remember about remote repairers (shield, armour and structure) is that those modules do have an optimal range. If you try to repair an item that exceeds the optimal range you will some or all of the hit points from the repairer.
So while it is possible, it may not be practical to fit remote reps to your ship so that you can heal your drones during combat situations. If you do want the longer range, certain ships will have a range bonus.
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I been tempted to throw a remote repair on my vexor for my drones.
When I see drone taking damage I just pull that one drone back and the rats follow it. If I want to reset the agro, I pop it into the bay.
Using remote reps on your drones was is and probably always will be a thing in PvE activities, as drones take damage there is no way to repair armor or hull without some form of remoter rep capability. Besides the remote reps on the ship itself there are armor and shield maintenance bots (drones that rep things) that can be used as well.
I never found remote reps useful for keeping a drone in the fight, but they are useful in keeping one alive while it comes back to the bay once it is taking damage. The other primary use is to repair drones after you complete a pocket (room) before moving on to the rest of the mission, this prevents wasted time needed to warp to a station to repair your drones.
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In fleet situations, usually some pilots will bring ships solely for remote repair work. If this interests you check out the Oneiros and Ninazu as goals to aspire toward, and the Exequeror (probably spelled wrong) as an interim.
When solo I do not recommend fitting or using these modules at all. The range isn’t there for repairing your own drones. It’s best to just accept occasional drone deaths.
Remote repair drones, however, fit a narrow niche. If flying duo or trio, these let your gang heal up each other (and each other’s drones) without the large opportunity cost of a full module slot. All you lose is some drone bay space.
What form of insanity is this?
Medium reps have can reach 10k to 15k and large can reach 20k to 25k both of these are more than enough range to make them useful as a tool to keep your drones alive and this is especially true for sentry drones.
You do not have to accept loosing drones in PvE content in this game, if you simply accept what the limits are. Range is the most important factor in this, keeping your drones close enough that they can be recalled to the bay, or at a minimum get back into range of your remote reps BEFORE they die is the key. How far out they can go will depend on what ship you are flying, your characters skills, the drones you are using and whether they have damage accumulated before you launch them. Here are some basic range numbers for illustration.
Sentry drones about 2k to 5k.
Heavies / Gecko about 8k to 10k.
Mediums about 10k to 15k.
Lights about 20k to 25k.
These ranges can be extended somewhat by the use of a remote rep since that rep can mitigate (cannot complete counter) the incoming damage a drone is taking. In general I find that I can add about one quarter the range of the reps you are using to the max range of your drones. As an example if I have lights at 20k and I am using a medium rep (12k to 15k range) then I can safely send my drones out an additional 2k to 3k and still get them back into the bay before they are dead. Figured this out years ago and have had to change the ranges slightly as CCP has made changes to drones and the AI but I have not lost a drone to NPC fire in a mission in more than two years.
For all that I mostly engage in market PVP and ganking, I do know missions and PVE sites well. I’ve done a lot of them to build security status (before tags) and standings.
Basic drone control range on a ship you’d care about drones on is over 50km (with a few basic skills trained). More if you fit modules to extend this (which is usually only done with sentry drones).
Light drones will constantly be at the end of this range in PVE, killing tackling ships before they get near you. Lights don’t get shot much but when they do they are dead.
Medium and heavy drones get shot all the time and take much longer to recall. Yes, you can in theory sacrifice all DPS for 20-30 seconds in order to have a chance to save your 660k ISK Hammerhead II, but it will usually die anyway.
Sentries are not something you sit on top of. In a Vexor, Vexor Navy or Ishtar, you deploy sentries, then speed tank the rats. You will often be 30-40km from your drones - a 15km range repper isn’t much use here.
Drones are like ammunition. You can be extremely frugal with ammunition, using tech 1 ammunition and making every shot count. Or you can accept that you’ll be a little wasteful, and accept higher ammo costs in exchange for killing rats faster. The latter is a strictly dominant strategy in EVE, where there is no shortage of PVE sites and hence no need to extract maximum value from each one.
I may or may not be doing it wrong, but it works for me.
I almost never let my drones fight at extended ranges, unless it’s on the last couple rats in the wave or it’s a larger rat that won’t target the smaller drone size.
I don’t want my drones to be taking agro, if one drone is, I call that one drone to orbit me, letting the rest of the group do work till the agro change.
It is now clear how and why you lose so many drones and it has nothing to do with the drones, the NPC or the AI, you lose so many drones because of YOUR choices as a pilot.
Because drones control range is 50k or more does not mean that you “should” use your drones at those ranges. Mine never go more than 25k to 30k in PvE and then only the lights and even those only under very rare circumstances. Yes at 50k sentry drones are effective against even the smallest and fastest NPC ships because at that range tracking is not a relevant factor
I never worry about those tackling NPC ships anyway but then I have this thing the call a tank on all my mission ships. See by using NOS and leaving them alive they litterally become my cap source needed to tank the extra damge I am taking because they have reduced my speed so in the end they are nothing more than a few moments extra effort.
Travel time alone makes sending medium and heavy drones out 15k or more a useless proposition. They will only get there a few seconds quicker than your speed fit ship and by keeping them in the bay you prevent them from taking a lot of damage.
If you are maximizing the abilities and the unique aspects of sentry drones there simply is no need to be 30k or more away from them. I can drop sentries in a level 4 mission, orbit the group of them at about 15k or less (wwell within the range of remote reps) and still maintain more than enough speed to avoid most of the incoming damage. Yes you are right I am losing out on the damage out put from 3 guns that have no bonuses to damage, but then I have room in my highs for those reps and that is a fair trade.
Wanted to isolate and respond to this one.
This is the source of all your drones loses and it has nothing to do with the game or any of it’s mechanics, this is a personal decision you make.
Considering drones like ammo and simply replacing them after every mission is not very common in PvE. In fact since I started in 2009 (different character) you are one of only a handful of people that I have ever heard or seen make that statement.
In the end it is all personal preference, if you want to consider drones ammo and replace them during or after every mission that is your choice so have fun. I choose to respond to what you post not because these things you post are wrong, I respond so that others reading this know that there are alternative ways of using drones in PvE, ways that do not require continual replacement.
The money wasted by playing that slowly costs you much more than three or four drones per play session.
I can’t fathom valuing my time so little that I wait for rats to slowboat to within 30 km before setting light drones on them.
Being scrammed by rats is always a risk even in a Marauder, and especially in more commonly used ships. Disconnects and surprise PVP both happen and not being scrammed when the unlucky DC happens, or when three to ten Taloses show on close Dscan will save you often.
I’ve only ever lost one ship to a PvE disconnect, but it was about 800 times the value of a Warrior II. I’d have lost several if I just tanked every rat.
I hardly ever loose drones, if I see a drone taking agro or damage, it usual means that you are beyond the lock range of the attacking ship and they lock up your drones because they ate closer(in my experience).
I recall that one drone to orbit me, and let the other drones eat their lunch while attackers are following the one drone, or I try to grab agro.
Just want to sum up the advantages / disadvantages:
Advantages:
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you can repair anything you can target that’s within range
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in PVP when a whole enemy fleet focuses all their guns on you because you’ve been called “primary target”, whatever regular armor or shield repair modules your ship has will never be able to cope with that kind of damage; what you have to do instead is fit armor plates or shield extenders (as much buffer hitpoints as possible), and rely on your entire fleet to focus all their remote repairers on you, to offset the huge damage coming from the enemy fleet.
Disadvantages:
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Relatively short range - the “logistics” ships have bonuses to the range of these modules, making the repairers a bit more viable. Regular ships are restricted to close range.
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Consumes capacitor energy - much like an armor repairer or shield booster for your own ship. Again, “logistics” ships can “remote capacitor” too, giving each other the energy required to operate these things, regular ships can run out of capacitor relatively fast, depending on the ship and the situation of course.
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Must target the ship or drone that you’re trying to repair - this makes electronic warfare / jamming ships the absolute nemeses of “logistics”; if you disrupt their targeting with ECM and/or remote sensor dampeners, they can’t repair. Their buddy is in dire need of repair and they can’t target, or it takes ages to target his ship. A second nemesis is energy neutralizers, which can drain the capacitor energy that the repairers need to function.
Venture that I waste significantly less time than you do. While you are waiting for your drones to get to those targets 30k to 50k out or more I simply launch sentry drones and start killing instantly. While you are wasting even more time waiting for your drones to move 20k to 30k to the next group again my sentries switch instantly and are killing before your drones even get there.
Yet again you show a complete lack of any ability to think outside your little box when it comes to drones. Or perhaps you are being willfully ignorant of the other options simply because you think it will make your case. Either way let me just use my forum sentry drones to shoot that down.
See I do not have to wait because ANYTHING even the speedy spider drones are easy prey for sentries when they are 30k or more out. And when they get too close for the sentry drones I simply keep killing what I can and wait that few seconds for them to get inside that magic 10k to 15k range thingy, then I do the nearly instant drone swap and have lights on the field to deal with the threat.
Now this one is precious worried about a few pixels on a computer screen.
Never un-dock what you cannot afford to lose, or something you are not willing to lose.
Most of those scramming rats you are concerned about are the first things that die to my sentries and usually when they are well outside their scram range. If not they become primary targets once they get closer than 10k to 12k. And the beauty of using sentries is that I do not have to “waste” time waiting for my drones to return to bay, they do so virtually instantly because I always keep them in recall range. So essentially you are rambling on about a risk that simply does not exist if you employ your drones properly.
This one goes back to the never un-dock what you cannot afford to lose or what you are un-willing to lose. DC are a reality and they can happen at any time and to any person. Personally my internet connection is so bad (drop out wise) that I lose 3 to 5 ships a year as a result of those DC. I used to be like you sending drones all over the map because I could, then I got tired of replacing ships to DC and started experimenting with how to prevent it to the largest extent possible and those experiments are in fact what lead me in large part to adopt the current methods of employing drones.
Who ever said you have to tank every rat and yet proximity agro on many of the groups in missions is yet another reason to keep your drones close. I have watched many players get drones out and about and lose track of where they are and hit a proximity trigger on a group they were not ready for or did not want to agro at that point in time.
Wanted to deal with this one separately and in a different way.
Before we can even start a discussion on the value of time spent in EvE we must define what metrics we are going to use to measure that value. So here goes a few thoughts.
The ONLY REAL VALUE to any computer game is what each of us gets out of it for entertainment and enjoyment, EVERYTHING else is irrelevant. You can have the richest character in all of EvE and it gains you nothing in real life other than the entertainment value from the pursuit of that goal. On the other end of the spectrum you can have nothing but the stuff CCP gives you when you start your character, do nothing but sit in that same station night after night counting the rotations on your ship spinning activities and have just as much fun as the person behind the richest character in all of EvE.
The only remotely tangible way we can place a value on time spent in EvE is the pursuit of ISK and the accumulation of stuff. If that is the metric that you had in mind when you posted the portion quoted here then using a drones ship is a failure from the moment the thought enters your mind because drones ship are terrible when making max ISK per hour is the metric you use to measure the value of time.
In the end what we really have in all computer games is the living embodiment of one mans trash is another mans treasures and as such there is no way that we can place a value on time that anyone else spends in this game.
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