I’ve been working with drones a lot, flying ships that use drones as a primary or supplemental source of damage. I’m also old, and the systems for drones are largely the same as when I started this game - simple but one-note, requiring absolute minimum input, and sometimes, giving far more than is warranted for such little effort.
Drones have always been an interesting subject for me, because I love the idea of controlling lots of little worker bees like an RTS game. The power fantasy of being a carrier pilot still appeals to me, but drones are in such a weird place in EVE right now. I think it’s time they got a bit of a touchup, and here is my suggestion.
Drone Control Interface
A new high slot module. Can only be fit to certain ships.
Only one may be fitted per ship.
The Drone Control Interface requires training in Drones. The tech 2 version requires Drones V.
While active, this module works similarly to Bastion Modules, Industrial Cores, and other mode-switching features on ships. Your ship’s velocity and agility are reduced. Your ship’s other weapon systems either cannot be activated or are significantly reduced in effectiveness. Your ship’s drones receive bonuses to their speed, tracking, hit points, and damage, and you can control drones from much farther (effectively eliminating passive drone link augmentors and changing how passive drone modules work). While active, your drones have reduced priority from NPC enemies and they take reduced damage from AOE affects such as smartbombs.
All ships designated Drone Ships can fit a DCI. All other ships cannot, and any ship that is not a “Drone Ship” has their Drone Bay reduced to 25 m3 total. This allows for utility drones like salvagers, miners, EW, and light logi drones to be used by any ship. However, combat drones and new support-type drones are solely the territory of Drone Ships that can fit the Drone Control Interface, alongside other modules.
Drone Flights and Controls
No more passive drones. Drones cannot be set to auto-engage, will not switch targets automatically, and must be commanded to target enemies like any other weapon system.
In order to provide a slight education curve from Drone Ships to Carriers, Drones will now be assigned to “Drone Flights.” These are essentially drone groups that you can assign to hotkeys such as 1, 2, and 3, and issue individual orders to. Selecting your ship’s capacitor allows you to control your ship, selecting the Drone Flight on the UI or pressing your hotkeys allows you to select that group. This is important because…
More Than 5 Drones
Through the use of other modules, likely high slot modules that require an active Drone Control Interface (similar to compressors and an Industrial Core), players may be able to control more than 5 drones. Perhaps the Drone Control Interface allows +1 active combat drone per level of Drones, but each “Drone Flight” can only have 5 drones in it at once. This means that you could have a flight of lights and a flight of mediums. Support drones may also go above the combat drone limit, but would require their own support module, as suggested in my next point.
New Drone Types
“Support Drones” could be singular drones that each require a module to be deployed, such as the aforementioned “Support Drone Controller.” They could vary in type and function, such as a support drone that pulses shield restoration to your other drones (not ships) in space, or perhaps target paints a specific target to provide bonuses. Only one of these drones could be deployed per “Controller” fit, but they could be deployed in addition to combat drones, meaning you could control more than 5 total drones at once.
Other New Drone-Specific Modules
Other new modules could include something like the Support Drone Controller which allows you to launch 1 additional drone in the “support” category. You could update Drone Navigation Links and make it so that tracking computers or other modifiers are now Drone-specific bonuses, preventing people from doubling up on benefits for drones and turrets. These modules can only be activated if there is an active Drone Control Interface.
New Hull Bonuses
It could be possible to keep hull bonuses relatively the same or adjust as necessary. However, it may be preferable to move hard bonuses like “50% drone hit points and damage” off of hulls and instead put them onto the Drone Control Interface, or new modules entirely. It would likely be better to encourage what types of drones a specific ship can fly - light, medium, heavy, sentry, logi, etc. - by manipulating these bonuses on the hull.
New Fitting Options
With the changes proposed above, all sorts of new modules specific to drones and Drone Ships would be available. This shakes up the meta for Drone Boats themselves a bit - perhaps target painting could also be more beneficial to drones, encouraging them to be used as more than aggro management? Maybe the fitting requirements for drone-boosting modules requires sacrificing speed or a tank, so that these ships are vulnerable once you get past their web of drones or allies?
Won’t This Just Cause More AFK Ishtars?
Before you come in here talking about the “AFK Botters” problem, consider this: AFK Botters will always find new ways to AFK bot. CCP taking away interesting player options and interactivity because “botters will use this” only hurts we who actively play the game. Also, people still AFK rat in Ishtars, maybe if we made drone gameplay more interactive it would require them to be at their computers.
Also. All drones should be normalized, except for damage types and base hull values. All drones should have the same speed, tracking, and damage multiplier at each tech level, with the potential that all faction drones might have more HP, ‘augmented’ drones do more damage, and tech 2 drones have higher stats overall, or whatever - but the only difference between Amarr, Minmatar, Caldari, and Galente drones should now be the type of damage they deal.
Anyway. This essay brought to you by a supremely tired drone lover who wants drones to be actually kinda cool.
