drones take no skill!!!
please nerf all drones until they deal no damage!
drones should be made totally useless!!
this is the common thought that i see everywere, every time someone tries to talk about drones, or any “no skill” weapon those are the comments that pop up…
but now, nerf, after nerf, years of nerfs, drones finnally lay at “totally useless”
i used to use drones as seconday weapons, the way they were intended to, a cannon, and two turrets, or something similar;
drones themselves were always easy to beat, they always had severe downsides to them, such as being easy to destroy, having low durability, unable to target especific targets, unable to aim at weapons
there was a time that “drones” (actually a singular drone) was trully “overpowered” the sidekick was given a 200% damage boost, the change was quickly removed;
drones in general did have a low “skill floor” but they also had a low “skill celling” there was no way to get “better” whit them exept for “learning to build better” the exeption being turrets, which you could learn map possitioning, and put turrets at strategic points to be able to be more effective with them;
overally, drones were easy to “counter” there are several ways to do so…
but still, due to them being an “no skill” weapon, it got people to cry and cry, ignoring their severe flaws and the fact that they are bad weapons overally…
so now we are here
at this point, i almost never see drones, be it in PVP or PVE…
when i identify i drone player in my team, it just makes me want to quit the battle and report that user for “inactivity”, as 100% of the time, it results in our team to lose…
i can safelly ignore a “droner” in the enemy team, as the only thing it damages is the paint of my vehicle, gives us a free win, and i can just quicly ram the drones for easy free points, air drones? destroyed before even deploying them.
i believe, that no weapon should be “totally useless” no matter how much “skill” it requires, but at this point having a drone user in your team just feels like a liability…
so in this post, i won’t be proposing a “buff” in a way, but a FIX for drones, to make them actually not only require the so called “skill” but to also be “usefull” and “fun to play”
so starting:
new module/weapon proposal
“laser targeting system”
energy consumption: 1
function:
when mounted on an armored vehicle, makes a lazer similar to flute’s, when the lazer is on an enemy target, it will increase the damage recieved by the target by 3% per second, up to 8% for regular weapons, and 15% to “no skill”(drones) weapons
with this proposal, there could be “more” than just “deploy, run” to the gameplay of regular wheel drones, and flying drones, and it could even be a good “support weapon” for other allies, you could even run a build that only uses them, and solelly help your teammates win the fight!
now lets look at individual drones:
wheel drones:
very low durability, extremelly low damage, will extremelly often run around and target multiple enemys, dealing almost no “effective damage” to a target, extremelly bad AI will make it ram into enemys and instantly get destroyed(even when not hitting a bumper)
a solution could be to make you able to “target” with those drones, like a caucasus, making you actually able to do damage to a singular enemy, + give it better driving AI so it avoids enemys instead of running right into them, giving them resistance to bullet damage could be good to, as just 3-5 shoots from a spectre, can just instantly destroy it, while not making it invisinble to canons;
grenadier has been nerfed so much, it can’t keep up with your own armored vehicle, has extremelly short range, and the accuracy makes so it will miss even the biggest of builds
solution?
same thing as the sidekick, but increase accuracy, no need to reduce damage as their damage is already complete garbage where it is.
fuse:
i don’t know where to start, this thing is just horrible, has always been horrible, and will probrally remain horrible if a complete rework of it is not done, the AI of the drone just stinks, when deployed, it will remain 2-4 seconds without doing literally anything, then it will find a “target” and it MUST be in your minimap for it to “see it” then it will run to the closest target, ram it (not explode) and then after some mileseconds, it explodes, sometimes it even explodes when an enemy is far from it!!! it still uses the old explosion mechanic, but it’s extremelly bad AI low base damage, low amunition, long reload, inability to deploy more than 1 or start reloading while one is active, slot machine targetting, is not worth doing the same damage to all parts in the radius of the explosion…
missile drones:
they take extremelyl long to reload after firing, the missile is slow, the hitbox is massive, the missile will often hit the ground, and it only deals exactly 101 damage per shot (both of them) probrally still using the old blast mechanics, horrible missile turning,4 energy consumption, still not worth it using even with dealing the same damage on all parts of the blast radius, nor due the fact that the missile can change target mid-flight if it loses it’s current.
for the flying drone, increasing the damage by 50 points, and increasing durability due to it’s size and giving it targetting capabilitys could be good, for the turret you could “maybe” double it’s damage per hit, as of now you can mostly just ignore them.
module based flying drones:
they are horrible, they won’t even deal damage, instantly destroyed by any weapon as soon as they are deployed, they are huge, and fly right above you without moving at all, all of this while having less than 50 points of health;
so
increase durability OR make them constantly move around like annhilators do, as of now they get destroyed too fast to even deal any damage to targets
yaoguai:
currently in a “good place” deals enought damage, while you need to aim and strategy where, and when to place them, low durability, but small hitbox makes so it survives enought;
annhilator:
in a “good place” can currently work as a “side support weapon” like the developers intended to drones originally be;
turrets:
i don’t know what to change without breaking them, they require enought skill to be used “in a good way” you won’t have a lot of sucess with them by just randomly dumping them.
vulture:
remove from the game, the is no fix for this atrocity.
what do you think about this post? what would you do to “fix” the drones?
they did major nerfs to drones that where in the pre-hovers times. (I realize some people have not been here as long, but drones used to be really good when the game started)