EFT - Understanding it

[Aciiid]

From the little bit of Lore I read today, Gallante used to defend their territory with Drones alone, so I'd imagine most of their ships have good Drone capacity.

Caldari frig's don't seem to have any drone bay at all, so may be an indicator of higher racial ships. Only at cruiser stage do Caldari get to use drones.

 

[Chick]

Drone pecking order goes:
1. Gallente
1. Minmatar
3. Caldari
4. Amarr

It's all RP.
One of my alts had about 6mil SP in drones. They raped anything that moves and I spent the day pottering about Tanking, salvaging and looting as they cleaned up.

It's pretty trivial to keep an eye on yoru drones, see what gets agro, and recall them, once you have the relevant support skilsl increasing their HP, speed and of course, Damage.

 

[Requiel]

That would be pretty suicidal with the amount of drones you can currently control. When you get some more drone skills, you can later control up to 10 drones, I think, but also need to put something into the high slots that allows control of 1 more drone. So you will be able to build a complete drone boat, but I doubt whether you will still be able to salvage anything with it, considering you put 5 of those items into your high slots. Generally, IIRC Gallente ships lend themselves to drone strategies.

The maximum number of drones you can control at once with a sub-capital ship is 5. No matter what your skills, you can't have more than 5 active drones in space at once. Training Advanced Drone Interfacing allows you to fit a Drone Control Unit which allows you control of 1 extra drone and which can only be fitted to Carriers and Motherships.

There is an exception but you'll never encounter it. The Guardian Vexor is a faction cruiser that was given out as an event reward several years ago only 50 ever existed and some of those are now dead. It allows one additional drone to be deployed per level of Gallente Cruiser. If you find one for sale (you won't) expect to pay around 20-30 billion for it.

Back when I ran missions all day I used a Dominix with T2 Sentries and T2 Heavy Drones. I have Drone Interfacing V (20% bonus/level to drone damage), Heavy/Sentry Drone Operation V (5% bonus to heavy/sentry drone damage per level), Gallente Drone Spec IV (2% bonus to drone damage per level) and Gallente BS V (the Dominix has 10% bonus to drone damage per level). All together that equals a 183% bonus to drone damage. I'd have a single rail gun to grab aggro and then let my drones kill everything. They'd pop battleships faster than I could lock new targets and with my skills they were fast enough to burn out to elite frigates at 80km range, kill them then return before the rest of the group put any damage on them.

 

[Gottaa]

I'm wondering if I can just focus on Drone training reading all this, and save money on ammo and missiles, and indeed the guns I'd need, and just get T2 drones ?

And are Drones something you can repair or should they be considered disposable ?

I guess the most important question is would drones be cheaper than guns to start?

 

[Cullhaven]

Caracal is the first Caldari ship with drone bay I believe - only 2 though.

 

[Requiel]

I'm wondering if I can just focus on Drone training reading all this, and save money on ammo and missiles, and indeed the guns I'd need, and just get T2 drones ?

And are Drones something you can repair or should they be considered disposable ?

I guess the most important question is would drones be cheaper than guns to start?

Drones are handy in any race of ship as they supplement the capabilities of pretty much everything. They have their own set of advantages and disadvantages however, they aren't an automatic choice.

Pros:

• With a big enough drone bay you can engage anything of any size without worrying about tracking, sig radii etc.
• Pretty much every ship can use them in addition to it's normal loadout.
• Almost all of the skills transfer across to all drone types
• You can have different drones that would normally take up midslots such as ewar drones, repair drones etc.
• If you're jammed your drones will still keep fighting even though you can't target anything.
• No need for ammo

Cons:

• If they die you lose that DPS until you redock and restock your drone bay
• They need to fly to their target from your ship before they do any damage, if they start taking damage you may not be able to pull them back before they die.
• If you need to leave in a hurry, you'll have to leave them behind which becomes expensive when you lose an entire flight of T2 Heavies
• They can be aggroed and attacked separately to you which means that hostiles can destroy your DPS without needing to break the tank on your ship.
• They require a bit more micromanagement than just turning turrets on and off. Drone AI is better than it was but they still do dumb things from time to time.
• Sentry drones can do instant damage but you will have to stay still while they are deployed.
• The maximum effective range of drones is a lot less than a sniper fit ship - Max with skills alone is 60km and you can extend that by 20km with Drone Link Augmentors.

 

[Gottaa]

[Rupture, Drone]
Medium Armor Repairer II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I
N-Type Regenerative Membrane I
Damage Control II
Extruded Heat Sink I

10MN Afterburner I
Cap Recharger II
Omnidirectional Tracking Link I

650mm Medium 'Scout' Artillery I, EMP M
650mm Medium 'Scout' Artillery I, EMP M
Small Tractor Beam I
Salvager I
Salvager I
Drone Link Augmentor I

Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I

How does that look as a Drone setup Rupture ? I thought Artillery to get the agro, or am I going to just end up compromised, should I focus on a full on combat ship, and ditch the tractor and 2 salvagers ?

And posting this here so I know, I need Repair System iV, Drone Sharpshooting I, and Scout Drone IV for this fit

The micromanagement aspect isn't to much concern, in most MMO's I generally play a pet class so it's kinda a return to form

 

[Althorn]

If you want to go silly range, run about and get the drones to do most of the work, you might like to look at: (or laugh your socks off at)

[Bellicose, Roadrunner]
Small Armor Repairer II
Overdrive Injector System II
Ballistic Control System II

10MN Afterburner II
Target Painter II
Sensor Booster II, Targeting Range
Cap Recharger II

Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Heavy Missile
Drone Link Augmentor I
Salvager I



Valkyrie II x3
Warrior II x2

 

[Darakor]

Remember that for any high slot on a Rupture not fitted with big ass weapons, somewhere in the world a Brutor gets a heartattack...

 

[Darakor]

Now that I have a little more time, some more serious feedback. I have no idea how much drones add to my dps, but except for ships I cannot actually hit with my Artillery, the general feeling is "In Level 4s, not that much". In Level 2 missions it was more noticeable, but still not huge. But note that I had the drone dps in addition to Artillery and Missiles. If you reduce your damage output by over 50% by not using 4 high slots for weaponry, my gut feeling is that you will be much slower than 50%. So fights would last more than twice as long with more than double the drain on your tanking resources. Especially in the beginning of a mission, if you get a semi challenging one, that is too risky in my opinion.

I much prefer the route of going in weapons blazing and come back later to pick up the pieces. With one specialised killing ship and one specialised salvage ship, the feeling is that it is much quicker than having one ship that cannot do either right. Your killing speed will be less, your tank will take more strain, you depend a lot on your drones which you will lose until you get the hang of them and your cargo hold is less than half the size of that of a dedicated salvage boat.

So my gut feeling is that it will be highly inefficient. But I have no hard data to prove it aside from what I wrote above. So if Req or Chick give you feedback, you are probably better off to listen to that.

 

[Chick]

Remember that for any high slot on a Rupture not fitted with big ass weapons, somewhere in the world a Brutor gets a heartattack...

Idi Amin is Brutor

Anyway - on drones vs missiles vs guns:
If you put 6 mil SP into Drones, they will shred things(*) as you'll have nearly maxed out T2 drones.
If you put 6mil SP into Gunnery, you will shred things(*) as you'll have nearly maxed out T2 guns.
If you put 3mil SP into Missiles, you will still be a bumgay caldari pilot.

I used to mission run with a Dual-repping/Cap injecting, Afterburning Machariel. Close in on things at 1km/s, web and shred with T2 800mm AC's, and move on. Not the safest, or most efficient, but Pimp as Hell. Taii was a CNR fan, Domi's with heavies / sentries rock, Tempests with Artillery and shield tanks work. Etc Etc.

Most ships however have room for at least 1 flight of lights, and one of mediums. Make sure youare packing these for L4 missions, as your Arties can't hit tackling frigates and it's embarrasing to have 200m of BS held in place by 150k worth of shitty frigate.

Some misisons have faster HAC type cruiseres that like to orbit you at 2km too, Arties can have trouble there. You either have to Mess with their radial vector (Kiting) or swap to AC's, though if you are in a slow ship (Maelstrom) this could be harder work than it sounds.

The trick is to get to a point where you can do them comfortably then as you soak up the cash, then cross-train for PewPew!

nb: Things (noun) ships of the correct size given your weapon choices, ammunition, range and tracking.

 

[Taians]

CNR is the lvl 4 king (well maybe the golem is) because missiles aren't effected by tracking.

If your serious about hitting up level 4's are your primary source of cash, i'd consider cross training to Raven and cruise missiles. It will take a few weeks is all.

Domi is also very viable but more skill intensive. You really need T2 sentry drones. The up side to this is that you will train skills that you will use in the long run as opposed to short term skills (cruise missiles). Cruise missiles aren't overly great for pvp.



Thats what i used to ultimately run with. The faction shield booster makes missions an AFK joke. Dont bother looting, just blitz as much as possible. Shield hardeners you swap around as needed. Thats a fitting i use for guristas based missions. Notice the cap stabilty with everything active. Its a joke

 

[Taians]

The DPS is with pretty shitty missile skills too. I dont even have cruise missiles IV lol. Ignore the speed it goes. Its high for a BS, ive got certain implants in atm

 

[Cullhaven]

Might nick that Tai, when I get me Raven.