Guns on drone ships always feel a bit awkward. Items like these would let ships with drone bonuses focus on fielding drones.

Small +5m3 drone bay, +5Mbit/s bandwidth, +1 max drone, fitting stats like a small energy neutralizer
Medium +10/+10, +1 max drone, fitting stats like a medium energy neutralizer
Large +25/+25, +1 max drone, fitting stats like a large energy neutralizer

Thoughts?

@grumpy, so because hybrids were recently looked at, and gallente ships use hybrids (along with caldari ships), drones shouldn't see any changes? That doesn't really make much sense. In addition, the problem is that drone ships don't feel like they are using their turret systems at all so those ships haven't really benefited from the hybrid buff much.

I guess you could call this a buff for drone ships since it would give an option that wouldn't be useful to fit on other ships. However, I don't think drone ships are currently under powered, and wouldn't want this to be a buff, but rather an option. In the dominix example posted, the blaster version does 25% more damage than the drone version, and almost 40% more when you include the fact that you can overheat blasters but not overheat drones.

Ishtars and Gilas would not benefit as much from this because they could never fit the large units and would be restricted to the +10Mbit/s version.

I updated the OP with some more specifics.

With these two combined improvements, how does that effect the current situation with say Galentte capabilities. How for instance might it influence faction warfare between Galentte and others? (that despite player opportunities to cross train and use alternative races tech)

So i think it makes a lot of sense to ask these questions.

No drones dont need that, drones need a buff of a different kind.

They should be much tougher to kill, as they're the only weapon system that can be killed off in fight.
Heavy and medium drones need a speed buff, and tracking buff as well.
Light drones need speed and tracking buff, all light drones should be comparable to warriors in that regard.

Droneships are least desirable in PVP and incursions just because of that reasons above. Drones are too slow, have tracking issues of turrets and travel time issues of missiles and are too easy to kill off. So drones have even more drawbacks than missiles.

Their only advantage is the ability to carry drones with different speeds tracking and damage type.

In other games with pet classes pet usually has HP comparable to that of a hero, or slightly lower, and does comparable damage too, so an opponnent must make a decision whether to engage the pet or pet owner. However in Eve going after drones is almost always the best. I'm thinking of something to offset that, but unfortunately I dont have a good idea right now.

So maybe a module that links the drone's shields to the parent ship's shields could be useful?

It could require the parent ship to remain within a certain range to operate, but at that point firing on the drones would be pointless, as they would have a smaller sig than the parent, but share the same shield effectively.

Downside? The drones all lose their shields when the drone ship does too. This would also make drone ships logistically supportable more effectively by shield reppers too.

Given that the last "drone rebalancing" from CCP resulted in us getting fewer drones, perhaps a suggestion that would be more amenable to the development team would be as follows:
Small DCU: +5% Drone Damage/HP, 10PG, 20CPU
Medium DCU: +10% Drone Damage/HP, 200PG, 40CPU
Large DCU: +20% Drone Damage/HP, 2100PG, 70CPU

Where will neuts fit then, I ask you, on Gila/Ishtar/Pilgrim/Curse? DCU isn't the optimal solution as problem isnt with droneships being underpowered, but drones themselves underpowered.

It's a tradeoff.

You want a neut+drone fit you have to give up either drone DPS or neut capacity.

You must choose, but choose wisely.

That seems to be the main problem with drones currently, there just aren't enough choices to be made when fitting and flying a drone boat. I don't think anyone in this thread thinks drones are currently underpowered, just boring and incomplete compared to other weapon systems. The other issue is that drones do not scale with your ships fitting.

Reducing the number of drones seemed like an issue with lag (in addition to balance). Now that objects in space and the overview have been optimized, I think it is safe to let drone boats loose.

Which is why I made the counter-suggestion I did.

Right now there is no choice to be made in drone fits. You get sucky drone DPS (though the reach can make it worth it). No decision to be made.

If you want something to fit that will increase the drones' DPS it needs to be balanced appropriately. If you are getting 80+DPS out of a fitting (which the large DCU I posted would give on a full-skilled Domi, possibly over 100DPS each) it needs to have appropriate fitting requirements or it's overpowered.

While I like the overall idea of DCUs for subcapitals, simply using high slots wouldn't be enough. It would have to use a turret or launcher hardpoint too. otherwise you would simply put them on anything with utility highslots.

Marauders anyone ?
Pirate Faction ships anyone ?

Plus, your suggestion to add bandwidth, would give Marauders (and other ships which are not intended for them) access to Sentry (and heavy) drones.

Sentry Myrmidon anyone ?

I chose the 5% bonus for the light based on the Ishkur currently getting *no* damage bonus for it's drones.

It also follows the well established doubling scale for weapons systems with the large version finally giving the full +20% bonus.

This is just a guess at what the dev team would likely alight on as the final form given current scaling of both ships and modules.

One of the other things I like with your idea or my modified form is it lets a player run a Typhoon as a full drone boat, thus completing its versatility.

The downside (as a player) to my version is it lacks the versatility of using the extra drones to throw ECM types into the mix while maintaining decent damage.