Other Drones - noel-wolfisheim/notes GitHub Wiki

Specialized Drones

EW Drones

EW Drones require the Electronic Warfare Drone Interfacing skill, and are pretty much what they sound like - drones that use EW instead of damage. These can become insanely handy if you're in a gatecamp or other fleet situation, using your drones for your EW capability while your other weapons do the damage. However, to be used properly they do require a bit of micromanagement so consider this before you train or fit for a large fleet action.

The side benefit (some would argue primary benefit) of training the EW drones skill is that it gives a 3 kilometer bonus to drone control range for drones of all types. Think of it as "Advanced Scout Drones" except that the bonus isn't as good and takes longer to train. Still, it's worth getting up to level IV because your drone control range will be about 62km without drone link augmentors.

Sentry Drones

Sentry Drones are the new solution for making Drone platforms viable for fleet combat, or any engagement over 30km. The furthest-reaching of the current set in game are the Warden IIs, which can hit up to 60km out (or much further with Omnidirectional Tracking Links fitted).

The main issue with utilizing Sentry Drones effectively is their inability to move, inability to hit small or high-transversal targets, and their strain on the Drone platform boat itself. In order to get the Sentries to actually engage any target over the 60km (based on scout drone ops skill + EW drones skill) base engagement range, you have to stack a bunch of Drone Link Augmentors (+20km targeting range per) in the highs, thereby decreasing your combat efficiency as a standalone combat ship.