And don’t send heavy drones out to anywhere near your control limit. It’s a nice way to watch them pop if they do catch aggro. And they will.
I usually fly in a gila, which is certainly not optimal but it’s fun and feels slightly more challenging^^
I kill frigates with the rapid lights first and attack cruisers and larger ships with my drones. I’m certainly not a very efficient player that’s for sure. 
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Sounds like you have fun doing it, and that’s kind of the point, so keep doing what you’re doing if you are. If you’re not…Then figure something else out.
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I personally like the Gila as well, as medium drones still have decent application to frigates when compared to heavies, so I use it for ratting instead of an Ishtar or Domi, or for running lvl3 missions when I was an Alpha.
Sometimes I didn’t even bother using light missiles to whittle down frigates, and just used my drones to deal with them first, before moving on to other bigger stuff, because I had brought the wrong ammo. 
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You’re quoting old information from 2017 which hasn’t worked for years to push a point that no one is arguing for. No one here wants people to be able to AFK run sites and make billions a day. But there are better ways to target those specific players and not harm the functionality of drones in all PVE situations.
And if you’re limited to 4 locked targets?
This is stupid and will cost you subscribers and no I don’t “bot”. I do play with drones and this is just going to annoy me. Considering how many times CCP has gone out of their way to annoy many of their customers this year I don’t think this is wise from a business standpoint.
I know you won’t listen. You do whatever you want despite any feedback. It’s the one thing that CCP is consistent about.
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Yes, there was no one arguing, but asking a question, on how people run null sec anomalies AFK without dealing with drones dying, as they never did null sec anomalies.
My point is that there are methods to mantain aggro on your ship, no matter if older methods still work or not.
Which ship is that? Is that for Alpha skills?
Alpha players will be the least affected, as they aren’t able to multibox in the first place, so they would be actively fighting stuff.
I have ratted and done lvl3 missions on a gila just fine as an alpha, and never ran into any lack of targetting slots as I worked my way up from frigates to battleships.
When you use different ships and different weapon systems, you are supposed to have different targetting queues and priorities, that’s all.
None of them have worked for at least a year, if not two and they’re largely dependent on the type of rats you’re fighting.
No, it’s a particular type of space that reduces your number of locks.
This isn’t targeting multiboxers. It’s targeting low/no attention players, single or multibox. And as we’ve seen already, people single boxing are going to be effected.
So, you have little to no experience with actual difficult content that will be adversely affected by this change.
First I’ve heard of this and I’ve been playing a long time. Then again, my primary gameplay is PVP and I play the market game and do industry for income. There was a point in time in the last year where I did the whole afk ratting thing, because it doesn’t take infrastructure to do, and is simple to set up. Do I think it should be a thing? No. Do I know how it works? Yes. Do I think this change will stop afk ratting? No. But it will effect gameplay in many other areas of the game.
I dont like this change.
Started playing Eve 3 month ago. Skilled one month of it to get an Ishtar, because I like to watch my ship orbiting the combat site and the drones will handle the rats. Got enough to do with the intel and watching the local. I think it’s barely possible to rat afk. The neuts will come for the ESS and kill the AFK ratter on the way to the ESS. Searched a relaxing game after work, maybe Eve isn’t the game I’m looking for after this patch.
Back again to this point.
Reading through the thread again, please confirm if these are the points you are trying to bring up.
For PvP, the only perspective you have pointed out is that now drones will automatically go after any enemy capsuleer attacking the player, without requiring a command.
Thinking of this point of view, I can agree that shouldn’t be the case, and maybe this change should apply to PvP as well, so players don’t get a freebie in PvP situations only, as they might not even have noticed they were being attacked in the first place.
If that’s not the point, of if there’s any other big changes regarding PvP, please point it out.
Regarding the abyss, the main issues brought up were about ECM. I agree that it’s a point worth bringing up.
Regarding battleship lock times and limited targetting slots, I don’t believe it’s a point worth bringing up, as there’s ways to counter and adapt to the change, from auto targetting units that increase your number of max targets, to keeping a proper targetting queue.
You mentioned the ship that is limited to only 4 target slots on a very specific situation, which will be greatly affected by this change.
If that’s the case, please point that ship and the environment it’s at clearly, and any other similar cases, and maybe you’ll be able to convince more people that it’s a major change for certain players in very specific situations.
Now here comes the 3 month old players complaining directing their drobes is hard …
While they krab in null.
Fml this game needs a good colonic.
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No, you got that one right.
And sensor damps.
Given I rat nearly daily with an Arbitrator in Gammel manually, I dispute this point.
Which also fall under the category of ECM, but okay.
Alright!
Now here’s something worth discussing about! 
From what I’m aware, Pochven already has many other issues, like insta locking drifters from 100Kms away, the standing grind, amongst others, so it definitely needs more work imo.
So, back to the drone behavior change.
Is the Pochven scenario more related to PvP, PvE, or both? How much is it affected?
Clearly a player of experience ratting in high sec in an Amarrian drone boat. Ratting in Low and High sec are a different activity all together from ratting in Null Security space. Ratting in Null Security space is required in order to keep your systems defensible. It’s also boring af. CCP has tried to make it more interesting with the recent ESS update, but the AFK ratting meta gives little in response to the bounty income changes based on system pvp activity, since even at the minimum bounty value, a single ratting vexor can make 7-8m per 20 minutes with little to no input.
Most importantly, ratting in null security space is repeatable in the same system. You don’t have to move systems and search for anomalies like you do in low/hi, which lends itself to botting and afk ratting.
I will go ahead and repeat the issue I have with this change. It will only minorly effect those people who have been taking advantage of this system for decades and is more likely to harm players who aren’t related to this system disproportionately.
In the Pochven scenario, this is primarily a PVE problem. The sites themselves are difficult for a single player (I’ve watched many Ivy League vexors die to the simplest of Pochven sites). The rats are intelligent enough to target drones, so drone control is important in the matter of keeping your drones alive. However, you want your drones to target smaller targets while it’s important for you to remove cruisers and battleships as quickly as possible to keep the sites dps from overwhelming your ship’s tank. With most ships having a max of 4 locked targets, 5 with max skills and 6 with max skills and an auto targeting system, plus the fact that doing these solo in anything under a battleship is nearly impossible, means you’re more likely to be overwhelmed by ships - since your drones won’t automatically engage the frigates which still do a good deal of damage.
This is another case in which the single account player would be more adversely affected by the change. I run 5 accounts when I do these. I don’t bother with drones because they’ve been a bad weapon system for a long while when not used en mass.
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This.
Remember the comments asking CCP to implement harder and more dynamic content, that makes people fleet up and etc, instead of changes like this?
CCP probably designed these sites with making them extremely harsh on single players, requiring them to fleet up, just like with incursions.
The restriction on locked targets might even be a way to force players to bring more people, just to be able to target enough things and manage incoming damage.
It’s the same for me trying out solo Abyss T2 on a worm, and dying on rooms that have way too many enemies to handle alone.
The content was designed to be done in a fleet in the first place, and if done solo on a cruiser, the difficulty would go down, but so would the rewards.
Like you mentioned before, the people farming sites on Pochven are definitely active, and some will be affected by this change, but they can rely on other methods to deal with frigates if they are using a battleship solo, or bring more people to rely on.
They are doing fresh end game content after all, so it shoudln’t be hard to adapt.
Not a bad change imo.
Wont affect me at all.
The goal posts you set are met by Gammel and many many other systems.
I stand by my supposition based on what info CCP has supplied that if you use Drones efficently, you wont see a change at all.
With 5 characters I get a reduced payout for site completion compared to if I do the site with 4. Overall, I make more money with 5, but the value per character is reduced, meaning I’m above the recommended number of pilots in the site.
The most efficient way to use drones is to not use them. Drone travel time is terrible, drone application is terrible, drone damage is terrible. The only saving grace to drone ships was fitting ease and ease of use.
And the only way to win is not to play vOv
The only reason for this is because CCP keeps making changes based on Null space statistics that effect the rest of the game adversely. And while one change may not effect the entire game to a point of breaking it, continual small changes over the course of 10 years that adversely effect the entire game when targeting null security space destroys the viability of those weapon systems outside of null space. If the actual problem is AFK ratters in null, focus on fixing null security anomalies such that afk ratting is no longer viable, not the weapon system that is used by most everyone.