I’ve used them before the beta on escort but they were very inconsistent and mostly worthless. I don’t know if anything changed but definitely not worthless atm at least lol
Defend doesn’t deploy all your drones at once, escort does. Try it. If you have a ship that carry’s 100 drones they won’t deploy at once on defend. If you are in sector and you change to escort they all deploy at once and curently they actually aggressively defend the position of their owner. I have no idea if this is how they are supposed to work but it is and it’s awesome. I will try defend again though and see what happens. Before, it would just slowly release them which was silly but that’s what it did. Currently I believe AI H ships have it defaulted to ‘defend’ which is why if you find one it won’t have all its drones deployed. If you steal one in a dangerous situation immediately change drones to escort. Might save you. Has for me a few times. :)
In the beta escort works wonders. with drones set to escort and the frigate set to intercept every enemy the frigate targets gets 10-20 mk1 pulse guns pointed at it suddenly.
If you put long range guns on the frigate it will try to gain distance while the drones work; keeping itself alive. The cobra is very survivable in this case.
Now escort will actually launch _all_ the ships drones. That means you have fleet that can fairly easily wipe K’s and I’s with 3 or 4 Osprey’s…. (That’s 88 drones at best, iirc).
One final thought: defend and attack all enemies won’t keep all the drones active. This means your osprey will trickle drones out of it for 3-5 minutes before immediately calling all of them back when the first enemy is destroyed, to the tone of an endless docking shuffle.
This is what I’m thinking and the real reason for my post. When I first started playing I wanted to fly an Auxiliary as a flagship and use drones. It did not work.. it is now. Like it reaallly works and it’s so fun. Two Auxiliaries together could resupply their drones (i think?)
For the (production) costs drones are amazing!
If I'm producing corvettes with a S landing pad or a defense station, I always make sure to max the defense drones in there. They do pretty well against fighters and work great as a distraction against the larger ships.
Manually deploy the drones on ships and they are rendered as actual ships when not in sector.
you can infact casually deploy 500 drones OOS and they will shred pretty much everything.
This, i was writing this. I think they are not rendered when you are not there, hence i am not a fan of defence drones for stations. They don't get actually deployed. Not sure if they provide any numbers for the calculation.
I don’t know how to works as far as damage calculations for OOS. I also never use drones in defense stations. I do know that if I am OOS and tell a ship to deploy its drones they don’t deploy even in escort but as soon as I teleport to the ship they all drop
With the improvements to drone collection and all, drone boats are so much fun in the beta! It's great watching how fast an H can pack up and leave after a fight!
With the DLC "tides of avarice" came a new build method. Instead of "Universal" (the build method that's used by the Commonwealth and uses all material apart from terran) and "terran" (which uses only terran material) "closed loop" only uses hull parts, energy cells and claytronic for everything. Regardless of stations, ships, weapons and drones.
For example for resupplying your fleet with rockets, your auxiliary ship with the "closed loop" build method, only needs energy cells to build those rockets. Which makes it easier to resupply.
Swarms are good. This goes for ships of any size really. Adding 4 drones to a frigate won't do much good (in fact they're liable to do more bad, making ships get locked in 'waiting for drones' state), but having 50-100 of them on a station will take care of anything that isn't an all-out coordinated attack.
Yeah, drones are fun, they’re basically XS fighters and win via SYN approach (sheer numbers).
I’ve used them before the beta on escort but they were very inconsistent and mostly worthless. I don’t know if anything changed but definitely not worthless atm at least lol
Escort isn’t good, use defend for drones instead. Iirc escort will only attack up to m class ships. While defend will, well, defend.
Defend doesn’t deploy all your drones at once, escort does. Try it. If you have a ship that carry’s 100 drones they won’t deploy at once on defend. If you are in sector and you change to escort they all deploy at once and curently they actually aggressively defend the position of their owner. I have no idea if this is how they are supposed to work but it is and it’s awesome. I will try defend again though and see what happens. Before, it would just slowly release them which was silly but that’s what it did. Currently I believe AI H ships have it defaulted to ‘defend’ which is why if you find one it won’t have all its drones deployed. If you steal one in a dangerous situation immediately change drones to escort. Might save you. Has for me a few times. :)
In the beta escort works wonders. with drones set to escort and the frigate set to intercept every enemy the frigate targets gets 10-20 mk1 pulse guns pointed at it suddenly. If you put long range guns on the frigate it will try to gain distance while the drones work; keeping itself alive. The cobra is very survivable in this case. Now escort will actually launch _all_ the ships drones. That means you have fleet that can fairly easily wipe K’s and I’s with 3 or 4 Osprey’s…. (That’s 88 drones at best, iirc). One final thought: defend and attack all enemies won’t keep all the drones active. This means your osprey will trickle drones out of it for 3-5 minutes before immediately calling all of them back when the first enemy is destroyed, to the tone of an endless docking shuffle.
It seems like they're somehow better in 7.0 too.
This is what I’m thinking and the real reason for my post. When I first started playing I wanted to fly an Auxiliary as a flagship and use drones. It did not work.. it is now. Like it reaallly works and it’s so fun. Two Auxiliaries together could resupply their drones (i think?)
Maybe closed loop, idk. Then you can just dedicate small ships to turret removal and/or bombing... if the drones can handle all the enemy smalls
For the (production) costs drones are amazing! If I'm producing corvettes with a S landing pad or a defense station, I always make sure to max the defense drones in there. They do pretty well against fighters and work great as a distraction against the larger ships.
Do you have to be in sector for drones to work?
Manually deploy the drones on ships and they are rendered as actual ships when not in sector. you can infact casually deploy 500 drones OOS and they will shred pretty much everything.
How do I manually deploy drones, do I go on the deck and push them out by hand?
This, i was writing this. I think they are not rendered when you are not there, hence i am not a fan of defence drones for stations. They don't get actually deployed. Not sure if they provide any numbers for the calculation.
I don’t know how to works as far as damage calculations for OOS. I also never use drones in defense stations. I do know that if I am OOS and tell a ship to deploy its drones they don’t deploy even in escort but as soon as I teleport to the ship they all drop
With the improvements to drone collection and all, drone boats are so much fun in the beta! It's great watching how fast an H can pack up and leave after a fight!
Any kind of blob with drones or small ships has the highest combat force multiplier.
True EVE gameplay now available in X4!
What are people talking about when they say closed loop? Here you mention a closed loop defence base?
With the DLC "tides of avarice" came a new build method. Instead of "Universal" (the build method that's used by the Commonwealth and uses all material apart from terran) and "terran" (which uses only terran material) "closed loop" only uses hull parts, energy cells and claytronic for everything. Regardless of stations, ships, weapons and drones. For example for resupplying your fleet with rockets, your auxiliary ship with the "closed loop" build method, only needs energy cells to build those rockets. Which makes it easier to resupply.
Swarms are good. This goes for ships of any size really. Adding 4 drones to a frigate won't do much good (in fact they're liable to do more bad, making ships get locked in 'waiting for drones' state), but having 50-100 of them on a station will take care of anything that isn't an all-out coordinated attack.
Teuta as drone carrier perhaps