I believe that drones should receive an energy cost reduction because they’re not very useful right now. They deal less damage than a play controlled weapon (less fire rate, can miss easily despite having autoaim, less damage overall and cannot target important modules like wheels or weapons). And i am okay with them dealing less damage. They shoot for you and they deal less damage, a fair trade-off. They are also very fragile, a quick burst or one shot and they’re gone. But right now, they don’t offer anything special, just a worse version of other builds. But with a lower energy cost, they can offer a unique advantage: strength in numbers. Each individual drone will still have the current rubbish damage and rubbish survivability, however, with a lower energy cost, it will compensated by deploying more of them. Additionally, with more drone launchers, the drone carrier will be way bigger, to fit all of those drone launchers. And this makes the drone carrier easier to hit (because all of the drone launchers take space), slower (due to increased mass) and harder to armour effectively (because it’s harder to effectively armour up a large vehicle).
In conclusion, reducing the energy cost of drones will make them usable, but will also introduce trade-offs to keep them balanced.
Their pros will be numerical advantage, but their disadvantages will be low individual damage compared to regular weapons (as it is currently) , poor HP for drones (as it is currently), the drone carrier will be easier to hit, slower and less armoured.
It would still be hard for a drone carrier to solo carry the team, like with other builds, due to the disadvantages that drone carriers have right now and the disadvantages that drone carriers will have with my proposed change, but it would at least give the drone carrier an opportunity to do something, beyond just being the reason for the match loss or being the lowest damage player in raids.
Drones currently feel very balanced to me, sadly compared to the current meta they suck so bad, but so does everything else that does not purposely overperform. Most weapons that are genuinely fair feel imbalanced and sucky because nobody uses balanced weapons everyone is always milking the low hanging fruit, you bet that the moment, for a raw example, Fortunes are nerfed or another weapons performs their job but better due to whatever buff it gets almost 90% of all players running fortunes will hop onto that gun instantly
Blame it on their lukewarm designs. They all more or less do the same, so ofc the one that does the thing they all do the best is going to be the only pick.
Lets take the Jotun for example. Why does it feel like a reskinned Inci? Similar damage, only 30% slow? Who designs game weapons like that? You can barely see the difference between the two weapons, even if you squint hard af.
either that, or at least give them more “ammo”…like mines that are drop and forget have an insane ammount of ammo, but drones and turrets have…base 4…lol…and can still be run over, oneshoted…etc.
with the rearm time (an eternity compared to mines)…at least more ammo would reduce THE ABSOLUTE NEED to mount EXPLODABLE genesis…
one other thing could be allowing them to be redeployed (drones and turrets) without the need for previous ones to “get rekt one way or another”, same as you can deploy the next batch of mines regardles of the previous ones activating or not (not 100% sure of this…don’t use mines)…which allows a miner to deploy a VERITABLE MINFIELD in a few seconds…
They have differences between them e.g. wheeled drones and flying drones, each one does one thing better, if you try to do the other’s job, they will suck.
and each one has their indirect reasons that will influence other aspects like how the build is made etc.
In the end it all depends of your mood for that day.
On any platform my friend. Especially with grenadiers, anacondas and owls, if you are moving fast, the drone will miss. And with many builds being quite fast, it’ll be fairly easy to achieve the needed speed to make drones miss.
Blockquote " * the drones already have enough downsides don’t add new ones please. "
My idea aims to give them some downsides, but at least make them competitive. With more drones, you could at least deal reliable damage and be a reliable support for your team, and not just the annoyance for both the enemy and the teammates. With more launchers inside a vehicle, they don’t need to change their size or anything, but, logically, if you put more drones in your car, it’ll take more space. Therefore, having a consequence for getting more drones. It’s like with other weapons, the more weapons you have on your car, the bigger it gets to have space to put all of them.
You have a point, but, with other weapons, you can at least be somewhat competitive and do the role that the weapon was designed to do. But with drones, unless you get people that are not paying attention, you cannot do that much.
That can work too, but i feel like that would scare people into thinking that drones will become OP. I see many people already think that drones are OP. This way, with the reduction of energy costs, drones will still be what they are, but you could have the freedom to equip more of them and make your own loadout. Right now, drones are too few and, unless you play support with your team, you’re useless on your own, as, if it is a 1 v 1, the guy will just gun down the drones and slowly bleed you out of your drones until you have nothing and then he’ll target the defenseless drone carrier and game over. But with more drones, you can have some pushing power, as it’ll take more time for the enemy to kill all of your drones, so you have the chance to do something to him.
One. Reduce Sidekicks to 3 Energy.
Two. Reduce Owl to 3 Energy.
Three. Reduce Anaconda to 3 Energy.
Four. Reduce Fuse to 3 Energy.
Problem solved.
PS. Create a Rare Wheeled Drone and challenges and trials.
not always true, my friend…it also depends VEEEry much how your team’s able to use you…
case point: i manage to infiltrate behind enemy lines and as soon as i drop my turrets…(drum roll pls)…
my teammates draw the combat away from them (my turrets)…now add to all that…need to sd my turrets (recharge time)…drop new ones…if i can do that again (get behind enemi)…or, even better…charge straight into enemy ranks, hope to survive, drop turrets/drones, and escape…
that won’t solve the problem, the more you get up the more will be shot down or run over.
Cooldown and more durability will, no cooldown or an overheating like mechanic and more durability for the drones not the pod.
whatever regular drones has less dura than a gasgen and we all know how much the gasgen is loved.
That’s a good start. But i think an even easier solution is to reduce all drones energy cost by 1. Easy to implement and gets the job done. With the new energy system that they are working with, they can fine tune the energy cost so that it makes the drones useful but not too broken.
I agree that cooldown and durability buffs would help drones stay up for longer. But i think that this approach has a low chance to be implemented, as people will think they become OP. My approach tried to do that but by keeping some disadvantages so that it would have a higher chance of being implemented. In case my point is misunderstood, i agree with you, but, as a first step, i think that lowering the energy cost should be the first step. Even if your drone army is still easily wiped out, at least it’ll take more time for the enemy to do so. Then, after this would be tested, they can implemeht your idea.
Even with a slower build like yours, you can still bleed the drone carrier dry of resources or just outright kill the carrier directly by ignoring the damage the drones deal to you. With my proposed change, the drone carrier would at least deal some damage to you before you kill all his drones, so the drone carrier wouldn’t be a detriment to the team.
Well, drones are mostly support tools. But if they were to have their energy cost reduced and you deploying more of them, you can have some offensive power on your own as well, without depending on your team completly. Of course, it would help for them to get other buffs too (like how babuskae suggested: cooldown and durability), but i think that the one change that they would really need right now is an energy cost reduction, to make drone carriers able to handle enemies on their own. Almost any build in the game can work in some capacity on its own, without team support (of course, team help is prefered, but they work on their own too). But drones are highly dependent on the team. A lone drone carrier can’t do much. Because the drone carrier deals the most damage when paired with other teammates or when the enemy is caught off-guard.
I don’t understand.
People don’t complain about being shot at by any other weapon but drones, why?
If you shoot the drones you render that player useless for 30 seconds, and that is easier than with any other weapon even if you have luparas and chords, go try to degun maces, leeches, protectors, vectors, sinus and so on, it’s way harder.
Ok, let’s say you are greedy AF and you go for the centre mass of a drone build itself, ( which i don’t advice, cause is that way a drone build will get you ).
Most probably you will do the same to any other build whatever may be, at the end you didn’t focused the weapons but the build itself, the outcome is the same, you got killed, by whatever weapon, but you don’t complain, the mistake was yours in both cases but if you got killed by a drone…it’s the drone fault.
