Originally by: Felysta Sandorn

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Looking at the dev input, the blog, and everyone's input, I think this looks like a great idea... The way I see it is as follows:

Ships will all get a drone bay buff, perhaps up to double on smaller drone bays, and perhaps 1.5x on larger drone bays. The drone bandwidth will only let you use the un-buffed drone bay size though.

I'm guessing bandwidth would be measured in something like terrabits per second (TPS), where drone sizes would take different amounts of bandwidth, eg:
Light Drone: 10 TPS
Medium Drone: 20 TPS
Heavy Drone: 50 TPS

Taking the Drake as an example, the way I see it post patch:
Drone Bay: 50m3
Drone Bandwidth: 50 TPS

This means that you can not put 10 light drones in the bay rather than 5, but you can still only use 5 at a time. Alternatively you could put in a mix of lights and mediums and fly 2 meds and 1 light at a time. Basically, I see it working exactly the same as it does at the moment, but allows all ships with small bays to have spare drones. The bandwidth would basically determine what size of drone that ship is meant to use. This balances the overpowered Myrmidon and Eos, and gives underpowered drone boats (arbitrator, vexor, pilgrim) a little more flexibility, by giving spare drones. Some further examples for these ships to how I see this being implemented:

Arbitrator:
Drone Bay: 100m3
Drone Bandwidth: 100 TPS
(allowing for control of 5 medium drones, pretty much identical to how it is now, but with space in the bay for spares, perhaps 7 meds and 6 lights)

Myrmidon:
Drone Bay: 175m3
Drone Bandwidth: 150 TPS
(allowing control for three heavy drones simultaneously, leading to a more balanced ship. Alternatively two heavy drones, two medium drones, and one light drone. Also gives more space for spares)

Eos:
Drone Bay: 75m3 (+75m3 per Command Ship Level)
Drone Bandwidth: 100 TPS (+30 TPS per Command Ship Level)
(allowing for 150m3 and 130 TPS at Command Ship 1, up to 450m3 and 250 TPS at Command Ship Level 5, which equates to being able to control 5 heavy drones at level 5, 4 heavies and 1 light at level 4, and down. Not really a nerf to highly skilled pilots, but balances the ship with the rest of the command ships for people without Command Ship 5. Also gives a hell of a lot of space for spare drones, and extra loadouts (ie armour bots) for longer journeys)

You know what... I'm loving this idea already... What does a guy have to do to get a job in CCP around here?

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