''Drone repair bay'' sunds really good or may be the possibility of taking drones from cargo bay into drone bay and back, perhaps with some time penaltie like if you are ''moving'' them from one bay to another.

I agree. Drone boats need something to make them feel like Drone boats. Drone boats should come equiped with Drone repair bays with repair bonuses per level.

You want drones repped out in space, fit a Remote Armor Repair System.

As for the general idea, as was already stated, the main drawback of the sentry drones is their immobility. One idea I saw about this and could support is an option to quickly stow them into the cargo (not drone) bay from afar.

they use to do that...only...We kinda ran into this problem where drone boats would spawn more drones then people's ability to store ammo on their ships...

You want drones repped out in space, fit a Remote Armor Repair System.

As for the general idea, as was already stated, the main drawback of the sentry drones is their immobility. One idea I saw about this and could support is an option to quickly stow them into the cargo (not drone) bay from afar.

EVE is supposed to be a trade off.

Sentry drones do lots of damage, but don't move. That is the trade off.

You want your drones to move, do not use sentry drones. You want drones to do massive damage, then they aren't going to move.

right now drones especially sentries are not in need of a buff.

a large part of the benefit of sentries is that they can be dropped and moved away from. This means you give your target the option of attack you or the drones.

allowing you to move them with you means they may as well just be guns on your ship.

what might be nice is for the to have something like a siege timer where they have to anchor to be able to fire, but can stop firing and be recalled.

Actually, drones are in need of a great many buffs. Raw damage is pretty low on the list of what is wrong with them though.


They are ludicriously easy to kill. Ewar drones are just plain crap. Their AI has the IQ of a rock. They are almost physically painful to use. Their skill requirements are monsterous if you are using them as a secondary weapons system, your ship looses a slot to them if they are primary.

The UI is what is most in need of reworking. It's almost unusable, has been for a long time. The only thing that made it tolerable was that you didn't have to fiddle with it constantly once you had aggro in the mission---- now the AI of the rats has an unnatural hunger for the things and they are a micromanaging nightmare with the worlds clunkiest UI.

Survivability is the second biggest problem. Others can burn their weapons out or run out of ammo, both things completly under their control. Drones can be popped out of space with stupid ease---their signatures are huge, their HP are tiny. Even with several Omni Tracking Links they won't orbit outside of smartbomb range. I personally liked a suggestion I read that would make them untargetable like missles, but still vunerable to smartbombs and maybe make them vunerable to defenders. At least their survivability would be more on me paying attention when I see a bomb go off. The other route is to radically reduce their signiture size and/or buff the HP to the levels that match their sig.

Other problems are primarily just tweaks needing to be made to the overall system. Ewar drones in particular are difficult to balance because Ewar itself is difficult to balance.

- if drones could orbit outside of smartbombs you are make a item which it's main purpose is to counter drone obselete
- ewar drones should not be particularly effective, the 20 second lock break they can give is invaluable I don;t know what the situation is now, but 5 small ewar drones use to completely lock down ships in some fights.
- surviveability is only a major issue with PVE. but this goes back to the point of the aggressiveness of npc ai.
- drone target selection is poor, but should be managed by the player anyway, i'd prefer they went idea after each target.
- apart from t2 sentries the skill requirements for drones is actually relatively low, especially when you consider all of the supporting skills needed for effective guns of missiles.

- Smartboms also counter frigs. I don't see a lot of harm with using a special drone module (OTL) in valuable med-slot to protect your drones. Imagine that you could burn all your target's ammo with a smartbomb when it start to shoot you - it's the same for drone-based ships.
- There are other ewar drones beside ECM ones. ECM drones are frustratingly random but useful. I suggest their reworking or removing. Rest of ewar drones just plain terrible and should never be used.
- Drone survivability is a huge problem in PvP fro drone-oriented ships. Sentries are somewhat durable but they make you a sitting duck which is bearable only for carriers.
- Worst part of drone skills is memory as a primary stat.

In priority the drone changes I would personally love to see would be:

Drone UI Overhaul >>> Drone Mechanics Adjustment (things like drone MWD overshoot etc.) > Drone re-balance (Amarr and non-ECM EWAR drones come to mind) > and once that is all done some Drone buffs provided fixing all those existing issues hasnGÇÖt made them OP (in-bay drone repair, over-heat-ability, sentry remote recall or whatever else)

And all that with a healthy re-evaluation done at each and every step along the way.

I am pretty sure CCP wouldn't be adverse to that either given infinite time and resources, but with the current path they are taking I am at least confident that it will happen someday GÇô just not sure when.