New Day / New Ways to Play: Drones I & II

[LittleWillie 3,199]

OK a little time has passed and some very little things have happened at Garage Willie,

 

In light of the UFO sale I decided to buy two more drones. Now I ave 3 Drones on 3 accounts.

 

Assault = Titan // Smoky / Shaft

Driver = Wasp / Vulcan  (Probably should have taken Engineer with this one oh well)

Supplier= Hornet / Viking // Isida

 

All 3 of these accounts are Major Generals staring at hundreds of thousands of exp points needed before they can unlock m3 gear. :blink: 95% of their equipment is already mu10.  So I bought them Drones in order to have something to develop over the next year.

 

I hope to have all at mu 6-7 after the sale. Then mu to 10 as sales happen.  MU above 10 will be low priority ie 50% sales only.

 

-----

 

I have used the Drive Drone 4-5 times now. Driver does not do you any good unless you are doing well. So it is something you do not use to make a comback. You use it to put the boot in when the other team is already down.   So I have popped this one in after the game started when I see my team is doing well.

 

I ran it three times with mu 4 for 5 or 6 minutes each battle.  Basically it was enough to get 1 extra OD use ... but only towards the very end of battle. If you watch the meter it is very hard to see an effect. So it is hard to tell what you need to do to make it work well.  At least so far it is hard for me to tell.

 

I will try it out again when I get 3 more steps on it after the sale.  But it's looking like you need to get about 10 steps on it in order for the drone effect to "gt rolling".

 

We need to learn how to play with Drones.  But what we might learn is we can fight very well without them.  Well... time will teall.

Edited July 3, 2018 by LittleWillie

[GorgoBlesk 831]

Wasp Vulcan? What is the point of that combo? Vulcan is a long range turret so it is better with heavy and medium hulls. Hornet and Wasp Vulcans usually get quickly destroyed and have awful k/d. I just fought against 1 such enemy in Massacre and he had no kill. He got instantly shafted or railgunned every time he started to fire.

[LittleWillie 3,199]

Wasp Vulcan? What is the point of that combo? Vulcan is a long range turret so it is better with heavy and medium hulls. Hornet and Wasp Vulcans usually get quickly destroyed and have awful k/d. I just fought against 1 such enemy in Massacre and he had no kill. He got instantly shafted or railgunned every time he started to fire.

The point is it is fun. Except when you tip over that is. As for k/d mine has always been around 1.20 - 1.25.  But, again, so many tip overs. Without them it'd be, like, 57.4. :)

 

Seriously this combo was super effective on Deathtrack and Parma to name two faves. Several MM maps are not the best so yeah there are games where I get smushed.  Light hulls are easy to kill.  But few people see the combo in play so they do not have twitch muscle memory experience fighting it at close quarters  Or so goes my theory at least.  All I know is if you drive like hell pushing Wasp and always keeping on mind $%@$%% tip overs you can fight and win at firebird ranges.  And it still works at long range so zip zip zip go you t various different firing spots.

 

So there are times I get on a roll with vulcan. You can shift fire from target to target quickly. It can rack up a few kills quickly at times.  This is why I thought it's be good with Driver.  But now that I own Driver I am not so sure about that.

 

 

---

 

For Massacre I can either be the foe's uttr nightmare or I might have to find a hunker down and cover spot.  It is one of the harest maps to drive on too. Hae I mentioned tip overs?  But worst case you hav a long range gun and you are small enough to find behind low cover, stuff big hull owners don't even see as shelter. So if you are on a disadvantageous team situation at worst you can play defense.

Edited July 4, 2018 by LittleWillie

[LittleWillie 3,199]

Played again with Driver, mu=4. That is a 12 second speedup time for a kill.  

 

I joined an ongoing game with about 7 minutes left, ASL, my team Blue winning. So after my 1st death I equipped the drone with just under 6 minutes remaining. It seemed to speed up the OD cycle a little but it was hard to see ID meter move faster. So I don't know. 

 

I think this drone might be worthwhile only after a lot of MU. without the drone it is easy to get 2 OD uses.  With the drone you get a third towads the end of the game.  If you got a 4th OD maybe then it'd be efffective.  

 

Meanwhile all the other drones pretty much help out a little bit here and there. You get a little assistance during teh whole battle. With Driver you masically just get one big boost towards the end.

 

Well that's what I'm spending 100k or more to learn.

[LittleWillie 3,199]

OK I decided to burn 10 more batteries using the drone all game. See if there was any sense of getting more ODs.  When MM let me in the gam the clock read about 9:40 remaining. I had the drone quipped before the game started. Rnks were pretty close. Enemy team held the initiative most of the time. I played aggressively to fuel the drone scoring 18 kills.  I do not think I lost any to self-destruction this game.

 

I got 3 OD uses during the game. I used them right away to get the next clock ticking. I was hoping to see it'd be possible to get 4 ODs.. Nope. I fot the thrid one with about 2:30 remaining. No way I was getting to four. So when I was killed with about 1:45 remaining I un-equipped the drone and respawned.  At the end of the game my battrey burn was 8 which matched the clock readings.

 

I did notice one thing. When you get a kill with teh drone up the little guy vanishes until the next battery cycle. Then it re-apears.  SO there is a visual cloe to when you trigger teh drone.  HOWEVER... if this caused the OD clock to move any faster I didn't see it.

 

I will not use this thing again until it has several moe mu steps.  At mu 4 the thing seems to have almost no effect.  I might have had 3 ODs in  the game even w/o the Drone.  If drones are 'pay to win' it is going to take a LOT of 'pay' to get a little 'win'.

 

[C_JIlO6oBbIO 134]

I`ve got the trooper drone fully mued, very useful for DM. full drug for 20s, meanwhile collect the drop boxes and you will have full drug for a minute or even longer.

 

example: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edit: I`ve got assault drone half mued. Tested it in DM and TDM, it`s op. Got full drug for like 6 min once.

Edited July 8, 2018 by C_JIlO6oBbIO

[LittleWillie 3,199]

Well I read and re-read the Wiki blurb about the Driver drone and now I think I get it. When you get a kill it speeds up the OD clock and the drone goes takes a nap for 15 seconds. The clock speeds up for ## seconds up to a maximum of 20 seconds.  So at full mu thie drone can keep your OD clock is a state of constant speed up.

 

This does not seem to mean what I thought it meant.  I THOUGHT t meant you got extra bonuses for doing things like kills, flag caps, CP caps, killing the flag carrier and so forth.  But that seems to be wrong What it DOES do is just speed up the background clock that ticks up whn you are doing nothing special. Even at full mu this drone now seem a poor performer cmpared to some others.

 

I will have this at mu=6 and am going to stop there.  I will buy the 1st drone intended to buy instead, Engineer.

 

Two other accounts have drones. One has Assault. The other had Supplier and just bought Mechanic too.  It is an Isida so it will often be near teammates.

 

As a free player I will just have to slowly mu them to a useable level and amass batteries in the nmeantime.

 

 

I`ve got the trooper drone fully mued, very useful for DM. full drug for 20s, meanwhile collect the drop boxes and you will have full drug for a minute or even longer.

 

example: 

 

Edit: I`ve got assault drone half mued. Tested it in DM and TDM, it`s op. Got full drug for like 6 min once.

Thanks for the drone feedback.

 

Yes, it seemed Trooper would be good for DM.  I rarely play FM though so I have not bought it. It does have the advantage of being the easiest to use. It just has the pardoxical property of, the more it helps you out the less often it works for you. :)

 

Yes Assault at upper MU has the theoretical ability to keep one set of supplies going an entire game.  And the more it helps you the more it helps you. :)

 

I was hoping Driver was like Assault but for OD. But Assault gives you an instant direct boost.  Driver gives you a bit of a boost towards a benefit you don't see for minutes yet. The direct benefit seems much more useful than the indirect benefit.