Collected fragments from Observatories.
https://forums-archive.eveonline.com/message/5899067/
Wonder if its worth another look?
Both Drifter and Triglavian ships in the Abyss are found damaged, it’s likely that at least some of that damage is from combat with each other. Although Trig ships get repair bonuses so there is a hole in that logic. Their technologies are in some ways better than our own, or different. Might be that they can somehow last longer in the Abyss as opposed to simply being able to traverse it unmolested by the vagaries of that space. So the Drifters begin to take damage from the crushing depths and that blows the overshield thus triggering their DD.
Drifter ships are not really flown by intelligent pilots. My research, and others, suggest an infomorph intelligence operating a puppet on the main ship and slaving other ships from that. A good way to explore dangerous space if you don’t have many available clones. Which points to a lot of automation on the ship, and that shows when you fight a lot of them. The Overshield/DD combo is most likely automatic, but could have been triggered by a couple of factors.
Their technology not being perfect could be why the Triglavian ships are all biased towards remote repair. Thinking about it, also why their weapons, and, from the look of it, their logistics, ramp up in strength. The Rogue Drones appear to use filaments to enter Abyssal Deadspace, they have been found in Dronelands sites. I’m not sure about the Drifters; they have some interesting space travel technology but the Triglavians don’t use filaments. They seem to enter by other means and set up an exclave. Maybe they use some kind of acceleration gate to approach a location in Deadspace, something like the Eve gate, or a Drifter wormhole, but like the Eve gate in that you take damage as you get closer. So their power systems are designed to be adaptive. They could be using some phenomena like the ‘dead storms’:-
"Detorid marks “the edge of the once great Jove Empire” and is home to dead storms.
_ Dead storms are “yet to be discovered elsewhere. They appear randomly, centered around certain planets and ravage the area for days and then abruptly vanish.”_
_ “Current theory points to them being tears in the fabric of space, why they exist in the first place or the reason focal point around certain planets remains a mystery and will no doubt do so for some time yet.”