Originally by: Mr Krosis

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I would say the conclusion is there is no simple answer.

Does drone navigation make your drones orbit speed faster? Yes.

Does a faster orbit speed make your drones hit less? Not necessarily.

The only time this really shows up as a "bad" thing is if your target is not moving or webbed which forces your drone into a perfect orbit. This is always a bad thing for oversized drones regardless of your level in drone nav.

I tested this just a little bit now, sending Ogre I and Hammerhead I against a stationary frigate (Jaguar Assault Frigate, Sig Radius: 34m). The drone controller had drone navigation level 3 (+15% orbit speed).

Out of 300 shots over 10 minutes, the Ogre I had 297 misses and 3 wrecking hits. This is a heavy drone orbiting and shooting at a stationary frigate. Would drone nav at level 5 made this any worse? Probably not. I then started flying the frigate in a straight line at 290m/s (just over the drones orbit speed). Angular velocity went down to about 0.001, and hit rate went up to about 100% (I'll attribute the 1 in 10 misses to the fact that I was 500m into falloff)

For the Hammerhead I, out of 300 shots it had 89 hits and 211 misses. The tracking guide shows that I should get a 30% hit rate with that drone at that range, so that seems about right. Based on other observations, I would guess that raising drone nav to lvl 5 would lower that down to 25% or so.

Personally, I don't think these numbers matter much because how often do you fight a frigate that doesn't move? As soon as your target starts moving, the drones go into a follow path and the transversal between them and the target goes way down. Once your target is moving, would you rather have drones that can't keep up with the target or drones that are fast enough to stay on top of them?

My personal opinion on this matter is that there is not much difference between drone nav 4 and 5. Or at least there is nothing specific about going from level 4 to level 5, and sharpshooting has nothing to do with it. With 5 you'll get the expected advantage, faster drones that can keep up with things. The main disadvantage is if you are using oversized drones they won't hit stationary targets as well. It is certainly not the "sky is falling end of the world" drones all of the sudden stop working type thing some people make it out to be. If they were going to miss at nav5, they were probably going to miss at nav4 as well.

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