After doing some pve I recall my drones, some of which have taken armor damage. When I hover my mouse over their health bars in my drone bay, it shows that they are at 80% armor or whatever. Next, I warp to a friendly upwell structure and tether. After being tethered for a few seconds, the armor percentage of the damaged drones drops once, then climbs incrementally as they are repaired, all while in my drone bay.
The first couple of times this happened I wasn’t sure I’d seen it right, but I’ve been reproducing it consistently. Today I was in a Gila with some Imperial Navy Infiltrator drones in my drone bay. I looked carefully at one of them and saw it was at 54% armor. I warped to an upwell structure, saw that tether was engaged, and watched the drone health. Suddenly its armor HP dropped to 0% and it didn’t repair at all.
My undamaged drones are not affected. And if the drone’s armor HP is 99% then I do not see a drop. It’s only the significantly damaged drones where I see this.
My working theory is that maybe the tethering repair process removes a drone HP bonus but keeps the damage amount–maybe it removes the ship hull bonus, or maybe the Drone Durability skill. I’ve observed this mostly in my Gila. I think I’ve seen this in my Vexor too. I should confirm that, and I should try it in a ship without a drone HP bonus too.
i don’t recall tethering in a ship with a bonus to HP, but i know when i tethered to repair a ship, usually my raven, it repairs the drones to max for all 3 slots.
No, I haven’t seen it myself but will pay attention next time I’ve got drones with armor damage.
I wonder what’s causing it, maybe a wrong calculation of ship bonuses while on tether like you suggested, or an error or delay in the display of drone hitpoints when healed.
I wonder if it also applies to drones that are being repaired by remote armor repairers, or only tether. And if it applies to hull damage too or only armor.
Luckily this bug, if it exists, seems to have no negative consequences. In the worst case you need to repair your drone a bit longer!
I confirmed that tethering also reduces drone hull % if they are damaged. This was in a Vexor. I took a Praetor II down to about half hull and recalled it to my drone bay. When I tethered, the drone’s hull dropped to about 0% before it started repairing.
Bug report submitted with before tethering and after tethering screenshots.
Have you tested your DPS value of the drones in the fitting screen while under tether?
You can also check the drones HP with ‘show info’ on one of them in the ships drone UI window, to see if the real HP value changes or just the damage percentage.
I attempted this in a Gila with Imperial Navy Infiltrators.
The ship fit window showed the same drone dps before and after tethering.
I tried ‘show info’ on a damaged drone in my drone bay, and it showed the same total armor HP before and after tethering. (This is total undamaged armor capacity.)
The Show Info window does not show me the damage to the drone while it is in the drone bay, it needs to be deployed. So I deployed the damaged drone. It was hard for me to measure accurately because it was repairing at this time and I have some lag, but it appeared to me that when I deployed the drone, its armor % jumped back up to the pre-tethered value plus a heal tick or two, and the armor damage amount in the Show Info window was less damage than before tethering.
So, I think this is indicating that the bug is with the % displayed in the drone window rather than with actual damage taken by the drone?
