AOE short range tracking disruptor

I don't know if they are OP. At least in EFT, drone boats don't achieve massively more damage than gun boats (when equivalent tech level drones/guns are used), the drone skills are organized like the Gunnery skills, so that achieving T2 takes a long time, and otherwise people lose them all the time. Even the NPCs shoot drones now; CCP has published the details so we know how to minimize that risk, but send a drone boat into a mission with waves or random surprise elites, and the drones are screwed.

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EDIT: I'd go for drones having to use high slots, if:

- drones become untargettable (just like missiles and guns)
- if you want to disable the drones, you have to ewar my ship (just like with missiles and guns)

So that means that a lot of ships that are limited to 5 drones (bandwidth) suddenly gain the full use of their 7-8 high slots, which is nice. And, instead of just shooting my drones to disable them, now you have to bring a buddy with an EWAR ship with strong enough jammers to beat my ship's sensor strength. Which is, again, very nice for me. And finally, those stupid NPCs don't shoot my drones anymore, and I can afk-mission again.

So yeah, go for it.

1: Drones be made susceptible to various forms of ewar. Anyone who has tried neuting a drone will know that no good comes of it. I think that the ability to neut, jam, TD etc. drones would be helpful in allowing fleets to decrease incoming drone damage at least partially.

And, instead of just shooting my drones to disable them, now you have to bring a buddy with an EWAR ship with strong enough jammers to beat my ship's sensor strength. Which is, again, very nice for me. And finally, those stupid NPCs don't shoot my drones anymore, and I can afk-mission again.

I've never understood why the gallante couldn't use more than 5 drones when other ships can fit more than 5 turrets.

You can shoot a blaster ship, but you can also use ewar against it. I guess my main complaint is that with drones in their current state, DPS is the only way to take care of them, and Eve has proven to be a game where there are multiple solutions to any problem. I just don't think drone boats shouldn't have to worry about electronic warfare like the rest of the ships in eve.

This post is just my opinion on drone mechanics in Eve Online. Feel free to respond to it with your own thoughts.


Problem:

Here's the way I see it, the other weapon systems in eve online can be disrupted in some way or another, almost like shortcuts.

Daredevil's blaster dps is too strong for your little comet to handle? Neut his ass and negate the dps. Shortcut!

Corax's rockets are managing to hit your kiting ship? Tracking disrupt him and reduce his range. Shortcut!

You're trying to kill a vexor, but you cant tank his drones for any significant amount of time, and he has too many spare drones for you to kill all of them? Too bad. Regardless of whether you ECM, neut, TD, or damp that vexor, his drones are still going to be on you.


Proposal:

I think that to reduce the OPness of drones, without killing their usefulness outright, ONE of two things should happen.

1: Drones be made susceptible to various forms of ewar. Anyone who has tried neuting a drone will know that no good comes of it. I think that the ability to neut, jam, TD etc. drones would be helpful in allowing fleets to decrease incoming drone damage at least partially.

2: Add modules aimed at reducing the effectiveness of drones/drone boats. For example, a high slot module that acts as an AOE short range tracking disruptor that only works on drones to reduce their effectiveness? Or maybe a module similar to the standard tracking disruptor for targeted ewar that reduces a ship's bandwidth or drone control range?

You can shoot a blaster ship, but you can also use ewar against it. I guess my main complaint is that with drones in their current state, DPS is the only way to take care of them, and Eve has proven to be a game where there are multiple solutions to any problem. I just don't think drone boats shouldn't have to worry about electronic warfare like the rest of the ships in eve.

Smartbombs, trackingdisruptors, ecm and webs all work against drones, so i really dont see what the issue here is.

You can jam drones. Once evil french men jammed my drones in my worm and I was hopeless against couple t1 frigates with only rockets as dps.

This is not an argument.

A blaster ship has more HP than a drone. Ergo, a DPS race may prove difficult and this justifies a need for solutions to exist aside from DPS. That makes it part of the balance equation.

A drone has a pitiful amount of HP and dies quickly. Just about any form of damaging weaponry can be used to kill a drone, provided you don't take this to extremes and try to snipe a drone with a capital turret or something. Therefore, there is no need for multiple methods of dealing with it. You always have the "choice" to focus on drones instead of focusing on the ship itself, and some fits are better for it.

Alternative methods of getting around a problem exist when there is a balance reason to justify it. When there is not, you simply end up making a thing bad.


If your true, unspoken concern is that drones appear too effective and are the current meta then allow me to ease your concerns -- they are not too good. They are simply braindead and require minimal player skill to use successfully. Most gamers tend to veer towards the unskilled side of the spectrum, thus making the option of piloting droneboats a popular one.

Given that most EVE players tend to be rather aged, you shouldn't be expecting too many of them to be transversal wizardry gods or anything of the sort. These kind of crutches need to exist for the playerbase to remain happy. Be at peace.

tl;dr you can shoot drones but in most realistic scenario's it's a stupid thing to do.

A light Drone on an Algos has about 1k EHP and a tiny sig radius... which might not sound like a lot but when you have up to 12 of them to chew through it becomes significant, add in the fact there are sometimes abandoned drones lying round in plexes and gates where pvp happens and he can connect to those aswell. By the time you've chewed through all that drone ehp with the sig of a pod you still have to kill algos itself with another 10k ehp. now you could try chewing through all of that EHP, but you'd be better to just focus down the hull itself in most situations involving drone boats.

It makes sense to focus down the drones when you're fighting a non drone ship that uses a small drone bay to supplement dps it's nearly always worth killing their drones first, or if the drone boat is kiting away from you and you can't hit his hull with your main dps like if you're in a merlin and a tristan is kiting you just pop his drones, but if you're the one kiting it's better to just outrun the drones and focus on the hull.