my salvage boat was jury rigged and had alot of mods for drone combat.

mostly so I could stay far away while I attacked with my drones. mostly cheap ratting

what exactly happened to the drones, thinking about coming back and trying to figure out what to do as it was my primary means of combat lol

In a nutshell, they have changed the NPC AI to focus fire on drones in mass so they die really quickly when deployed for battle now. Some say it’s making the AI react more like a PVP opponent in that they deal with a drone ships primary source of damage dealing now before moving to the ship itself. This is forcing many people to change the way they play and in particular is impacting mission runners, explorers, and drone focused PVE gallente pilots. Ratters too, I'd wager...

This could actually open alot of options, like remote-repairing your sentries instead of shield-boosting/armor-repping your ship for example.

The question would be, if the AI switches targets after it agressed, or if it stays on the first target it agresses.

Yeah, been running some Epic Arcs this week since the new build, and drones are annoying now, always getting the heck shot out of them, really require active management to keep them alive. 

Good thing my pilots are all gunnery/missle experts.

Drone damage actually got a buff.  But there is a ton of crying from people that would drop their drones and go AFK for an hour while the drones killed everything because nothing would ever target them.

If you acutally pay attention while playing this is a nice patch for drone users, especially in PvP.

So, forget what I said above now that I tested it on Tranquility.

I'm one of those old 100+ million SP players with all gunnery, missile and drone-skills maxed out and it's totally annoying now to fly LvL 4 missions. Killing the pesky frigates requires usually small or medium drones, but they get killed so fast while they approach their target that you can't even react and call them back.
Even remote-repairing doesn't work as the drones get killed faster then you can lock them.
There's alot of suggestions to use electronic warfare modules to get aggro from the NPCs, but from the 2 hours of testing I did that doesn't seem to work either.

Either the drones need more HP, or the AI needs heavy tweaking. Especially for newer players, who have specialized for drone-boats this is basically breaking the game for them.

For the time being I woudn't recommend flying missions for the purpose of generating ISK.

Originally posted by Sentime

Drone damage actually got a buff.  But there is a ton of crying from people that would drop their drones and go AFK for an hour while the drones killed everything because nothing would ever target them.

 

Links or Did not happen  . I looked to patch noted for retribution did not see a buff , only drone officer mods

I guess your not playing  eve or playing one-sided  .If you had been played you would know AFK misioning is a lie most of time

1-Missions with gates need to be activated

2-Missons with waves ,was already shooting drones when spawned

3-proximity aggro ,your drone goes around something with proximity aggro got shooted .Any BS is dead without small drones in  and that carppy missions with hundreds frigates in them  + EW

Missions sytem needed complete overhaul for long time ,but they only add hundred frigates to criple missoners/ mission complete times  but not a clever desgin allows to every ship (turret/missile/drone ) doable /effective .But  It needs brain

So far I've only skipped WC and the various Assaults and I've had little trouble with my drones.  I'm a Navy Raven pilot though so even my cruise furies pop frigs when they're a good way out.  That said, anytime they've managed to get in close I've launched my drones and taken them out pretty quick with no lost, but - yes - damaged, drones.  And I've only been skipping WC and Assault cause of that full room aggro bug which I think is fixed.

I'm not saying the new AI is perfect by any means but, from a solo CNR L4 missioner: the new AI has definitely made missions more challenging in as far as I actually have to pay attention now.  Which is good, I had a habit of nodding off at the keyboard during missions anyway...  :)

GL HF Fly Safe,

-k

edit:

(oh, and I don't regret the 4mil in Drone SP that I've "wasted" nor the fact that although I was a missile only Caldari pilot for so long I finally decided to train Hybrids and thus it just made sense to train up Gallente BS V as well.  So...  Cross training is kinda the end-game ((oh dear god, I said the dirty word)) in EVE anyway.  You'll have to do it eventually and a more robust char is always a good thing cause next month they'll nerf everything BUT drones and drone boats and then you'll be all NAH-NAH!  err, something....)

---

Originally posted by kovah
So far I've only skipped WC and the various Assaults and I've had little trouble with my drones.  I'm a Navy Raven pilot though so even my cruise furies pop frigs when they're a good way out.  That said, anytime they've managed to get in close I've launched my drones and taken them out pretty quick with no lost, but - yes - damaged, drones.  And I've only been skipping WC and Assault cause of that full room aggro bug which I think is fixed.

I'm not saying the new AI is perfect by any means but, from a solo CNR L4 missioner: the new AI has definitely made missions more challenging in as far as I actually have to pay attention now.  Which is good, I had a habit of nodding off at the keyboard during missions anyway...  :)

GL HF Fly Safe,

-k

edit:

(oh, and I don't regret the 4mil in Drone SP that I've "wasted" nor the fact that although I was a missile only Caldari pilot for so long I finally decided to train Hybrids and thus it just made sense to train up Gallente BS V as well.  So...  Cross training is kinda the end-game ((oh dear god, I said the dirty word)) in EVE anyway.  You'll have to do it eventually and a more robust char is always a good thing cause next month they'll nerf everything BUT drones and drone boats and then you'll be all NAH-NAH!  err, something....)

---

With the new AI and the changes to the T2-missiles it's basically back to square one, where every LvL4 mission-junkie was flying Ravens/CNRs/Golems.

That's no problem for people like you or me, who have played long enough to have all the skills at hand to swap ships instantly, but for those newer players it's some weeks/month of respeccing.
Respeccing and diversifying is not a bad thing, but it sure hurts alot of players and CCP should've thought about that more carefully beforehand.

Originally posted by DanitaKusor
Someone on the help channel in game was saying that if you recall your drones after combat starts the enemy ships would swap aggro to your ship then you could redeploy the drones and the enemies would continue to ignore them.  Have you tried that out?

They'll only ignore them till an aggro switch happens. That said the change is not that big of a deal if you are paying attention. It is a big deal if you did what I did before which is go semi-afk in a Rattlesnake, only really paying attention for activating gates and recalling drones when waves come int.

Originally posted by Salio69
the drone nerf is game breaking for me. i specialized in drones and was planning on resubbing for this expansion. once i heard of this, i just thought thats pretty much it for me then. i dont want to waste all that time going into another route again.

Have you not yet learned that forum noise is not a reliable guide to in-game conditions?

Originally posted by Sentime

Drone damage actually got a buff.  But there is a ton of crying from people that would drop their drones and go AFK for an hour while the drones killed everything because nothing would ever target them.

 

If you acutally pay attention while playing this is a nice patch for drone users, especially in PvP.

No

Drones are bing alpha popped by the AI because of the make up of so many missions. AFK is not a factor. The drones get primary based on an AI group and they are wiped. Add to that, losing a squad of T2 mediums is several million ISK, it cuts deep in to an already nerfed income from most missions.

It, like the HML nerf was a PvE/ Income nerf. It like so many other nerfs in recent years couldn't be white washed by CCP because the community see past all the flim flam.

If only there was some gameplay method whereby your could learn how to stop your drones getting popped

If only....

I am only doing level 2 missions in my cruiser at the moment (new player) but I don't seem to be having any trouble with losing drones (I've lost 1 so far).

What I do is fly up to a group of enemies and let them attack me, then deploy my drones.  If they do focus on a drone I pull it back in and send out a different one.  That usually gets me through a mission with occasionally a bit of damage to a drone's armour that needs repairing but nothing more than that.

Of course, I imagine that will be different in higher level missions with more powerful enemies but I hope to have better drones and skills by then.

Originally posted by DanitaKusor

I am only doing level 2 missions in my cruiser at the moment (new player) but I don't seem to be having any trouble with losing drones (I've lost 1 so far).

What I do is fly up to a group of enemies and let them attack me, then deploy my drones.  If they do focus on a drone I pull it back in and send out a different one.  That usually gets me through a mission with occasionally a bit of damage to a drone's armour that needs repairing but nothing more than that.

Of course, I imagine that will be different in higher level missions with more powerful enemies but I hope to have better drones and skills by then.

You're correctly assessing some things but "a little" isn't so little as you move into higher level missions.

Check out eve-survival.  Look at the quantities of enemies you'll be facing.  In level 2's it was quite acceptable to fly right into a batch and just beat them up like that.  In level 4's, you often need to thin them out at range.  If they all come in, there isn't a ship that could enter some pockets with the ability to withstand that much DPS (2k incoming damage ranges).

A glitch/bug when the AI changes went live had this happening.  "full room aggro" and in some missions, nothing could be done but warp out, come back - kill a couple, warp out - repeat until it was doable.

During that a "trick" was to use a T1 ECM drone (or batch of them).  EW against the NPC's would pull aggro from the webbing/scram frigates so you could warp out before your ship got popped.

That 'glitch' has been fixed but some missions are really tough to try and do these days - especially things with ECM and/or Sensor Damps on the NPC's.  They can prevent you from firing at the targets and drones won't work being as they will get the aggro and die quickly.

It's not impossible but it is a lot tougher than it was.  Many L4's will now require some rather serious SP to do them efficiently and it wasn't the case before.

Net effect:  "Veteran" players aren't too badly effected - mutter stuff.  Newer players will find some types of encounters crippling/undoable.  It doesn't disable wealth to the vets, only to the younger chars and that is a bit of a mutter from folks like me.  (yeah, I'm a "vet" type player but one that doesn't like even more advantages to those of us with plenty of wealth..)