Droning Tips Wanted

[Ebonwulf]

Message pretty much says it all. I love usin the little mean bastids and all, but I need some tips as I'm wanting to play with em, but they breakin my bank fiercely, besides just generally annoying the daylights outta me since I'm losing quite a few. I've been using the "cheap drone test" technique (heh), pop one of the little buggers out, and it works fine. Switch it off, pick it up from my feet, not moving mind you, and then launch a med assault drone off. The drone refuses to move...No problem, switch it off, launch it again, and boom, sudden teleportation to the ether. I've read quite a bit about some of the bugs, and thought I might be able to manage it, but however I seem to be losing more now even after having worked with em enough to get used to it (skill 13 anyways).

So for those of you who are vets of droning, just how do you do it as of right now? If you know of more "droning friendly" areas where the bugs seem to happen less, pass those along as well.

Please, no rants about the bugs or what not, I've seen the upper layer of them myself, and I'm absolutely positive that KK knows as well.

[FarSight]

- buy one drone in shop then try to find resser next conster to build you another 20 drones (they will be better quality and should cost you about 1/5 shop price)
- hunt in not populated areas
- dont launch drone when standing near walls
- if you are in dungeon try launching drones when crouching
- dont launch drone fast after moving
- dont launch drone fast after zoning
- dont launch drone fast after you lost previous (destroyed, disconnected by ESC far away from you)
- when you disconnect drone and you are switched to diff prspective (eg: yoyu launched drone from FPP and after ESC you are in TPP) switch perspectives some times (swich between FPP and TPP 2-3 times)
- when your drone disapear (not in blackbox or upinthesky but simply disapear) do Alt+Tab and fast reconnect drone should be on floor near you (funny is that in this case other ppl around see drone but you dont see O_o )
- when you got blackbox or upinthesky do alt+tab and recconect and zoning and chang position .. and pray mayby you will be lucky to not losing next one ...

[Ebonwulf]

Wow, great reply. I'll try the launching tips out, the res/cst thing I wasn't too concerned about as I was aware of the glitches and wanted to test out to see if I could handle the amount of bugs. Will do on my next round with it.

Anyone have something else to add?

[jernau]

Right now the only tip I can give is - Don't. At least wait until they fix the newest set of bugs or you'll just get an even worse impression of it than normal.

[Heavyporker]

Hey! Another Ohioian! You a Buckeye?


Anyways. I got this droner on Terra, been meeting this real kind and generous droner in the graves. He says - try holding a drone, alt+e a couple times until you see the drone floating in front of you (first person perspective, btw), and wait about 10 seconds.

Almost always fixes it, but you DO lose a slew of drones now and then, still.

The other droner tips above apply. The drones themselves seem to bypass a lot of map clipping, especially when launching.

And another thing - you want to have repair skill and ONE tradeskill (either research or construction) to make your droner's life enormously easier.

Oh, and implants. When you get the chance at a droner implant, get it. The pue +dex implants only help marginally in that they let you use higher TL drones,, but you need a lot of subskill points invested for the bang behind the drones.

I will tell you this.... it's still nice to be a droner.


DEATH FROM THE SKY!

[GIJ0e]

and turn 3 times spinwards, spit into the wind and invoke the name of the great god dronnar in the hope that in his benevolance he will let you launch a drone.

seems to work as often as all the other tips :p

[Idola]

Probably not the sort of tip you're looking for, but this one served me obscenely well:

Get an FPS game where you can fly about in all directions. Play it. Repeatedly. Get used to the dimensions you can move in. NEVER HOVER. KEEP MOVING YOU SILLY BASTARD. DON'T EVEN CONSIDER STAYING STILL FOR MORE THAN HALF A SECOND.

Drones are fragile; in PvP you're either going to be moving all the time, or you WILL lose your Drones (Bugs not counted, obviously).

[Ebonwulf]

Only time I have held the drones still is when hunting plants down in the sewer, and flying in there was definitely a learning experience, as for some reason, along the edges of the water and lip of the ledge it seems to think it's a deep hole. When I finally made it to the outzone, flying seemed such a walk in the park even on the hills.

In PVP situations, I realize either strafing runs, or juking and diving will be the key things. The small profile is it's best defense in that case, and (the ones I've played with so far anyways) seem to have enough range to where you can make that harrassment even more effective.

As for right now tho, yes, I did shelve my droner. For a time it didn't seem to matter where I popped a drone or whether I ducked, etc, I'm just karmicly challenged enough that I lost the majority of mine. It's definitely something I will come back to, but for now, I'm keepin with a trusty sniper rifle. ;)