I agree with you. Drones are exposed. They’re either stationary, hover above your build or roam around the map (and most likely crashing into everything). Guns can be hidden. Drones will target the cabin (often the strongest point of the build). Other weapons can target whatever the player decides (like enemy’s guns). I do not really understand why people complain so much about drones as well, but hey, if their complaining is loud enough, it scares the devs from fixing them. And, unlike other weapons, drones do not have that many modules compatible with them. For cabins, besides the call and munin, there were only other 2 cabins that i know of that can work with drones: one that buffs your damage if you go straight for some time and the other one giving damage buff if you stay close to the enemy for 8 seconds. The other ones don’t really benefit drones at all. With modules, you have radar/detector, cheetah engine and genesis to work with (that gives a very low amount of ammo per genesis, especially compared to the blue ammo box while taking up more space than the ammo box). With wheels, you only have bigfoot for their perk. So not only you can’t deploy many dropes to compensate for their individual weaknesses, but, as you suggested previously, their cooldown leaves the drone carrier exposed for a long time and the durability of the drone itself is not only hidden from the normal stats but also pretty low (i think they have like 45 durability or something like that, literally being able to kill them by ramming them with a bumper). And also, despite so many people complaining about their autoaim, any drone without an MG can easily miss. I find that owls sometimes even miss in adventure mode against AI because the missile cannot turn well enough to keep the target locked. And those with MGs have really long delay between their bursts and do not deal great damage. And even in exhibition when testing people’s builds, against stationary opponents in the test drive, the missiles sometimes miss for no reason.
Devs already planed to reduce the energy cost of Anaconda, Owl, and I-can’t-remember-which-other-drones by 0.5 in the upcoming update. i’m not sure discussing something that is already about to be implemented is vry productive.
Y’all just need to play your turret drones like Sandbland.
I’ve seen that tactic before.
It’s a good start, but won’t fix much, as you can still use around the same amount of drones, even with the changes that they announced. To make drones actually usable, they gotta do a significant energy cost reduction (like 1 point of energy cost reduction for all drones for example). Another idea could be to halve their costs (meaning that, after the energy rework, they keep the same energy cost values). Other possible solutions are, as babuskae said, to address the cooldown and durability of the drones themselves. My personal opinion is that a combination of halving their energy cost, buffing their cooldown and durability is the way to go, but, if they reduce the energy cost of all drones by 1, i’d still be happy as a first positive step would be done towards making drones actually viable.
That’s quite a good build. Didn’t expect that. However, you can see what creativity you need to have to make turrets useful. As with most other builds and in most other situations, turrets aren’t that useful when they were used in their intended role.
Just to put in perspective any regular drone has less dura than a gasgen, hey , the rest i agree, it checks out.
Drone will not receive the TLC they should have, drones and other weapons, at least i’m not seeing that happen any time soon.
But they are fun.
As you point out i would like to see more drones, they are lines that aren’t complete, OWLS and GRENADIERS are not the same as Hawks and Sidekicks.
I just think you are trying to use too much diplomacy, in a way that resembles apologetic, which i’m not in agreement, that’s all. ( at least it was i read your initial post).
Do you know how long i’m searching for this vid?
Thank you.
Hi, Sandbland just posted it today. He’s the only one who had it. He built this a while back but then got rid of his channel and didn’t repost it until now. His new stuff pops up on my Youtube feed.
No, laziness and lack of skill should never be rewarded.
I use this way of speaking because, if i don’t, then people will just dismiss the suggestion without bothering to even read it. And my goal with this is to reach as many people as possible so that, perhaps, we can make a change.
It’s not really a lack of skill. As pointed out previously, drones can easily be taken out due to low durability. They also do less damage than regular weapons, always target the cabin (the strongest part of the build) while ignoring enemy weapons or other explosive modules, have worse fire rate than regular weapons and some of them miss despite their autoaim. Due to all of these combined, if the enemy is paying attention, he can kill the drones and the drone carrier is left basically defenceless. And seeing that not many drones are active at any one point, it’s easy to kill them with almost any weapon class. And those that can’t, like cannons, can just shoot the drone carrier itself. Without its drones, the drone carrier is basically helpless. It’s no wonder that drones always deal the least amount of damage, even with all the modules for them and the drone cabin with bigfoot wheels. That autoaim that so many players think makes drones skilless actually misses quite often. It sometimes even misses against bots in adventure mode. And those bots aren’t known for their amazing skill. With so many disadvantages against drones, you need skill just to compensate for those disadvantages. And due to this, drones are nothing more than an annoyance and not a threat, like all weapon classes should be.
Then all machine guns and shotguns should reward nothing.