Feel free to laugh me out of the forum, but this is becoming a huge issue for me.

In Forsaken Hubs and Haven sites (the only 2 that I run), I usually fly a drone boat. The advice I am given by everyone I've told about this problem is "fit a gun, warp in, shoot to get the aggro, drop your drones, then wait for the magic to happen".

The problem I'm having is that rats in sites, even when I have no drones deployed, are just yellowboxing me and that's it. Because the rats are yellowboxing, my drones (which are on aggressive and focus fire) will not attack them.

When I was replicating the problem for a video earlier today, I warped into a forsaken hub and one rat attacked me, the rest just yellowboxed.

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Either this is a bug or it's a mechanic CCP have implemented to stop semi-AFK ratting. If it's a bug I will submit a report as I have the evidence, but if it's a mechanic implemented to stop semi-AFK ratting then I'm going to be pretty disgusted, as semi-AFK ratting has already been nerfed to the ground (relatively ****** ISK/h, huge risk).

Just wondering if I'm alone out there, as nobody I've asked knows why this is happening.

After years of grinding the same sites, and hundreds of bill, I know pretty much how these sites aggro.

50% of the time the initial spawn aggroes the drones, but shooting frigs and cruisers first in the first wave ensures you get aggro. I use a republic fleet target painter on them at all times.
Following 95% of the times rest of the spawns keep aggro on your main ship, or secondary ships you use.

5% of the times, the sites and sol system aggro drones in the following sites. I had this happen many times, for hours the spawns and sites kept aggroing my drones in the following waves.

My solution was to switch to another solar system when the 5% occourence happened.

Manny

Really? Drone aggro mechanics changed over 2 years ago.

See: http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/73413

This doesn't explain why I'm the only person out of the 10+ people I've asked who's having this issue.

Everyone else just warps in, gathers aggro, deploys drones, then returns to the screen 20 minutes later to either ISK or a wreckage. I have had incidents where I will be shooting a rat with no drones out and it still won't aggress me.

Try a target painter instead of a civ gun.

Rats hate EWAR, and your drones will thank you.

What range are your at?

All rats aren't the same, some races have longer ranged rats that aggro you at range while others have fewer of those kinds of ships. for example Blood Raiders (longer range) vs Serpentis (lots of shorter ranged npcs with them). Aggro range is important because npc behavior gets wacky if you are outside of their activation range.

I stopped using sentries a long time ago. I built a heavily tanked perma cap ECM bursting Dominix that used heavy drones for ratting, warped to zero on rats, turned on ecm burst and didn't worry about it anymore. Would lose like 1 heavy drone every 1-2 days and that was it.

Now i don't even do that much. FoF missile Navy Raven , warping to 100, for me. Not nearly as 'afk' as a drone boat (have to restart missiles every 5-6 minutes) but FoF missiles don't give a damn about aggro, they just keep shooting lol. I don't even deploy drones with the thing, except sometimes salvage drones, or ecm drones if some catches me before I can warp.