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.
Has anyone else seen this?