I think that Drones need to have some sort of shielding bonus, I'd upgrade all drone shielding to 120% so 20% more shield of it's original. And I'd add a skill to add energy/shields to a drone. Like say: 1% per level and needs some sort of commod to get goes up to level 20.

Thoughts on this Atlum?

The higher end drones should be able to take more then 2-3 Shots from a BG, Period.

And they should be able to rape W2 with ease.

I say Drones over tech 14-15 need to be boosted in the Shields Catagory.

Also, electricity is a major problem with drones, with the need to constantly rescoop drones, we wont be able to take advantage of the ideas you are implementing.

As DMs wont be able to use a energy boosting aug over a damage boosting aug, as we dont use it.

Hey, if you want drones that are not combat specific, why not make drones that have an aura boost that are given to other drones in the Area?

Say:

Assistance Drone
Tech 10
Size 75
Requires 2000-3000 elec to deploy
Gives an aura off that increases all surrounding drones Shield Bank and Regen by 25-30% Percent.

Applause Drone
Tech 10
Size 125
Requires 3000-4000 elec to deploy
Gives off an Aura that increases Damage, Firing and Range by 20, 10, and 50% Respectively.

I cant get the stats right as i probably suck at that, but you get the idea.

I like this idea, perhaps include some of the other statistics as well i.e. 10k Energy = 1000 more energy to drone etc

donres should be obtainable like skill, better as you level up

earlier lvls should spend a fair amouint based on there level and lvl up at a "fair" pace

higher levels should spend more then before and lvl up faster, but the drones will cost more (not net cost, cost + level = fair)

Drones can rape w2, they pwn up to BGs, then you have to get rarer drones if you still want to pwn.



Have you used mining drones? They take a long time to run out of energy.

OK, heres my ideas.

High level DMs (in Paxes) should only need to use a few (2-4) high tech drones (tech 20) and they should be able to take on BGs no problem, Titan drones are pretty good in these terms except for their size. If not for their enormous size and fairly large electricity cost i would use these all the time. Another thing that should be changed is BGs, they are lower level than Forgones and Icepicks but they are much harder to beat. Personally as a DM i can take on only about 3 BGs at a time (if im lucky) while I can take on almost 2x that many Forgones or Picks. Another problem is with mobile drones, the AI station bought ones (mobile lighting and ethereal) are great but they can not be scooped, this makes them useless in most cases. The immobility of drones is really what hurts higher lvl DMs. Also, the ruin ones are way too expensive to be considered for most players. Because of this many DMs tend to stick with mining and fatty drones because they are easy to replace and have decent damage (but not on par with other classes). DMs are pretty good at clearing AI out of of a galaxy at low lvls and most of the ai automaticly attack the drones which creates a constant stream of XP for the low lvl players.

Overall, with the DM skill each lvl should do more than the lower lvls of it, and there should be restrictions to keep the lower lvl players from getting a high Drone Deployment lvl at low lvls.


EDIT: overall, i think the focus for high lvl DMs should be on a few high lvl drones, not a ton of mid lvl drones. Also, there should be much better shields on high lvl drones, to prevent drone loss.

Thats exactly what i was saying.

Drones have too weak shields, thats why they cant be used for the full extent of their life.

I have to constantly redeploy my Urqa's because after a while, their shields go down to likw 1/2-1/4

oh and xp should be based on the DM lvl, like no DM gets 20% xp, DM10 gets 60%, DM20 get 100% and everything inbetween

Both great ideas...

I'd say the cost of drones are fine... Alot of them are still weak defensively... One problem that I've seen offensively is that most of the high end drones use weapons with low tracking or even no tracking (mobile bule blaster drones, DWO drones, lipo drones, siege drones, etc...)... This actually touches on a greater problem that isn't specifically about drones...

W3 AI are too fast. Every single AI can outrun every single non-SD combat ship from about DF180+... Some of the AI in W3 are too fast and too agile, especially considering their size... If they were slower/less agile, SDs would be able to use their speed for something other than running away, and low tracking drones would actually be able hit consistantly...

That being said, I think having non-perm drones scaled in strength by the person/ship dropping them is a great idea. Another possible idea, which relates to one issue that alot of people is to give a bonus to all drones stats based on level... Perhaps 0.0125-0.025% per level... (Lvl 2000 would be 25-50% to all stats)...

I think drones are too strong at low levels because you can deploy alot of them and they are cheap... Its easy to get DD to 12... So by level 50 you can quite easily be MFing 12 of a similar type of weapon to what most lvl 50s use... Perhaps making it more difficult to get DD12 would help... Allow 1-4 to be gotten for free... 5-6 with an easy commod... 7-8 in W2 with a medium commod... and 9-12 in Steppes with Quu drones... 13-16 in Ruby Steppes with Qafirs... and 17-20 in Perpetual Motion with like... 2x Qafir drones or something like that... Maybe even a qafir+ to make it a little more expencive...

That being said... Perhaps reducing the amount of slots used by tech 16+ drones... With DR3 I can deploy 6 tech 16 drones, or 5 tech 20 drones... but 9 tech 13 drones and 15 drones of tech 10 or less... Basically, with doing both these things, you'd make getting 'access' to the higher tech drones more difficult, but also gives the higher tech drones more of an advantage...

I was thinking maybe...

4 'slots' per level...
Tech 1-6 -- 4 slots per drone (15 at DD20)
Tech 7-10 -- 5.5 slots per drone (15 at DD20)
Tech 11-14 -- 7.5 slots per drone (13 at DD20, 15 with DR5)
Tech 15-16 -- 8.5 slots per drone (9 at DD20, 11 with DR5)
Tech 17-20 -- 10 slots per drone (8 at DD20, 10 with DR5)

nowadays donres have crazy damage but crap sheilds

they should be like a little person with a dwo, or ohl ect ect

decent sheilds, decent damage, to make it fair

to mix it up like atlum wants her is a thought: have 2 healer drones, 2 big drones, and like 6-8 medium ones

I like the drone aura idea, this makes it so that DMs would carry around an assortment, or combo of drones for different uses. maybe you could also make drones whose weps would have tweak effects on enemies, like +200% weight, or -10 shield regen. these drones could then be used in conjunction with more powerful (but weaker shielded) drones. The damage drones like lipo and dwo should have a lower shields compared to the tweaking and aura drones which could have high shields but little or no damage. this way a DM would need to use a mixture of both te be effective.

If DMs need to carry aorund an assortment of drones for different situations, maybe drones could be smaller?

Either smaller or take lesss energy.

First, get a better energy. Like a thunder or even lightning. Second, if you aug your ship right, and use things like RDDSs then elec isn't as big of a problem as you think. Even having sandy solarites or solar pannels of some sort will help boost your elec regen. There's plenty of things out there

Exactly, so you still end up using all Cap augs. And I can afford a Thunder as im not rich.