so i found a build in the exhibition that has fatums and grenadiers. i found out a few things about these drones…
they last half as long as normal drones. example: if a drone lasts 60 seconds then the fatums last 30 seconds.
their recharge rate is half as much as normal drones (they recharge faster). normal drones being grenadiers and sidekicks. fuzes dont count as they have a longer reload.
im… not sure how to feel about that??
i mean they have a short lifespan but recharge quicker… im unsure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. i think they would be at least decent in raids assuming they can get off the damage. bots tend to target drones heavily and the only raid i can see this working in is raids with steppenwolfs… against bosses these drones would be practically useless.
idk what do you all think? do you think this is a good perk for the fatums to have or no?
250 kg
If the enemy destroys the spider drone, the time until the next activation of the “Fatum” is reduced by 2 times. The next launched drone will also deal 200% of the base damage and heat up enemy parts 2 times more efficiently.
I haven’t tried it, so it’s hard for me to say, but the numbers tell me that this drone won’t work for crap. It’s got a higher energy requirement, a higher power-score than the other drones, half the lifespan, and doesn’t even inflict real damage, instead it heats parts up providing a multiplier for weapons that do deal actual damage.
Using it will require a very specialized build, and not what has become the traditional drone-boat, instead it is an auxiliary weapon to be used with a more traditional (non-drone) weapon, more like what drones were intended to be when they were introduced. For this I like them, but they probably will be useless and underwhelming at the higher power-scores they are fitted for, I suspect. I doubt they will be very popular, beyond their novelty.
The perk stacking this game has leaned into is more complicated than I care to fiddle with, but I suspect if you can get all your ducks in a row with this drone it will work OK. You’ll have to use a cab that gets a damage bonus to heated parts, a reload module, wheels that support that with their perk, sympathetic fusions, and a weapon that can capitalize off of the heat-softened target.
IMO, that’s a lot of BS just to play a video game, but whatever. It’s more BS than I care to contemplate, but if you can line up all these things, you may have an effective Fatum build…until they change the entire system again with the next update, of course.
I mentioned earlier that they felt really short lived but to me it seemed like the next ones were expiring even faster. I’ve been too busy to take a good measurement on them for that. I think it’s something better suited for someone already set up to record though too.
Inside a raid it’s not that bad you can get ammo in pvp you need explosive parts though to up the ammo amount.
If you can get them to target the same thing it might be fair but even with the drone controller cab they have a fixed range and break off combat if you or the target goes outside of it.
I don’t like that they have a shorter lifespan though I do like they get better as they die. Their range is good but it’s almost seems better suited for a turret or a quad that stays close so they are more forced to target things you might be shooting at.
well from my calculations they last half the time of a grenadier and recharge twice as fast as the grenadier. even then thats not a whole lot of time. the recharge time being half that of a grenadier is nice and the cheetah boosts that as well but still… its pretty short lived for a drone. id get more use out of an aurora itself. idk why its not just 8 energy or even 7 or 6. if it were 7, 6, or 5 energy it would possibly be better as a support weapon, its active time would also need to be increased by double for it to be of any use to.
i have a theory as to why its that short though. 1 being that bots can target it in pvp or pve modes and since they have such a short time they decided not to go for it.
or that they thought the drone might be to overpowered if it lasted twice the duration as its perk increases the damage by double or triple… 200% i think is triple damage? and they didnt want the grenadier incident happening all over again. on top of that it would recharge twice as fast to so… i can see how it could be an issue.
true though who would use it? 9 energy is more then the aurora and in that case id rather use an aurora since its 1 less energy point.
the drone cab might work but idk… though i am wondering if the drones 200% damage boost stacks with the damage boost from the cabin to. the cabins supposed to increase the damage by double. so would the drones get a x4 or x5 damage boost? if so thats kinda scary…
they do but as stated above, you know someones gonna try that. im tempted to in raids but i dont have it yet. plus the drone has to be killed by the enemy to get the boost. idk if you can activate the cabin perk to get them to SD and get the boost that way.
Better calcs are needed I wan’t to see is dmg given is equal to time out in the game. (i.e. active not cool down time.).|
Targeting wise it should be no more then 200% 100 at most it would be good to measure this too.
I’m only interested in the measurements right now. I’ve been busy fixing other house hold stuff.
I thought the opposite that they might do twice the dmg and live half as long. Can we test against this and see what’s going on? This would matter in the other portion you mentioned.
I have issues getting that feature to work well. Even from the over drive control cab. Larger dmg would be normally good but if you can’t aim it that’s crap.
It’s fine it’s just more testing. I haven’t been on much but I’ll probably finish the season out.
The biggest problem I see with them is how they move, it feels like these drones are way more susceptible to your own build getting in the way of fire, and if you try to move far enough for your drones to get a clear shot, they end up moving away from attacking the enemy as they want to stick rather close to you, and it feels like once they start to readjust their own positioning they end up fiddling around rather than firing.
Basically the drones feel like they want to walk around in a circle around your own build, your build being the center, but at the same time, they want to also walk around the enemy in a circle and fire at it, so basically you need to keep yourself inside this circle and block the drone shots most of the times, and you can’t be outside the circle or the drones really aren’t good at firing outside the circle, once they lock on to an enemy they want to spin around in a circle around that enemy, while at the same time still spinning around in a circle around you, and because of this they just end up wonky and can’t decide what to really do as they keep switching back and forth on which circle they want to walk and end up sorta not sure where they are supposed to go as builds move around, managing to deal damage on pure luck alone.
No matter what the situation, it feels like 2/3rds of the time your own build is in the way of the drone no matter how you try to position yourself, even with muninn
I’m not sure about this. While I haven’t used them yet, my plan is to combine it with other drones, probably some wheeled ones (since I have barely used them previously).
I suspect the drone controller cabin will make this approach stronger, so that you can make sure your spider drones are heating up the enemy that your grenadiers are also attacking.
I doubt it will be OP, but it should be more viable than wheeled drones alone.
PS per drone 1250 vs ( sidekicks 760 ) ( Hawks 570 )
1 energy consumption per drone ( sidekicks 8 ) ( Hawks 6 )
250 kg vs ( sidekicks 256 kg ) ( Hawks 128 kgs )
Now, for a solid drone build you only need 4 things.
the co - driver ( one or even the most well implemented of all co-drivers )
The cheetah
Bfs
A ruby ( it gives the max range for your drone or Caucasus), having anything above that it’s a waste
If you want a solid and fancy build you can add one of 3 cabs.
Howl
the call
Muninn ( even after the improvements having 2100 base PS it’s a big disadvantage to a drone build, only to have some mediocre and marginal improvements and against much more powerful adversaries)
whatever invisible or other modules you can spare.
Traditionally, a drone has 20 seconds active and 30 in cooldown from stock
A Fatum has ± 16 seconds active and a faster cooldown, so 6 fatums may be equivalent to 4 drones, they can be more but have a faster cooldown.
If a Fatum is destroyed, the next one comes out with Psicho mode active , in those times can be useful to stick around in a 35 meters radius from your Fatum and protect it from incoming fire.
Hawks are as fast as your build is, Sidekicks are great foot soldiers and attack dogs, all the rest are carbon copy, only worse
Fatums are not faster as Hawks can be nor more nimble than sidekicks ( from what i saw so far ) are they more powerful?
How about their time to reaction? From deployment to actually do some work?
I think they’ll make for a better auxiliary weapon than as a primary weapon with a full boat load. Their high PS and energy consumption seem like a problem. I feel like letting them heat up targets and then smacking them with a hammer would work for these, and is the intention.
Maybe using them with Gerridae would help solve their orbit issues, allow them to keep line-of-sight with targets better, and avoid collision and blocking from your host vehicle.
I’m not sure I care if it’s ideal or not. Blooming Cannon Ravager-Spider(s) just feels like it needs to happen anyway, but I bet the Fatum and the Gerridae will dance well together.
Has anybody tried it?
Running full does seem to work if you run enough heating and cooling. There’s a few in CC on PC that run them.
With them being drones though the big Ifs are:
Getting them to target
Getting them to stay on target
Active run time is enough
Number of launches possible before becoming explosively dangerous.
Against is it better to just run your own aroura as a hard tact weapon.
iirc the aurora is 8 energy while the fatum is 9. if its meant to be a support drone then why add the extra energy point?
i also notice that drones dont have the best attack pattern. they tend to drive in a circle around your vehicle and can also get in the way making you wedge yourself on them or even just getting in the way. also the fact they stop firing when something gets in the way be it your vehicle or an obstacle they get to close to. idk the driving on the drones is a bit wonky and they tend to stick very close to your car. this is an issue ive always had with wheel drones but even the fatums are doing this and to a problematic degree… i think a rework to their ai and distance to your vehicle is warranted. get to far away and they stop attacking, get to close and they just end up getting in your way, you end up getting in their way, or they end up wedging you.
