Drones have a tracking value. I suppose this works like the usual tracking speed attribute for turrets. I am not sure how it translates for drones. Is the tracking value that which a target has relative to my ship, or relative to the actual drone?
Tony Moore
[ Editor ]
It is relevant to the drone's vector.
There was once a trick that would work if you were in a small ship whereby you could greatly reduce the damage done to you by drones by stopping your ship or flying very very slowly. It worked particularly well on light and medium drones.
The proposed reason for this was that the drone's speed in an orbit around a stationary object meant that the tracking couldn't keep up with the speed it was travelling. This does make some sense in that normally a drone would be chasing after a target making the relative speed difference much lower.
NN comments
Silas Sanyasi
-
My corp mates have done some testing regarding the stop to avoid drone damage tactic and got varying results. The original theory was that this would be the best tactic against fighters, but this did not seem to work very well at all. Perhaps as you say the faster drones would have more problems hitting you. I believe this is highly dependent on the drone controllers drone skills, though. I remain unconvinced about the effectiveness of this tactic myself.
Tony Moore
-
Agreed – I recall there was something regarding one of the drones types which was faster than the rest but had poorer tracking – this leads me to suspect the Minmatar drones but I also believe that CCP tweaked the stats to reduce the effect of the trick.