What are drones for?

Gah'Matar of the Brutor Tribe [ Moderator ] Feb 26, 2010

Drones are small automated space crafts that some ships can launch.

They are mostly used as a weapon. Some drones do other things, the most popular being the ECM drones.

You use drones for a few reasons:

You have a ship that has bonus to drones and a large drone bay

Then Drones are your main damage. And usually, that means you're flying a Vexor, Arbitrator, Myrmidon, Dominix or Ishtar.

Your ship has a sizeable drone bay and can deploy 5 small or medium drones.

Then you use drones as extra damage. The Thorax is a text book example of this. It packs a significant punch from its guns and its (up to) 5 medium drones can add 30% more damages and -- critically -- a lot of range.

Your ship is slow or a battlecruiser or larger.

You have problem keeping up with frigates or hitting them. These ships usually have a drone bay that can carry 5 light scout drones or more. The light scout drones are very effective on frigates.

There are some other classes of ships that cannot use normal weapons but still carry drones like many capital ships and industrial ships like mining barges and the Orca.

NN comments

Drones are free DPS. If only have a 5m^3 drone bay its still worth kicking that scout drone out to do its thing. There are few (but notable) circumstances where drones are bad, but almost always they should be adding to your pilots DPS, shortening combat time and increasing ISK/Hour.

May 11, 2010

If you have a drone bay at all, bring drones. Example: Taranis vs Taranis. One has drones, one has not. Guess who will win the fight 9 times out of 10.

Jul 28, 2010

Gorble Gibbernof [ Moderator ] Mar 3, 2010

Drones can cover large distances very quickly, with skills trained they can attack things far out of range of your guns. Also the damage they do is quite good. In general small drones do as much DPS as a small turret and mediums do as much as a medium turret (with the drone skills/turret skills trained up of course). However unlike a turret drones aren't tied to your ship, have longer range and can track smaller targets better. In addition to that they have a tendency to stay alive due to their speed and small signature (makes it hard to lock on to them).

In many cases drones can be used to replace smaller caliber turrets on larger ships. For example a cruiser can keep a set of small scout drones handy for when a fast frigate comes and the cruiser's guns can't track fast enough to keep up.

In addition to this drones can perform other tasks such as mining or target jamming. They can also act as snipers (sentry drones) or the equivalents of frigates (heavy drones).

Overall drones are good for sizable damage to any type of target in any type of situation.

NN comments

Yuri [ Editor ] Apr 19, 2010

Drones are free DPS. The skills needed to at least get some of them out into space are quite minimal and they cost you, the pilot, nothing in cargo hold space, power grid, CPU or cap.

Battleships can have a particularly hard time of hitting frigate sized ships, while a flight of small drones can easily kill them.

They also have the benefit of making combat more interesting, giving you more to do.

At higher skill levels they can repair other fleet members ships (not your own) along with providing some E-war support (webbing and jamming) making your ship farm more flexible than the fittings would suggest.

And some ships use drones as their primary means of DPS.

They can also increase your mining speed, if you happen to be "shooting" rocks.

And if you are mining in a Scythe, for example, you can use all your highs for mining lasers and then use your drone bay as CAP for NPC rats.

NN comments

Romain [ Editor ] Jul 28, 2010

To add up to what was said : drones are also a playstyle... each race has it's specifics... missiles for caldari, and drones for gallente (for the most part).

They also help you being good where your not... if your in a battleship, hitting frigates is not possible.

If you are long range, vessels within "melee" range will be troublesome.

Drones make up for it, since they are versatile.

Also they are great for semi-AFK missions ;) take aggro, launch drone, let them have the fun by themselves :D

NN comments

Matt [ Editor ] Jul 28, 2010

Drones are essential in PVP where it is all about getting as much hurt on a target as fast as possible.

As has also been mentioned they are very useful to compliment your firepower in areas you are weak in (attacking frigates when you are a battleship for example)

Generally acknowledged to be the most useful drones for combat are the Warrior II's (and other light drones) great for Battlecruisers and Battleships as a Frigate screen, they are fast and have great tracking, they can outrun almost anything, a vagabond or inty (totally speed) fit may be able to outrun them, but that's about it.

Mediums are great for taking on cruisers or Battlecruisers, obviously you would want your own dps on them too, but they will make your life a lot easier.

Heavies I have no experience in, they may be good for taking out Battleships but they are so slow, and take up so much band width I wouldn't use them for anything really, however again if you are Gallente and fly an Ishtar, they may be worth it?

Sentry's are the Perfect PVE fit, they sit there and fire at what your firing at, they don't move, you just stop, set up shop and snipe awau, also if you are Gallente and are flying a Morros with perfect drone skills, these are godly when it is in siege mode, infact the morros is probably the own dreadnaught I would take on a cap - standard engagement by choice.

Lastly drones aren't just for DPS, ECM drones have saved my backside on many an occasion when I've been jumped or caught unaware, you break their lock, so you can run away... it's expensive leaving the drones behind, but still better then loosing a ship.

Mining drones are also great for bringing in extra ore.

NN comments

Rico Jul 28, 2010

What I haven't read yet: If you sent drones on a target and after that someone jams you, the drones will go on attacking their target. So you do further damage to an opponent, whether player or npc(e.g. guristas), while you are not able to attack with your turrets/missile bays anymore.

NN comments

of course FOF Missiles are still able to attack enemys

Jul 28, 2010

Correct, also on this vein, if you get jammed, if you set your jamming drones to agressive, they will try to jam the person jamming you… Infact if you have jamming or assualt drones out and you are agressed they will try to jam/kill whoever attacks you automatically.

Jul 28, 2010

what's your question? be descriptive.