cough

Heh...

OK ill refrain from my normal bashing since you actually try to do good.

Before your recent change to gunner most content in this game could be soloed by a lone gunner this includes stuff like Lion. Limiting factor to achive some of these things where the damage classes on the easily availble missiles. That was the only thing holding real gunners back from soloing everything. The fact that you use the curse word dreadnought in your post is an indication of where you have gone horribly wrong. Any gunner with self respect dont fly a dread unless trying to pose as an fc to lure people (or something). Dreads are very usefull if you wanna do stuff in groups or when there is a galaxy assult, the dread has some nice advantages. But when you solo hunt stuff you do not show yerself in a dread. I'll teach ya how a real gunner fights of you want.

As a FC I find engineers more challenging than HF gunners... and everything I use is weak to mining.

But back on topic there should be a low cost alternative to the better

It really doesn't seem 'fair' that a nubby engineer must pay so much more per death. Even a set of titans (which there should be an alternative to) can be fairly painful in comparison with other deaths.

How about drone generators? The generator itself costs something (as does a weapon) and could take some bits and bobs to operate.

I still wonder what happened to venu and merc drones that where suggested years ago? These should be put into the game.

Make it a mision item in perpetual motion, hand in each of the venu gears to get a BP to make venu drones, these should be fairly cheap t 19 drones for the n00bish droner that are fairly usefull to do content with. The point being that they only take stuff like tit sheets, mets, nukes, silicon, micro and possibly vitalised micros in some small amount. This to enable people to make alot of them.

After you do the venu mission you open up the merc drone mission BP which will be alot more expensive since it takes merc gear to hand in to get a bp for the drone. These drones being far more powerfull and usefull in UZ and other more dangerous areas. These drones would take lac sheets and possibly quicked micros and some regular commods to build. In any case they should not require any drops to build so you can make alot of them.


These missions could then be expanded possibly making a hydra drone that obviously needs to be alot more powerfull than the hydra gear in general but the point is that it should be a repeatable mission to get a BP that make a t 21 drone.


None of these drones should be super powerfull but they should be an alternative to drones that drop in the UZ.

Indeed, something HAS to be done. There is now a shop buying Armada Drones, simple Armada Drones, for 1b.

I am dirty filthy rich and still find this ridiculous, I wonder how I would feel if I did not even have 1b. Armada Infernos and Armada Charge drones also use the same Sup augs that go into tooons of base augs and Ada Damps making them incredibly valuable. This in turn takes a drone, the only end game ones, and makes them not only highly limited (making minis instanced made the Armada Drone source plummet) but also incredibly expensive.

There should never be such a silly bottle neck in game, this game mechanic is making it very hard for anyone who is not an already established player to create an Engineer. There have been literally dozens of suggestions on how to fix this but all of it seems to be ignored.

And with the new drone charging system you almost have to have spares unless you want to run the risk of going without a needed drone for a full 20 seconds. You used to be able to scoop and redrop which was awesome, now we need to wait for some reason.

Please stop ignoring this issue, read through the whole topic and pick some possible fixes.

New drone BPs that take common commods (like how the support drones are made)

Drones that drop in crates as DG loot

A new mini zone for drone loot

All 3 seem to be viable fixes but I know there was more stuff. This is totally ignoring the issue of drone deaths, this is simply addressing the SUPPLY issue.

Let's not have this die on us.

something like these suggestions would sort out the issue of not being able to obtain drones for a long period of time many people never have the issue not affording the drones its trying to find the damn things or armada drones to make them

Do. Moar. UZ.

Just because every sniper or MC'd ShM / Zerker only goes there to solo the bosses isn't an excuse.

Find newbies desperate for UZ ships, then help them. Or you can just ignore them, sell them builds that you've done easily, and bemoan the lack of drops coming out of the zone.



Hmm.

Ok, now im not saying that time should be based on my schedule or anything... I probably play less than some, but theres probably less people that play less than me. Inbetween running to each side of EF space (4uberz), and all over perilous(4uberz), with all the new zones like mausoleum and Olympus... I find it kinda hard to camp UZ with the spawn rate, in fact it directly discourages it. All im sayin is I agree with Beli, Alternative DECENT drones would be a beneficial addition to the game. or if you want people to camp it, increase the spawn rate to a bearable amount (for me it isnt worth more than just going to get my lockouts and hope to get lucky)

Indeed, there was no lack of drones when minis could be camped, it is the same reason ZACs have gone up to 250-300m per. We can use wishful thinking to solve the issue saying to simply "do more UZ" but a lot of people don't have time or frankly the will to do 3~ ubers just in the hopes that they get an Armada Drone or 2.

Why can we not have alternatives? We have not had any new drones to replace their UZ counter parts put in (besides Heph which is meh and requires t21) and there is not good below UZ drones. At the same time UZ is pretty much being done at an all time low because the zone has been in for 3-4 years and now that Oly + a few other places are out there is simply no reason to go back.

I feel I could continue ranting for quite some time but the gist of the idea is across. There is an obvious issue with obvious solutions.

Venu and Merc drones built from BP that is obtained by turning in the respective gear would be pretty cool. You'll want other damage types though. I thought App Wand would be a nice place to start for lower quality healing drones.

Yeah doing UZ is a problem though with the long lockouts. But more high end drones that a bit less expensive could solve the issue, particularly in the radiation/mining/surgical damage department

Note: I'm not an Engineer and have never played one, I have known quite a few Drone Masters and Engineers though.

Do you really think it's fair to expect them to do content that has been done to death just for viable drones? This is an Engineer's weapon, and there's plenty of weapons that get released for the other classes.

Just give them a few other options, hell, maybe you'll see temp drones used by other classes as a mechanic if you flesh it out enough. I don't think it's all that great that Engineers are the only ones that use them because the drones are so limited.

Venu/merc drones are a great idea.

I don't think Venusian/Mercurian drones solely will solve this problem.