Drone mechanics: Difference between revisions

Even if you never fly a dedicated droneboat, if you run [[mission]]s or tackle [[exploration]] sites you will want to use drones. Why? As you begin to fly medium and large ships, frigate-sized NPC enemies become increasingly hard to kill. It may sometimes be impossible to kill them using medium-sized weapons (let alone large ones!) once they settle into a close orbit around you.

To compound the problem, in tougher exploration sites and level 3 and 4 missions frigates can be the most dangerous enemies, because they can [[Lexicon#point|warp-scramble]] and/or [[Lexicon#web|web]] you; certainly, bigger ships will deal more damage to you, but you can always run away from them, while scrambling frigates can hold you down and let their allies kill you.

For this reason, it's a good idea to be able to field at least a full flight of five light drones when you begin to attempt level 3 missions. Even if you're flying a battlecruiser with a 50m³ drone bay for level 3 missions, it may be wise to bring five light drones rather than five mediums, to deal with the frigate problem.

 

If you're flying a battleship with a reasonable drone bay and decent support skills, such that your primary weapons can kill cruisers reasonably fast (e.g. a [[Raven Navy Issue]] - which has a 100m³ drone bay - fitted with rigor rigs, for example), you may also want to consider bringing a flight of light drones and three sentry/heavy drones. The sentries or heavies can do some DPS to cruiser targets (sentries work quite well on them when their angular velocity is low) and can augment your DPS against battlecruisers and battleships. This will entail extra skill training, unless you've trained sentries or heavies for some other purpose.

Rats will generally attack the biggest threat they see, and prefer to go after similar-sized targets. Therefore, frigate rats may attack your light drones and above, cruiser rats may attack your medium drones and above, and battleship rats may attack your heavy/sentry drones. In particular, elite rats (see [[NPC Naming Convention]]) have a higher probability of attacking your drones. At the extreme end, [[Sleeper]] NPC are very fond of attacking drones, so much so that solo drone boats are very difficult to use in wormhole PvE.  

Therefore, in order to minimise your drone losses, keep an eye on their health - if they start taking damage, order them back to your drone bay (which will cause the rats to target something else, usually your ship). Also, using your ship's weapons on the rats attacking your drones may divert their attention (your ship can take much more punishment than your drones can!). For this reason, avoid ordering your (non-sentry) drones to attack distant targets - if your drones start to take damage, they likely won't have time to fly back to your ship and dock before being destroyed.  

Dedicated droneboats can be very effective in PvE, assuming you have good support skills. Using drones lets you control the type of damage you're doing, and can free up space on your ship for salvaging (or other utility modules). If you do fit weapons in the high slots, on some droneboat hulls with no on-board weapon bonuses (such as the [[Myrmidon]] or [[Arbitrator]]) fitting non-racial turrets can be a viable option. [[Turrets#Projectile_Turrets|Projectile turrets]] are a popular choice since they use no [[capacitor]] energy to fire and let you control which type of damage you deal. The downside is that you will likely need some additional skill training in order to use these weapons effectively.  

When you start attempting level 4 missions or tougher combat sites, you will have to initially choose between using sentry drones and heavy attack drones for your main anti-battleship weapon (as their skill prerequisites are somewhat different, and training either kind to Tech 2 takes some time). If/when you have trained for both kinds of drone you will be able to pack both and use whichever suits your situation.

** You can also immediately recall them if you need to run away or to launch a different set of drones (eg light drones to kill a scrambling frigate which managed to get close to you).

Primarily, your ship should have a powerful regenerating tank appropriate for the mission. While not strictly necessary, a Damage Control II is highly recommended, and rigs should be used to strengthen your tank. Drone Damage Amplifiers are essential to increase drone DPS, and a Drone Navigation Computer will help your slow heavy drones to catch faster enemies (a Stasis Webifier module can also come in handy for that). A propulsion module (Afterburner or MWD) is almost mandatory for cruiser-sized ships (especially [[HAC|Heavy Assault Cruisers]] or pirate faction cruisers), assuming they can run an afterburner indefinitely (i.e. being essentially cap stable), as it decreases the chance to be hit by the large weapons on NPC battleships (this is known as "speed tanking"). Weapons are usually fit last, using whatever CPU and powergrid are left over.  

Drone sniping means using sentry drones to destroy enemies at long range (often outside the effective range of their weapons). Thus, tanking is less of an issue as with brawling, though Tech 2 modules are still required in level 3 and 4 missions. On the other hand, good skills to increase locking range, drone control range, drone optimal range and drone damage are required.

For tips on using mining drones, see the [[ORE_Basic_Ship_and_Skill_Guide|ORE ship guide]].