Drone rework proposal

Discussion
1

I propose a series of changes to make drones viable, but to keep them from becoming overpowered.

If any armoured vehicle has drones on it, then it should recieve an engine speed and engine power DEBUFF.

This aims to fix the low PS drone griefing, by making players have to armour-up their drone carriers in order to stay competitive (because they can no longer can use speed as a survivability tactic AND stay at a low PS), and armour costs PS, so it should keep the low PS free of griefing via drones. And it will also prevent the last player on the team dragging the match forever by running away after running out of drones.

To compensate for this, i also propose a MAJOR ENERGY REDUCTION for drones. 2 energy cost for blue rarity drones and the barrier (the turret that generates a shield). 3 energy cost for cyan rarity drones, 4 energy cost for purple rarity drones and 5 energy cost for yellow rarity drones.

This aims to give drones a unique advantage: strength in numbers, but being weak individually. It’s no secret that if you compare a single drone’s damage output to the weapon that the drone uses that is manually controlled by the player (for example, MG drones vs regular MGs ; rocket drones vs regular rocket launchers, etc), the drone will deal less damage. So, this change proposes to make drone carriers able to apply more pressure on the enemy while the drones are still active. But, at the same time, it will also take more space, requiring more armour to keep the carrier defended (due to previously mentioned proposed speed nerf).

Overall, these 2 changes applied together allow the drone carrier a much stronger offensive presence and allowing it to support the team better, but also keeping it slow and large, so the enemies can still fight back against it.

If, even with this proposal, drones turn out to be too weak, optional solutions could be to either increase the durability of the drones or to make the genesis (microfactory) ammo pack, to give more ammo. This would aim to either allow drone carriers to play more aggresive (in the case of increased drone durability) , or to discourage the drone carrier from retreating due to lack of drones, by allowing it to stay in the fight for longer.

I believe that the individual damage of the drones should remain unchanged, to keep the drones from becoming overpowered.

2

OR they can just UNDO the damage they did before and rebuff all drones except the grenadier and annihilator drones. and maybe give more of a buff to certain drones like the anaconda and the owl which are completely useless.
if you didnt know all drones across the board were nerfed due to 2 drones in particular, the grenadier and the annihilator. the reason was that grenadiers were so overpowered that they could strip a heavily armored car to the cabin in little time. didnt matter if you had spaced armor or not, theyd turn you into scrap. you would have teams in clan wars running them with either 3 or 4 members running 3 - 4 drones all the time. they had quite a bit of range and if you got rid of one theyd just spawn another before you could kill the others. grenadier boats were far to common and they would wreck havoc in clan wars. annihilators were broken not only due to their height making them hard to hit but their damage and debuff they did to your enemies in general. people would run 3 of these and their effects stacked, if you got one or even 3 on you you were dead. theyd destroy weapons and bypass your armor and go directly for your cabin so if you ran a lighter build you were toast oh and they had so much hp a cannon shot couldnt kill them, i believe they had 150 hp per drone iirc… tons of people complained about it so the devs just nerfed every drone in the game. this was completely unfair and made all the drones practically useless. i had a fuze drone build i ran at 10k powerscore and now it does so poorly its not even worth running anymore. anacondas and owls (rocket launching drones) are so useless and awful that people just laugh at you for using them. they do next to nothing.

so if anything reversing the nerf they did would be a start but keep the nerf on grenadiers and annihilators.

3

I feel like they actually went into the game recently and ninja nerfed Sidekicks, as they seem even more lost now than they did before. They refuse to engage targets now and stare at walls right next to adversaries doing nothing. Then if I try to flee the enemy who is pummeling my unarmed rig, they immediately run under my wheels and block my escape.

But, whatever. I’m still not going to take this game seriously enough to ever engage it anymore emphatically than I can with drones. It’s simply not worth the effort, and I’m not going to try to replace my nerfed to uselessness inventory of guns and modules with new items that will almost certainly meet the same demise.

No more dragon chasing for me. It either works, or not. I don’t care. I’m not playing Charlie Brown Football with this game anymore. Due to the lag and the 3 minute queues, I’m not playing it much anyway.

This game feels like it’s scraping bottom again. And, even though I think the next update is riddled with idiocy, I’m still looking forward to the change, because the current state is pretty lame…again.

4

Since I think the OP was probably looking for more positive solutions, and less bitching, I’d suggest that for wheeled drones, they utilize the half-functional crosshairs that appear with these drones, and use those crosshairs to feed targeting directions for them. I’d like them to go where I point them…I’d like them to go anywhere that isn’t right under my wheels, frankly.

5

I think the old Munnin cab did that, but it is kinda a lot of money.

6

It does, but they poured a bunch of salt on it so it’s less than worthless. The way it causes the drones to rapidly self destruct is garbage. What happens usually is that the drones get lost, and blow up well before they ever engage any target, leaving you completely vulnerable with an aggravated belligerent while the system reloads, which at that power-score is always too long, especially with that slow-ass cab.

They had the right idea, but they did what they do.

7

Armor raises your PS score a tiny amount. Bumpers cost more PS but do not increase vehicle durability, but bumpers are cheap too, so are the passive melee. They cost Mass & Tonnage but not PS.
You want them to nerf my Call Cabin because I use drones with the Call Cabin? Then, the deployed drones increase my power and speed back to normal instead of boosting it above normal? That is illogical. Do not touch my Drones!

PS, I play passive melee while carrying drones, so this isn’t any low power score droner.

1 Like
8

I think that’s the way to do it too, but they nerfed passive melee not long ago, and I could really feel that one. It hurt.

Like I said elsewhere, my drones are garbage suddenly…I mean un-usable. They’ve been garbage for a while but I could still make them work. Now, like this last week, they are suddenly completely retarded and can’t find targets at all. IDK what happened.

Doesn’t matter from where I sit, though. The game is unplayable due to lag and rubber-banding, which is not unusual when a new (game breaking?) update is close. After the update nothing will be the same.

1 Like
9

You clearly don’t play much drones or not at all. Is how it strikes me after reading your post

1 – Is this enough armour for you?

Puncher

screenshot-240519-004707(40;3;122)
screenshot-240519-004707(40;3;122)1920Ă—1080 490 KB

Storm Chaser

screenshot-240512-012833(37;2;117)
screenshot-240512-012833(37;2;117)1920Ă—1080 491 KB

2 _ Drones don’t work all in the same way, let’s take hawks and sidekicks as an example, both have paper thin durability, ones are extremely good for pursuing while others work best in an area, so you need speed, for two main reasons.
As a all, all builds are extremely fast, and you will need speed just to be able to keep up.
Hawks more than sidekicks need speed just to be able to try to keep them alive.
they are extremely easy to take down, a single chord or lupara is enough to do the job…quickly, let alone other weapons that have the capability to supress 100% any drone.
I’m extremely aggressive when i play them but in a 1vs 1 a drone doesn’t have a chance against any weapon. It’s a lost cause every time…in literally a second any weapon can dispose my entire payload, 3 sidekicks or 4 hawks…

Sidekicks have a slightly advantage over Hawks in survivability, only because they don’t pop out in eye level and don’t remain as clustered as Hawks do, but either of them can be insta destroyed as soon as they come out.
So, often i end up using my build to draw enemy fire from my drones just to try to maximize their chances, i need the power and the speed to face hug as much as i can, to ram or even to pin down the opponent ( yeah, i kept the SG way to to things ).

I personally don’t use micro factories out of special events but other do use them, and they just give up with tons of drones yet to be launch , not for lack of ammo.

Drones are already weak, adding more drones won’t fix the problem, nor give more aggressiveness to droners

This is the only part i agree with you.
A fused drone for durability has around 65 durability, my drones have 30 durability, so much less than a gasgen and they are up against Miniguns, MGs, and all sorts of weapons.
What i would do instead, two simple things.

  • Give drones an increase in durability to be in par with the durability of other weapons of the same level of said drone ( whatever drone we are talking about ).
  • Change the mechanics to release them, something similar to the overheating mechanics, to give some degree of control of the cooldown time.
    Because without the co driver, BF wheels and the cheetah engine , there’s a solid 30 seconds of waiting.
    This, i believe, will increase the aggressiveness of drone players
1 Like
10

I just need wheeled drones to stop being so stupid. That’s all. I can deal with the rest of their limitations.

1 Like
11

this perk was made specifically for fuze drones because people complained that fuze drones needed to be un-nerfed. they threw a garbage ability on the cabin and said “here you go now shut up for 5 seconds”. the cabin is useless because you cant do anything with it. the fact it only makes your drones last 7 seconds then makes them go poof is absolutely stupid and an insult.

metas wont change much. you really think ammo is going to stop people from stripping other cars really fast?
the only thing thats going to happen now is people are now going to hard focus more on stripping weapons then ever before. then after the weapons are gone they are going to focus the cabin. armor doesnt really matter anymore as its just wasting ammo.

grenadiers used to have 150 hp till they were slapped into the floor. its a shame sidekicks didnt get at least that much if not a little lower durability. i mean drones are drones, yes. but the thing that needs to be taken into account here is a few things.
the owner is completely vulnerable.
drones have limited ammo.
drones have limited durability.

with the ammo count on drones so low as is i feel they need to up the amount of durability they have because drone runners rely on their drones for defense just as a mg user relies on his guns to deal damage. in most cases that i run drones they just die as soon as they are spotted by bots. this is a huge concern and issue. for players though its different as they dont focus on your drones constantly and prioritize them.
drones need a bit more love man.

time to upgrade then. that TI-82 aint doing much for them eh? :rofl:

1 Like
12

Keep that little dot above them empty, at any cost, it’s what i do, as long that little dot is empty they are enjoying the perk of the co-driver.

It’s not unarmed, stay in the second line, no more than 35 meters from your drones, less than 35 meters always, if you get caught ram the bastard, try to pin him down, do whatever possible to allow your drones to work, only retreat if they get destroyed.
Some sort of skirt in front of your build will push them away, it will be simpler if you don’t use BF’s

13

IDK. That’s a good point. We’ll see where it lands.

14

I used to do battle with four, now i’m doing with 6, i’m not running out of ammo as often as i used to be…but still MGs are killers, the drones come out, get destroyed and you still have to wait around 20 seconds to be able to have new ones, that if you have all the parts for it, if not it’s more 30 seconds…it’s too long.
It’s too long, too weak while in the thick of it

1 Like
15

i believe sidekicks and flying drones have shorter recharge times. i know fuze drones have a 30 second recharge timer which is… way to long… even with the recharge fusion perk it only brings it down to around 24 - 25 seconds. i believe its 24.7 seconds iirc…
when i fuse my drones i try to make sure they have the perk for recharge time because they just recharge way to slowly. if not that i try to go for active time but it only buys them a few seconds on the field so it isnt much…
i wish they gave the drones the ability to be picked up and recharged but even then… they get destroyed pretty much instantly by bots so it would be rare to get that perk to go off.

i mean even so they dont have much ammo to begin with and thats one of the major downsides to drones.

1 Like
16

The target lock and damage boost are two separate functions. I had one a little while ago (three grenadiers was a fun annoyance in Next Step), and it changes drones to a sort of detached Caucasus.

1 Like
17

the upside is… fuse for durability it’s a waste, with that out of the way there are other combinations… like.
range and activation time.
or any other combination.

18

Copter drones need to spread out instead of stacking on top of each other above you. They should dodge at least 1 time after being hit. (I don’t mean active moving like the legendary one)

Both rocket drones need reduction in time between shots. They are bad at all PS.
Dunno much about the current state of sidekicks, haven’t played them since the OG Droneapocalypse when sidekicks would chase clear across the map.

Fuzes have such a long reload that they are not really fun. (to me)

19

I would let them move around so the the legendary drone cab could send them off to targets. It’s kind of odd they let the ground drones run loose and not the air ones.

20

30 second reload time.
with the fusion its 24.9 seconds so you need the cheetah engine.