About Drones and Droning

[Kragar]

Since NC1 launch Ive mostly played Spy Droner mostly because its in my opinion the
best way of playing the game by myself. Mostly I also like crafting and PVE but nowadays
I'm very interested in pvp too. I also play odd hours and have to go AFK from time to time
so most of the time I prefer playing solo as I don't want to make groups and make other
players wait for IRL things I have to sort out.

So from my personal perspective I have questions about the state of Drones and Droning and
the changes and the bugs it currently have.

- Launching a drone: I get several times when I try to launch a drone the message that the item
didn't work for unknown reasons. I have to spam the launch button several times before it launches. From time to time my drone transfoms into a scorpion corpse and drops to the ground when I try to launch it. Have to wait until corpse rots for the Drone to appear.

- Dropping the drone. Sometime when I drop the drone, mostly to out of ammo reasons the drone
vanishes and drops through the wall I'm standing beside. Also the drone might pull mobs with it
to kill me.

- In El Farid I loose about 20 RK-500 drones per day due to while fighting I get synchronizing bug and many times its impossible to retrieve the drone. Any chance of returning the drone to inventory if you disconnect? ( Or something like that ) Or even better fix the Sync issue that have been haunting for 10? years now. Doubt I ever use other drones that I cannot buy from a vendor, the loss is just too big to use crafted.

- Drones used to be able to dodge and avoid damage. This have been totally nerfed. Currently mobs hit the drone 95% of the time. One cannot outrun, outdodge or place the drone to avoid damage. The only way seems to be to AOE through walls so the mobs cant hit you. Putting a drone in a place where mobs have difficulty to hit it was a FEATURE, you still have to relaunch and get to the hiding place again.

All other weapon systems in the game have possibilites to dodge, avoid and indirect kill mobs.

- Droner defence. The only way a Droner could defend himself tho only with LE chip in was to fire
at his on location when his body got attacked by something. Now this too is removed. Also have happened times that the body that is supposed to be stationary is pushed by other player into mobs fire. Yes a droner can drop his weapon but he doesnt have any healing up or resistances up and running and is basically totally defenseless. Droner have to look for an apparent safe spot to not get killed and even when droning the body can pull aggro from mobs. No other weapon mode have this huge disadvantage.

- Aiming. Low Level drones don't focus and are useless, the first useful drone is the TL17 Laser drone that actually hits what you aim at. Currently and for years it seemed like the AOE drones were the only useful drones out there. AOE Drones. When fired leaves a smoke trail ( still looks very cool ) behind the missile, this trail makes reading chat impossible ( please put chat window to left or right upper corner or something ). When it hits the explosion covers most of the screen if one is close, this makes the GUI unreadable. Every time a mob hits the drone, which they nowadays do nearly always it causes the whole screen "go offline" ( don't know a better term for this but its like a TV without signal ). "Healing" the drone also causes this firelike effect which makes maneuvering extremely hard AND also shuts down its weapon. Even if aim focusing worked it would be useless because the GUI is covered with SFX alot. In groups all explosions also from other drones/weapons affect the drone and hides both chat and GUI. While droning in places like El Farid I pretty much I don't see what I'm firing at and navigating through the
dungeon takes effort.

-XP . Dones are nice to use exping but pretty much all other weapon systems have similar ways of exping that are as good to level, however Droners in group have issues. Ive tried droning in group and there are issues with both XP gain and cash. Basically if the drone is outside of group area ( which it often is ) only the droner gets xp and cash, even in dungeons the drone usually is outside of the group area which makes droners not very useable in a party.

-Drone destroyers. There are locations that destroy a drone. In El Farid there been added meshes
on the floor in certain rooms that if the drone touches them they become stuck and unretrievable, I even have had other drones push my drone into this mesh. For what reason the mesh flooring was added and made it impossible to retrieve drones from under them I have no idea. Doors drops drones to the ground, maybe drop/stun players too to make weapon systems more equal...

Basically this weapon system still have all its bugs and features and on top of it the only few benefits it had have been nerfed. Also the recent nerfs have made several dungeons mostly obsolete. Do anyone do DOY tunnels or Ceres labs anymore even in groups?

The good thing with Neocron was that one could enjoy most of the content soloing, whats the reasoning on changing that after all this time?

[phunqe]

I recently started a droner for fun and if I compare a capped droner using for example a punisher with a capped tank with the moonstriker, the tank by far outweighs the droner in terms of soloability and survivability.
You would expect a rare drone to be able to take some punishment, but just by doing Chaos Caves you quickly realize this is not the case. If there'a bunch of mobs focusing on you, you spend most of the time healing your drone, with very little efficient firing time.

Of course, the tank cannot take this beating either, but I can place my tank strategically and crouch to avoid being hit most of the times, something that is not possible with the drone.
I do understand the initial need to change the drones, since they could solo even mc5 and ceres labs, but in my opinion they are now virtually useless as solo hunters. The PN drone does abysmal damage in comparison and you basically get your pension plan in the mail before finishing off high level mobs (I am comparing to for example a tank with special forces plasma wave or a spy with disruptor).

I have no idea how to actually boost them in this regard without getting back to the old invincible days however...

EDIT: On the other hand you cannot really have a flying Creed or Disruptor either, since that would be imbalanced in PvP, so yeah, not really sure what to do...

[[F6]Knight]

In El Farid I loose about 20 RK-500 drones per day due to while fighting I get synchronizing bug and many times its impossible to retrieve the drone. Any chance of returning the drone to inventory if you disconnect? ( Or something like that)

I like this. You should post this in the brainport section of the forum.


Doubt I ever use other drones that I cannot buy from a vendor, the loss is just too big to use crafted.

Big loss? You're earning millions a day. Crafting even a high level rare drone like a punisher costs peanuts compared to what you can earn with it, IN MINUTES. A few kills in el farid and you already got your money back.


Drones used to be able to dodge and avoid damage. This have been totally nerfed. Currently mobs hit the drone 95% of the time. One cannot outrun, outdodge or place the drone to avoid damage. The only way seems to be to AOE through walls so the mobs cant hit you. Putting a drone in a place where mobs have difficulty to hit it was a FEATURE, you still have to relaunch and get to the hiding place again.

Eum, no. It wasn't a feature, as stated by the devs, it was a BUG. Mobs were unable to properly target (and thus hit) drones indoors, especially when you were floating near a wall, ceiling or above a box. This has been FIXED and now you have to play the game as it was originally intended to be played. Please don't cry because the OVERPOWERED droner got nerfed SLIGHTLY and is still OVERPOWERED.

PS: putting incorrect info in caps annoys the crap out of the people who read your post.


All other weapon systems in the game have possibilites to dodge, avoid and indirect kill mobs.
My tank cannot dodge a mob, just like a drone can't. I can either put my feet in cover since mobs mostly like to target a runners feet, or I can use AOE, just like drones can.


Droner defence. The only way a Droner could defend himself tho only with LE chip in was to fire
at his on location when his body got attacked by something. Now this too is removed. Also have happened times that the body that is supposed to be stationary is pushed by other player into mobs fire. Yes a droner can drop his weapon but he doesnt have any healing up or resistances up and running and is basically totally defenseless. Droner have to look for an apparent safe spot to not get killed and even when droning the body can pull aggro from mobs. No other weapon mode have this huge disadvantage.

If my tank fires his AOE weapon at his feet, he will kill himself. Why shouldn't a droner suffer the same fate? You could argue that the droner is stationary and can't move away from a mob but this is a very weak point. Either kill a mob before it gets close to your body or drop your drone, move your body and launch another drone. In reference to one of my previous points made, drones cost peanuts compared to the money you earn with them. I don't want to resort to the all time low statement of "learn to play", but your post is driving me into that direction ...


Aiming. Low Level drones don't focus and are useless, the first useful drone is the TL17 Laser drone that actually hits what you aim at.

This is a known bug.


Currently and for years it seemed like the AOE drones were the only useful drones out there.

Obviously. If you can choose between single target leveling or AOE leveling at 10 times the speed, then the choice is obvious.
This is why most APU's and tanks go to Regants as soon as they get a half decent AOE weapon.


AOE Drones. When fired leaves a smoke trail ( still looks very cool ) behind the missile, this trail makes reading chat impossible ( please put chat window to left or right upper corner or something ). When it hits the explosion covers most of the screen if one is close, this makes the GUI unreadable. Every time a mob hits the drone, which they nowadays do nearly always it causes the whole screen "go offline" ( don't know a better term for this but its like a TV without signal ). "Healing" the drone also causes this firelike effect which makes maneuvering extremely hard AND also shuts down its weapon. Even if aim focusing worked it would be useless because the GUI is covered with SFX alot. In groups all explosions also from other drones/weapons affect the drone and hides both chat and GUI. While droning in places like El Farid I pretty much I don't see what I'm firing at and navigating through the dungeon takes effort.

Now this is a feature.
And oh no, you have to put some effort into playing the most OP leveling and money making class in the game. What were the devs thinking?


XP . Dones are nice to use exping but pretty much all other weapon systems have similar ways of exping that are as good to level, however Droners in group have issues. Ive tried droning in group and there are issues with both XP gain and cash. Basically if the drone is outside of group area ( which it often is ) only the droner gets xp and cash, even in dungeons the drone usually is outside of the group area which makes droners not very useable in a party.

You are kidding me right? ...


Drone destroyers. There are locations that destroy a drone. In El Farid there been added meshes
on the floor in certain rooms that if the drone touches them they become stuck and unretrievable, I even have had other drones push my drone into this mesh. For what reason the mesh flooring was added and made it impossible to retrieve drones from under them I have no idea. Doors drops drones to the ground, maybe drop/stun players too to make weapon systems more equal...

The grates were added years ago because people would lure the queen into one of the holes where she couldn't get out. She would spawn a bazillion scorps that would get AOE'd from above while abusing line of sight. It was an overpowered and almost completely safe leveling spot.
But the grates are indeed bugged as drones get stuck and fall through them. Even scorps occasionally fall through them or spawn under them.


Basically this weapon system still have all its bugs and features and on top of it the only few benefits it had have been nerfed. Also the recent nerfs have made several dungeons mostly obsolete. Do anyone do DOY tunnels or Ceres labs anymore even in groups?

Droners were OP and still are. Just slightly less than before.
And yes, people still do DOY tunnels and Ceres labs in groups. It's just a lot harder to solo them with droners now, which is intended.


The good thing with Neocron was that one could enjoy most of the content soloing, whats the reasoning on changing that after all this time?

A single class should not be capable of soloing all of the content with ease. Especially since a lot of endgame content is supposed to be group content. Most players perfectly understand the reasoning behind the droner change. I'm just disappointed that it took so long for this change to finally happen. This change should have happened 10 years ago.

[phunqe]

My expectations are probably way off however, since I'm basing it on what I can do with certain other classes in comparison. When I went out hunting firemobs with my droner I was amazed at how long it took to kill the mobs.

But ye, if the drone dies you just launch another without downtime, which by itself has to be considered in the balancing. While it might seem balanced in a group of PvP environment, solo wise the performance is then hurting in comparison.

As a group support class, the droner seems very capable as it currently stands.

[Torg]

let my try to answer from my recent experience


- Launching a drone: I get several times when I try to launch a drone the message that the item
didn't work for unknown reasons. I have to spam the launch button several times before it launches.

drone doesnt launch if youre to close to a wall or ceiling, move a step and retry.


From time to time my drone transfoms into a scorpion corpse and drops to the ground when I try to launch it. Have to wait until corpse rots for the Drone to appear.

this is a known bug, thats hopefully getting fixed some time.


- Dropping the drone. Sometime when I drop the drone, mostly to out of ammo reasons the drone
vanishes and drops through the wall I'm standing beside. Also the drone might pull mobs with it to kill me.

i never experienced this bug (disappearing dropped drone) but of course a firing drone will draw aggro, so mobs could follow it and find you. plain game mechanics.


- In El Farid I loose about 20 RK-500 drones per day due to while fighting I get synchronizing bug and many times its impossible to retrieve the drone. Any chance of returning the drone to inventory if you disconnect? ( Or something like that ) Or even better fix the Sync issue that have been haunting for 10? years now. Doubt I ever use other drones that I cannot buy from a vendor, the loss is just too big to use crafted.

in didnt have that disconnect/sync problem for quite a while, so its probably due to your connection or software setup.


- Drones used to be able to dodge and avoid damage. This have been totally nerfed. Currently mobs hit the drone 95% of the time. One cannot outrun, outdodge or place the drone to avoid damage. The only way seems to be to AOE through walls so the mobs cant hit you. Putting a drone in a place where mobs have difficulty to hit it was a FEATURE, you still have to relaunch and get to the hiding place again. All other weapon systems in the game have possibilites to dodge, avoid and indirect kill mobs.

the trick is to keep moving. try circle-strafing and frequent hiding behind obstacles. mobs have different aiming abilities.


- Droner defence. The only way a Droner could defend himself tho only with LE chip in was to fire
at his on location when his body got attacked by something. Now this too is removed. Also have happened times that the body that is supposed to be stationary is pushed by other player into mobs fire. Yes a droner can drop his weapon but he doesnt have any healing up or resistances up and running and is basically totally defenseless. Droner have to look for an apparent safe spot to not get killed and even when droning the body can pull aggro from mobs. No other weapon mode have this huge disadvantage.

thats the point with droners, isnt it? you may want to run missions or use a TL3 grenade launcher to gain STR and CON.


- Aiming. Low Level drones don't focus and are useless, the first useful drone is the TL17 Laser drone that actually hits what you aim at. Currently and for years it seemed like the AOE drones were the only useful drones out there. AOE Drones. When fired leaves a smoke trail ( still looks very cool ) behind the missile, this trail makes reading chat impossible ( please put chat window to left or right upper corner or something ). When it hits the explosion covers most of the screen if one is close, this makes the GUI unreadable. Every time a mob hits the drone, which they nowadays do nearly always it causes the whole screen "go offline" ( don't know a better term for this but its like a TV without signal ). "Healing" the drone also causes this firelike effect which makes maneuvering extremely hard AND also shuts down its weapon. Even if aim focusing worked it would be useless because the GUI is covered with SFX alot. In groups all explosions also from other drones/weapons affect the drone and hides both chat and GUI. While droning in places like El Farid I pretty much I don't see what I'm firing at and navigating through the
dungeon takes effort.

low level drones are _not_ useless. you just need enough RC and some TC, and get very close, and wait for the reticle to close. fire at big, stupid mobs, see exp levels flowing in. and keep AoE drones away from the target, as explosions might affect the drones shield.


-XP . Dones are nice to use exping but pretty much all other weapon systems have similar ways of exping that are as good to level, however Droners in group have issues. Ive tried droning in group and there are issues with both XP gain and cash. Basically if the drone is outside of group area ( which it often is ) only the droner gets xp and cash, even in dungeons the drone usually is outside of the group area which makes droners not very useable in a party.

drones are still killer exp, and teams are good. i had tons of fun, and exp, and money in Chaos Caves.


- Drone destroyers. There are locations that destroy a drone. In El Farid there been added meshes
on the floor in certain rooms that if the drone touches them they become stuck and unretrievable, I even have had other drones push my drone into this mesh. For what reason the mesh flooring was added and made it impossible to retrieve drones from under them I have no idea. Doors drops drones to the ground, maybe drop/stun players too to make weapon systems more equal...

meshes, and water. it's been this way from the very beginning. we've learned to deal with it, didnt we?


The good thing with Neocron was that one could enjoy most of the content soloing, whats the reasoning on changing that after all this time?

i'm soloing a lot (for similar reasons) and it's still fun. as are drones. and drones in teams. imho el farid is over-estimated, i tried droning there but preferred ceres storages (like point red, there are more) and chaos caves. the recent drones changes werent _that_ bad, dont let that get on your nerves and keep having fun.

[Doc Holliday]

torg said it pretty well.

On the note of drones. Despite all these issues you are having kragar if you get used to droning and get better at it so you dont lose so many drones you will find it is the best way to level a spy. Drones are the only weapon in this game that level both primary stats almost equally. For a spy this is Dex and Int.

Correct me if im wrong but i cant think of any other class/weapon combination that does that and does it so well (aoe vs single target before someone says use a rifle)

[phunqe]

Despite all these issues you are having kragar if you get used to droning and get better at it so you dont lose so many drones you will find it is the best way to level a spy.

No contest, it is the best way, but I at least was comparing end game solo hunting. But again, I was probably just taken by surprise since I've been used to hunting with a tank (damage wise that is), you obviously have other advantages with a spy (stealth, hacking).

[Kragar]

Knight;2200725']
Big loss? You're earning millions a day. Crafting even a high level rare drone like a punisher costs peanuts compared to what you can earn with it, IN MINUTES. A few kills in el farid and you already got your money back.


With RK-1000 and in EL Farid I wont earn millions a day and NC currency is nearly worthless. So count how long it takes to get a rare drone, get the materials and actually craft a few hundred of them. Its not about money but there is not really any point in using them with the amount of time it takes to get them and you will loose them constantly. Takes 5 seconds to get 20 RK-1000 drones from a vendor, I don't even know what it takes to even get a rare one nowadays, make few hundred blueprints and then craft the same amount.


Knight;2200725']

Eum, no. It wasn't a feature, as stated by the devs, it was a BUG. Mobs were unable to properly target (and thus hit) drones indoors, especially when you were floating near a wall, ceiling or above a box. This has been FIXED and now you have to play the game as it was originally intended to be played. Please don't cry because the OVERPOWERED droner got nerfed SLIGHTLY and is still OVERPOWERED.

PS: putting incorrect info in caps annoys the crap out of the people who read your post.



Current Devs might say that. That FEATURE have been part of droning since release and I have stated why it wasn't overpowered. You still had to catch and release the drone and it wasnt 100% proof vs damage. It made soloing possible.


Knight;2200725']
My tank cannot dodge a mob, just like a drone can't. I can either put my feet in cover since mobs mostly like to target a runners feet, or I can use AOE, just like drones can.


Your tank can't dodge a mobs ranged attack? you can hide behind structure to AOE mobs so they dont hit you, you can move
when you come into a tight situation, you can use heals, buffs get buffed and healed by others and you can even zone to prevent damage. Droners can't

Droners have to care for both Drone and self aggro, Droner cannot move, Drone gets always hit nowadays if mobs fires against it, there is no dodge, run or zoning while droning and some times you don't even know when the droner himself is hit by somthing as the drone GUI is covered with flashes and other GFX.


Knight;2200725']

If my tank fires his AOE weapon at his feet, he will kill himself. Why shouldn't a droner suffer the same fate? You could argue that the droner is stationary and can't move away from a mob but this is a very weak point. Either kill a mob before it gets close to your body or drop your drone, move your body and launch another drone. In reference to one of my previous points made, drones cost peanuts compared to the money you earn with them. I don't want to resort to the all time low statement of "learn to play", but your post is driving me into that direction ...



It seems you have very little knowledge of Droning and balancing classes and making a game viable for different play styles. If I dont totally remember wrong this same issue was discussed several years ago and exactly because ( as I already stated ) Droner is totally defenseless like no other weapon system and therefore it was let droners to be able to fire at their own location. And any reason other AOE builds/classes don't do NC currency as fast as droner? Even if Droner would be better
at making NC, so what? Tanks are good at taking damage, dealing damage, doing huge amounts of AOE damage, big selection of gear and can probably even hack warbots with right build. Is there anything the Tank cant do that a Droner can? ( Yes going into Hacknet )


Knight;2200725']

Now this is a feature.
And oh no, you have to put some effort into playing the most OP leveling and money making class in the game. What were the devs thinking?


Actually it was stated a few patchnotes ago that they would lessen the GFX of Droning but I see no difference. Droners are not OP, they are nerfed now to be only viable for exp grinding. NC currency is basically useless and the only currency that is worth anything are tech parts which now Droner became even slower to make money, and if you value so much the NC currency what makes other AOE weapon systems worse than Droning in making cash?

You keep babbling that the Droner is OP but you have no valid points to prove this. Currently Droner have strength in making exp solo and thats it.


Knight;2200725']

You are kidding me right? ...



About group exp. As I stated when drone run out of group range other group members wont get exp or cash of what the drone does, only the droner. I can see this from my other monitor when I'm droning in a group with another character. Group range is about 1.5 rooms in El Farid. However if the Droners body is inside the group range he gets a share of everything killed by the rest of the group. This is a feature that have been since forever.


Knight;2200725']

The grates were added years ago because people would lure the queen into one of the holes where she couldn't get out. She would spawn a bazillion scorps that would get AOE'd from above while abusing line of sight. It was an overpowered and almost completely safe leveling spot.
But the grates are indeed bugged as drones get stuck and fall through them. Even scorps occasionally fall through them or spawn under them.



I must say I have no idea what is considered abusing AOE line of sight anymore. Any place in the whole game with any class that does AOE you will be able to hit mobs that are out of line of sight if there is a wall or ground location to hit. AOE area isn't stopped by anything in this game.



Knight;2200725']

Droners were OP and still are. Just slightly less than before.
And yes, people still do DOY tunnels and Ceres labs in groups. It's just a lot harder to solo them with droners now, which is intended.


You have given no valid explanations of Droning being overpowered. Droning got strenghts that other classes don't have but have severe disadvantages to counter them, except now when all the advantages have basically been removed. As I said earlier groups gets still currency very fast, Droners get it much much slower and its near impossible now with the changes that have been part of droning for a decade. The intent have only made one less way of playing the game.


Knight;2200725']

A single class should not be capable of soloing all of the content with ease. Especially since a lot of endgame content is supposed to be group content. Most players perfectly understand the reasoning behind the droner change. I'm just disappointed that it took so long for this change to finally happen. This change should have happened 10 years ago.



Droning content isn't a fast process, it involves patience and lots of dying and its not like a droner can carry huge amounts of tech parts either, have to dump them into a gogu too and when one comes back the whole zone have reseted again. A group can clean several levels of DOY tunnels and loot several times more tech parts at the same time a single droner can even clean one level. Even MC5 farming wasn't easy, a single wrong move and the defenseless droner was dead.

Where does it say that a class shouldn't be able to solo most of the content in Neocron? Do you see on chat many people forming groups for anything? heck you even have to search for people to poke you, its not like the game is crowded with people. The only difference what used to be between droner solo and group doing Doy tunnels is that droner was less efficient way of doing it and you didn't have to rely on others.

[Kragar]

let my try to answer from my recent experience

drone doesnt launch if youre to close to a wall or ceiling, move a step and retry.



I know, the point is no other weapon system have this feature? and as a droner is totally defenseless
trying to launch the drone and as if you are close to a wall trying to activate an AOE drone, guess what..
you get hit by it as it fires when you launch it, also in this time you might have pulled aggro from some
mob and now you cant even defend yourself...

Am I the only one that see this as totally unbalancing/idiotic features for this weapon system?




this is a known bug, thats hopefully getting fixed some time.



Yes I know, its still part of fixing balance for different playstyles and weapon systems.



i never experienced this bug (disappearing dropped drone) but of course a firing drone will draw aggro, so mobs could follow it and find you. plain game mechanics.


The drone pulls mobs to the droner and thats why a droner could defend himself with the drone, now that option have been removed.



in didnt have that disconnect/sync problem for quite a while, so its probably due to your connection or software setup.



With probably 4 different computers and different operating systems since NC 2.x I always got lots of Syncs. The only
constant during this all time is NC client and that I use Cable internet. With the amount of Syncronizing issues there
pretty much isn't any other option than droning ( I can loose a drone but cannot be arsed to do corpse runs every
30 minutes or so ) The less other players there are around the more often I get disconnected.




the trick is to keep moving. try circle-strafing and frequent hiding behind obstacles. mobs have different aiming abilities.



Yes one used to be able to "dodge" incoming ranged fire if you were moving fast and go behind structures, now it seems
that if the mob fires at the drone it always hits whatever you do even if the drone is out of los when the attack hits.




thats the point with droners, isnt it? you may want to run missions or use a TL3 grenade launcher to gain STR and CON.



Not the point. You don't have health regeneration running or any other resistance buffs up when you are droning so
even if you drop a drone you are unbuffed and many times you might not even see that your body is getting hit. Also if you want to defend yourself you need another weapon system altogether.




low level drones are _not_ useless. you just need enough RC and some TC, and get very close, and wait for the reticle to close. fire at big, stupid mobs, see exp levels flowing in. and keep AoE drones away from the target, as explosions might affect the drones shield.



Actually any drone that uses recticle for aiming got a problem as the mobs always hits them ( didn't use to ) and you get the GFX show to blind you to be able to aim. I'm not saying they are useless but they are pretty much pointless as hitting anything is much much harder than with laser ( always hits center without aiming ) and AOE drones.




drones are still killer exp, and teams are good. i had tons of fun, and exp, and money in Chaos Caves.



Can do all that with any class in the game, except droner have to keep his drone inside the group area
to share his xp and cash.




meshes, and water. it's been this way from the very beginning. we've learned to deal with it, didnt we?



Im talking about weapon system balance. No other weapon system have something similar?




i'm soloing a lot (for similar reasons) and it's still fun. as are drones. and drones in teams. imho el farid is over-estimated, i tried droning there but preferred ceres storages (like point red, there are more) and chaos caves. the recent drones changes werent _that_ bad, dont let that get on your nerves and keep having fun.

Well as I stated Ive been droning since NC1 so I have a really good view on how the weapon system have changed from a valid way to solo most content in the game ( tho slower than in groups ) to only valid for xp grind system. Have you tried to farm some tech parts in Doy tunnels or somewhere else? Its not either about single nerfs, its about the accumulation of nerfs, bugs and overall weapon system validity in the game.

For me I always liked to research and craft rare items by myself for myself. It still took a long time to get enough components for something as I did it alone but well I had my fun with that. Doing this have become so much harder with the droning changes. Many of the changes that people say are bugs have been part of droning for 10 years, during the 10 years they still have not messed up the game.

You might want to also check who got the most tech parts in the game even with this new "clean" server, definately not solo droners.

[Kragar]

torg said it pretty well.

On the note of drones. Despite all these issues you are having kragar if you get used to droning and get better at it so you dont lose so many drones you will find it is the best way to level a spy. Drones are the only weapon in this game that level both primary stats almost equally. For a spy this is Dex and Int.

Correct me if im wrong but i cant think of any other class/weapon combination that does that and does it so well (aoe vs single target before someone says use a rifle)

Actually I'm only going to get worse at droning as I'm getting older..... Started droning in NC1..

Anyways the point I have is that people should compare the whole package of droning vs whole package of any other weapon system. Any other weapon system only valid for leveling up a character? Is the point that one more weapon system is used only for lomming it away at end game? As far as I know all AOE weapon systems are good ways to level, droning probably the best to level but leveling is only a very small part of the game. Havn't really tried APU leveling but seen some in El Farid doing AOE dots with huge AOE ranges, looks pretty efficient to me, correct me if I'm wrong.

People are just fixed on a few strenghts that people think are OP while forgetting a shitload of disadvantages.

[Mokoi]

Knight"]A single class should not be capable of soloing all of the content with ease. Especially since a lot of endgame content is supposed to be group content.



Where does it say that a class shouldn't be able to solo most of the content in Neocron?

Most classes can in fact solo most of the content in Neocron. Nobody claims anything to the contrary. However, [F6]Knight is right by pointing out that not every last bit of the content is intended for solo play.

There was a bug in the NPC AI that caused it to not properly target drones despite having a clear line of sight. For every other weapon category such a playstyle is strictly prohibited under the safespotting rule. The only reason droners were not punished for making use of this bug, is that it was so widespread that even if you had tried, you could hardly drone without abusing it.

The removal of said bug made it possible to see how drones are balanced in the first place (and you can safely bet that you as a droner are in good companion with most other classes regarding their happiness on the current state of balance).
As such, drones were not intentionally nerfed - not a single stat on drones was changed.

[Ivan Eres]

Most classes can in fact solo most of the content in Neocron. Nobody claims anything to the contrary. However, [F6]Knight is right by pointing out that not every last bit of the content is intended for solo play.

There was a bug in the NPC AI that caused it to not properly target drones despite having a clear line of sight. For every other weapon category such a playstyle is strictly prohibited under the safespotting rule. The only reason droners were not punished for making use of this bug, is that it was so widespread that even if you had tried, you could hardly drone without abusing it.

The removal of said bug made it possible to see how drones are balanced in the first place (and you can safely bet that you as a droner are in good companion with most other classes regarding their happiness on the current state of balance).
As such, drones were not intentionally nerfed - not a single stat on drones was changed.

Yes, and that shows again how important bugfixing is before balancing.

[Deus Ex Machina]

The drone pulls mobs to the droner and thats why a droner could defend himself with the drone, now that option have been removed.As every class, if a Mob is close to you, I guess a Droner can use single target drones to defend. Tanks and Spies tend to die too if they fire Area weapons to their feet.



Can do all that with any class in the game, except droner have to keep his drone inside the group area
to share his xp and cash.don't other classes have to be in the group area too? Sounds about fair.



There was a bug in the NPC AI that caused it to not properly target drones despite having a clear line of sight. For every other weapon category such a playstyle is strictly prohibited under the safespotting rule. The only reason droners were not punished for making use of this bug, is that it was so widespread that even if you had tried, you could hardly drone without abusing it.Could someone point me to the corresponding rules? I guess there are more than just a safespotting rule.