Any good resources for learning how to use drones in combat? I’ve read the wiki, watched some videos, etc. But a lot of these resources don’t delve much into the micromanaging that’s required during fights.
Last night I tried my first T0 Tristan Electrical in Abyss (per Uriels guide) and the first room had three lancers that killed all 8 of my drones (Acolytes, as recommended). They took damage very quickly so it was hard to manage the injured ones…
Second room had one ship that could out- DPS my two guns so I died.
So apart from better drone skills or buying more pricy faction drones, I’m curious what the best drone ship pilots use as groups, hotkeys, strategy, etc.
Also… Why does that fit use Acolytes specifically?
There are two reasons to use a specific faction of drones.
One is that each of the drone factions have a different dps versus speed balance (warriors really fast but lower damage, hobgoblins higher damage but slow, hornets and acolytes in between) and the acolytes may be a good combination of enough speed and damage.
Another possible reason is that each of the drone types deal another type of damage. I don’t know from the top of my head if electrical abyssal site enemies have a resistance hole, but it could very well be that the acolytes are chosen to deal that type of damage. Most likely this is the reason.
As to drone management: keep an eye on their hitpoints, stay close to the drones and when you see one start taking damage recall it. Better drone skills will help.
Yeah you are right. Electric Abyss lowers EM resist which is what acolytes do as DMG type. Thanks.
Does anybody know of a quick way to micromanage hurt drones? I haven’t found a faster way to return injured drones other than right clicking and choosing a folder to send them to. That seems slow…
So of I can drag that’s way easier. Can do I the same to launch one? I want to avoid Shift-F so I don’t re-launch injured drones until their shields are regenerated
This video is a PvP scenario but shows quite some drone management. Most are actually done with Shift+R, F, or drag & drop for individual drones.
It’s a great skill to have with any drone ship.
If you really want to get some extra knowledge about drones, I have written a longer guide here: [GUIDE] Advanced Drone Handling
Here’s some drone agro stuff I wrote in another post.
Do note that different rats can have different A.I.'s, so some rats might eat up your drones no matter what you do (in which case, it’s better to not use drones).
First, you can move your ship(s) up the agro table relative to your drones by:
Doing more damage with your ship
Having more Ewar (this includes the autotargeter for some reason)
Spider tanking
Remaining in range of the rats (so that they are less likely to switch to the drones that remain in range)
Furthermore, you can:
Train Drone Durability, Drone Navigation, and any ship skills that increase drone HP.
Make sure you are redboxed before launching drones.
Keep an eye on agro, and pull your drones in if you lose it.
Prioritize webbing frigs, as they will increase damage application to drones and slow their return to your drone bay.
I’ve also heard some voodoo about ejecting from your ship to reset agro, but have never tested it.
There are also some implants that increase drone HP, but they are kind of expensive, and may come with penalties.
Finally, I treat T1 and T2 drones as expendable, and avoid using expensive faction drones in content where I expect a lot of losses.
Thanks for sharing this! Yeah many videos are longer and go over the stats and theory of drone use, but it’s useful to see people’s drone skills in action.
These two points were definitely my downfall. What I did was launch when I got into room, before aggro. Then reacting too slowly to recall drones.
Sounds silly, so I’ll be sure to test it at some point just for the sake of curiosity. If you eject next to your ship and then it gets hit with missiles, could your pod take splash damage?
As I heard the voodoo of ejecting from your ship, you don’t need to do it in combat, just somewhere in space like a safe spot in the middle of nowhere. Never tried it myself though.
In case you do this in combat: Keep in mind when you eject from your ships it will lose all bonuses provided by your character (skills based, implants based, running combat boosters / drugs based and so on) and I assume your active modules shut down too (hardeners, shield boosters / armor reps and so on) thus your ship’s resistances, buffer and most if not all stats go downhill (not to mention your ship will become stationary significantly increasing incoming damage to begin with) to the point it might make your ship explode pretty fast even if with you flying it it can tank everything easy.
