A Guide To Drones

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Drone Types

Combat Drones

Combat drones come in 3 flavours, light, medium and heavy. They are launched from your drone bay and will chase down a target with MWD. When they reach optimal range they will switch off the MWD and orbit while shooting the target. The only exception is for fast moving targets, where they will likely try to orbit once, fail, then just continue to MWD after the target and shoot at it, which is less effective with respect to DPS. They are immune to EWAR, instantly lock targets, and are generally a right pain in the hull if you are engaging a ship that uses them if you are not!

Combat (and sentry, further below) drones also have T2 variants which are essentially identical except that each stat (speed, damage, hitpoints) has been increased by 20%, the penalty for which is much higher skill requirements to use them. Skills are covered later, so going back to drone types the fundamental differences between the 3 broad categories are speed, size, bandwidth and damage. Note that both light and medium drones are “scout” drones, whereas heavy drones are not. This is significant when skills are discussed below. The following table below shows the rough average values for each attribute, not taking skills into account:

File:1drone.gif

So – what do these stats all mean? The first two (speed and damage) are pretty self-explanatory. Essentially the light drones are fast and good at killing Frigate hulls (and other drones!), the mediums are in the middle and best at killing Cruiser hulls, while the Heavies are slowest and best for killing Battleship hulls. Mediums also work well killing destroyers, with Heavies for Battlecruisers.

As for drone size – this comes into play as those ships that can use drones have a separate drone bay which has limited size, and can only carry drones. Drones in the cargo hold cannot be transferred to the drone bay in space, though you can launch a drone into space then scoop it to your cargo hold should you wish to. Generally speaking, the smaller the hull, the smaller the drone bay, and it is always best to fill your bay up to the limit so if any of your drones get destroyed in combat you have spares.

The last stat, bandwidth, determines the number of drones you can have active in space at any one time (as do your skills, but again that is covered below). You can only launch drones up to your bandwidth limit, so taking the Vexor as an example; you can fit 4 heavy drones into its 100m³ drone bay, but it only has bandwidth of 75Mbit/sec so you could only launch 3 at any one time. Launching only 3 however is not the best way to maximise your damage, and if DPS is your target it is always best to have as many drones in the air as you can! So, for the Vexor, the best combination for DPS would be 2 heavy, 2 medium and 1 light. The only problem with this setup is that your drones are of mixed size and hence will reach targets at different times. The writer personally uses 5 mediums in his Vexor, with 2 groups of lights as backup.

The last factor affecting drones is their race. Similar to missiles, each race has its own drone, each with different characteristics, the rules of which apply across all 3 sizes:

File:2drone.gif

As you can see, the advantages of each drone generally reflects the advantages of their respective race e.g. Amarr has high armour HP, Minmatar are fast. Since people do not generally consider shield or armour HP to be of importance when selecting drones, it is fair to say that in PVP situations, if you want damage use Gallente, if you want speed use Minmatar. Obviously if you are ratting you will specify whichever damage type the rats are weakest against e.g. Caldari drones for Kinetic damage if you are Guristas ratting.

Sentry Drones

Sentry drones are a completely different type of drone in that they do not fly after a target and try to destroy it; instead they sit exactly where launched and shoot the target much like a turret on a ship. This has significant impact on how you can deploy your drones, especially in PVP!

If you deploy sentries in PVP then you either have to make the choice to stay nearby them so you can scoop them up should they take fire, or move away allowing you to manoeuvre to defend yourself but leaving them very vulnerable to being picked off by turrets or other drones. For this reason, sentries tend not to be used in small gang PVP, though they are used in large fleet PVP, POS warfare and spider tanking gangs, as the ships in that scenario tend to be well tanked and rely on repair rather than avoidance to survive. They are split similarly to the other combat drones with respect to drone race and damage type. They all use bandwidth of 25Mbit/sec, and take 25m³ drone bay space, so are equivalent to heavy drones from that perspective. They also have slightly different benefits, and drawbacks, with speed no longer being of concern, range and tracking are now the issue:

File:3drone.gif


Fighter Drones

Fighters are the ultimate in drones. They require high skills to use, and are very large (5,000m³) so can only be equipped in Carriers and Motherships. These ships come with bonuses to number of drones controlled per level, so with level V you can control 20 drones, producing around 2,000DPS! Their damage types are slightly different to the combat and sentry drones, with each having a primary (50HP) and secondary (25HP) damage type:

File:4drone.gif

EWAR & Combat Utility Drones

Another function of drones is to provide EWAR support to your ship. This can be useful is some situations, e.g. if you are solo PVPing and your ship has limited midslots, you will likely have a MWD, point, web and maybe cap booster. This will not leave you many options for EWAR, so if you can deal high damage with your turrets or missiles it might be of benefit to pack some EWAR drones.

The other scenario they can be useful is in “emergency” – if you can get a drone to successfully jam an attacker it might allow you to warp out when he loses his lock and thus point on you.

The drone EWAR types follow the main racial types that ships receive bonuses for. There is another category here – the Amarr not only get bonuses to tracking disruptors, but also to energy transfer. Similarly, the Minmatar get bonuses to webifying as well as target painting:

File:5drone.gif

  • NOTE 1 – The EWAR drones use the same names as their combat counterparts for size, with a tag (such as EC-300, see below for more detail) and have similar benefits and drawbacks for size i.e. speed vs. strength of EWAR. Thus a heavy energy neutralising drone will drain more energy than a light, but is much slower
  • NOTE 2 – The stasis webifying drone is only available in heavy, which renders it fairly useless as it often cannot catch the target you want to web!
  • NOTE 3 – The Gallente race also receive a bonus to warp disruption on their recon ships, however at present there are no warp disruption drones available in game!

Logistics Drones

Both shield transfer and armour repairing drones are available, with light, medium and heavy available in each type. As expected the heavies are slow to move and give the most repair amount, while the lights are fast and give the least repair amount. Again these tend not to be used “live” in small gang warfare but can be of use in spider tanking gangs where the additional repair amount can prevent loss of a ship. There other use is in small gangs following an encounter where light ships that were damaged but managed to escape can be repaired back to full health. Please note however that you cannot use logistic drones to repair yourself.

Table of Drone Type & Stats vs. Race

File:6drone.gif

Skills

The drone skill tree can swallow a lot of SP, with good drone users typically carrying around 7million SP allowing use of all T2 drones and with the support skills at V. The most important skills are:

  • Drones – This allows you to control 1 extra drone per level. If you are going to use drones at all, make sure this is at level V!
  • Combat Drone Operation – Allows you to use light and medium scout drones. This must be at level V to allow use of T2 light and medium drones
  • Scout Drone Operation – Confusingly enough does not let you use Scout drones, but increases the range at which you can control your drones, with +5km per level
  • Drone Interfacing – This gives a MASSIVE 20% increase to drone damage per level. You really should have this at least at level 3 or 4, the time invested is well worth it considering the extra damage this skill gives
  • Racial drone specialisation – This allows the use of T2 drones, and there is a separate skill for each race. You must have level I for T2 light, level II for T2 medium, and level IV for T2 heavy. As mentioned in point 2 you need Combat Drone Operation at V for T2 light and medium. You also need Heavy Drone Operation at V for T2 heavy. As you can work out, being able to use all race’s heavy drones requires significant investment in SP!

All the rest of the skills are important to some extent, however those mentioned above are in my opinion the most important. Like many other areas you need the base skill to V to enable training of T2 “specialisation” skills. The exception to this is sentry drones, which do not have a specialisation, they merely need the Sentry Drone Interfacing skill at level V. In the main in PVP, light and medium drones are the order of the day, so I have built some skill tables below for your information:

Absolute Minimum

File:7drone.gif

Recommended

File:8drone.gif

“Ideal World”

File:9drone.gif

Modules

Only four modules exist to support drone operation. They are all passive i.e. do not use any capacitor:

  • Drone Control Unit – HIGH SLOT – Allows control of 1 extra drone per item fitted. Can only be fitted to capital class ships
  • Drone Link Augmenter – HIGH SLOT – Adds 20km to drone control range per module fitted. Very useful for turning your ship into a long range fighter
  • Drone Navigation Computer – MID SLOT – Increases drone MWD speed. Very useful for helping your Warrior II’s chase interceptors!
  • Omnidirectional Tracking Link – MID SLOT – Increases drone optimal range and tracking. Only really of use for Sentry Drones, which act like turrets. A couple of these in mid slots, combined with a couple of Drone Link Augmenters and a Target Painter makes a set of Wardens a fearsome weapon for popping ships at 100+km!

Summary

Drones can be an incredibly useful addition to any player’s arsenal, both in PVE and PVP (and mining – but I conveniently ignored that aspect here, this is Agony, not ORE!). The degree of effectiveness varies, equipping drones in a ship with drone damage bonuses (such as the Vexor for example) and good skills can give you over 300DPS “for free”, while on bigger ships such as the Dominix, it can give you almost 500DPS! This is without firing a single round! On the flip side, flying these ships without drone skills although not pointless is certainly missing the point of their setups.

For those ships not equipped with bonuses, drones can be of use to give that little bit extra DPS to break someone’s tank, to scare away or destroy light tackling ships, or even to provide a little EWAR support if your mid-slots are filled with tank.

Essentially drones are like little unpiloted ships that are willing to do your bidding. They have no fear, and will fight to their death without flinching. The only thing that might make you flinch is the cost of a full rack of Firbolgs!