Drones are one of the three weapons systems of EVE, the other two being turrets and launchers. They are robotic spacecraft with various functions. Combat drones serve as the primary weapons system of many Gallente ships but are utilized by all races by some extent. Drones also serve a utility role, preforming various tasks such as mining or electronic warfare. While their damage formula is identical to turrets, drones are a unique mechanic of EVE.

Drones are the EVE version of pets. Some ships use them as a primary weapon and those ships will usually get fewer high slots or hard points. There are several types of drones: Combat, Mining, Electronic Warfare and Logistics.

Gallente are the primary drone users with the Dominix and Ishtar, however Amarr also happen to have some excellent drone ships, such as the Pilgrim and Curse. All four of the newbie ships have drone bays, however the Gallente one has the largest bay emphasizing their drone usage. Drones were rebalanced some time ago (nerfed drastically) by giving ships two drone stats: Drone Bandwidth and a Drone Bay Capacity. The Drone Bay is a special cargo hold that fits your currently available drones (load it in station). The bandwidth determines how many drones you can actually control at a time. For both of these stats Small Drones use 5, Medium use 10, Large use 25.

Aside from motherships and carriers, you can have at most 5 drones deployed at a time. The actual limit is determined by your Drones skill level and the drone bandwidth of your ship.

Creating Drone Groups

In the overview you will have the ability to right click on a drone and select Move | New Group. You can then create a folders and move drones into via the right click menu.

How you choose to do this is really personal preference. While ratting I'll generally have a group of light drones to take out frigates/destroyers as well a group of medium or heavy drones to take on cruisers and battleships. As a Gallente pilot, especially in a Dominix, Eos, or Ishtar, creating groups is an invaluable tool to organize all your drones since you will be able to store so many. There are a lot of options here as you could create mixed groups of certain drones while fighting a specific type of enemy and really increase their effectiveness. Being able to recall and launch different groups of drones can make most NPC spawns extremely easy.

You'll need the Scout Drone Operation increases drone control range 5km per level over the base 20km.

There are several other support skills that you can train to make your drones tougher, faster and stronger, but don't worry about those right away.

ECM Dones further extend the range of your drones by a further 3km per level.

Regardless of what kind of drone you are using, drone range is going to be a factor at some point. With absolutely no skills, you will only be allowed to command your drone to fight, mine, or otherwise chase out to 20km. You can always command a drone to return to ship, provided it hasn't taken too much structure damage. Skills that increase your “command range” are Electronic Warfare Drone Interfacing. The book names are a misnomer - all drones benefit from these two skills. There are also Drone Link Augmentors that you can fit to further increase your “command range”.

Combat Drone

There are four types of each size combat drone. The faster the drone the smaller the damage it deals in general, but this isn't always true. There are also differences in the type of damage the drone will do. You'll find some are more fit against certain NPC's than others and some are more suited for certain pvp situations. Some of this is personal preference, but in general you want your fast drones taking on fast, little targets and your slow drones dealing out more damage to slow, larger ships. If you can find out what type of damage your targets are going to be weak towards, you can use the drones that specifically deal that type of damage, like PvE situations.

When you get in larger ships that have much larger drone bays, you can start carrying around sets of drones to use in any situation that may come up.

Your light combat drone choices are between:

• Hobgoblins: Thermal Damage. Slowest in speed, does the most damage.
• Hornets: Kinetic Damage. Third in speed, second in damage.
• Warriors: Explosive Damage. Fastest in speed, third in damage.
• Acolytes: EM Damage. Second in speed, does the least damage.

For medium drones, the choices are:

• Hammerheads: Thermal Damage. Slowest in speed, does the most damage.
• Vespas: Kinetic Damage. Third in speed, second in damage.
• Valkyries: Explosive Damage. Fastest in speed, third in damage.
• Infiltrators: Second in speed, does the least damage.

Personally I use either hobgoblins or warriors if I need to use light combat drones, and hammerheads or valkyries for medium drones.

Using Combat Drones

You should see a drones section in your overview under the usual overview window. The easiest way to control your drones is by right clicking on them in the overview. Right click on Drones in Bay and select Launch Drones. Your little buddy should pop out and start orbiting your ship.

Since you probably don't have anything to shoot at the moment, right click on the Drones in Space and select Return to Drone Bay. You need to always have your drone return to your drone bay before you warp off somewhere or else you'll leave your little friend behind.

Also, take note that if your drone is damaged, it might not obey the command to return to the drone bay. If this happens get within 2500m of the drone, right click on it or Drones in Space and select Scoop to Drone Bay.

Let’s assume you found something that needs killing. Launch your drone and close in on your target. Your drone will have a max range of 20KM when you start, the Scout Drone Operation skill can increase this. When your target is within that range it will automatically start attacking whatever you are firing at or it will attack whatever is firing at it if you have not started shooting yet.

Sometimes you might want to direct your drone to attack another target. To do so, highlight which target you want it to go after and then right click Drones in Space and select Engage Target. However, drones that take too long to get to a target will stop their approach and select another target. This can be remedied by repeating your orders to the drones while they're in approach.

There are a bunch of scenarios you can encounter when trying to command a drone; here are the outcomes (tested with combat drones, lolcpp might have it so sentry/mining/EW drones behave differently). For the sake of example, you are piloting a ship with a 50km drone range and a 70km lock range.

• You command a drone to engage a ship at 40km
  • The drone will go out and pew pew the ship.
• You command a drone to engage a ship at 40km, and the ship burns away to 60km
  • The drone chases the ship and continues shooting.
• You command a drone to engage a ship at 40km, and you are jammed/damped/otherwise lose your lock
  • The drone continues shooting whatever, provided the ship remains in lock range
• You command a drone to engage a ship at 40km, and the ship leaves your lock range
  • Drone loses aggro on ship, begins slowboating back
• You command a drone to engage a ship at 60km
  • You get an error message, drone continues doing whatever it was doing.

If you are Gallente you'll want to start thinking about advancing your drones skills right after getting into cruisers. You'll want at least:

• Drones V
• Scout Drone Operation III
• Combat Drone Operation III
• Drone Durability II
• Drone Navigation III

Drones 5 takes awhile to train and you may want to train fitting skills before reaching it. You will need to train it before getting into battle cruisers or battleships and I would recommend it for cruiser pilots.

Once you get Drones 5 completed you'll want to get the following skills if you are Gallente:

• Drone Durability III
• Drone Interfacing III
• Drone Navigation IV
• Drone Sharpshooting IV
• Heavy Drone Operation III
• Repair Drone Operation III
• Scout Drone Operation IV
• Combat Drone Operation IV

After reaching this you'll be able to control 5 pretty mean medium drones or 2 heavy drones in a Thorax cruiser.

Other races besides Gallente may choose to approach this a little differently as drones are more of a supplement and training time can be better spent elsewhere (you'll need to fly battlecruisers or battleships to have decent drone bays). However, if you chose to utilize drones, you must get Drones V ASAP. That is because of the Drone Interfacing skill, which has Drones V as a prereq and raises drone damage by 20% per level. Here's some handy math:

4 drones (Drones IV) x 100% damage = 400%; 5 drones (Drones V) x 160% damage (DI III) = 800%

Drones V and DI III take about a week to train combined from Drones IV, which means you can double your drone DPS in 7 days. Once you get past the really vital fitting and weapon skills that you train just to get out of the newbie frigates, this is the most bang for the buck skill combination in the game.

Scout Drone Operation increases drone range by 5 km/level, so training that to IV (1.5 days or so) effectively doubles it. In addition, the Electronics Warfare Drone Interfacing skill also raises drone range by 3 km/level. It has Drones V and Electronics Warfare IV as a prerequisite, but if you've been going on fleet actions as a newbie tackler you should already have EW IV anyway. If you do, another 12 hours of training to get the skill to III gives you another 9 km.

After this I would say train the skills as you see fit for your play style. A Dominix using the above skills can easy kill most NPC battleships with drones alone. There are specialization skills that can be trained to use Tech 2 drones, but you should know what the hell you are doing before approaching those.

Heavy Drones Heavy Drone Operation, and its prerequisite Drone V, are needed for using heavy drones. Heavy drones are the weapon of choice for Gallente Ishtar and Dominix pilots.

• Ogre: Thermal Damage. Slowest speed, most damage.
• Wasp: Kinetic Damage. Third speed, second damage.
• Berserker: Explosive Damage. Fastest Speed, third damage.
• Praetor: EM Damage. Second speed, least damage.

Ogres and Wasps are the best bet for heavy ships like the dominix. You should use Berserkers on T1 and T2 cruisers. Use light or medium drones on frigates and destroyers.

Fighters/Fighter Bombers

See Fighters and Fighter Bombers.

This is mostly important for ships whose guns only do certain types of damage i.e. Gallente and Amarr. Since your guns will only be doing Kin/Therm or EM/Therm, its a good idea to take drones of a different damage type to give you a bit of unpredictability, and as a counter to people who know you're coming and set up their tanks according to your gun damage.

Warriors are the fastest drone at 4200m/s and can catch these guys and do some damage. If you can get the target in your drone range and tell them to engage, they will chase the inty down well outside of your normal drone range.

Something that happens quite often when using Warrior II's (or Warrior I's with a high drone navigation skill) is that against slower targets the drones will fall behind. Warrior II's base speed is 5040m/s. A taranis travels at (for the sake of example) 4400m/s. Your drones catch him quickly and begin to orbit dropping out of MWD state. They only impulse at something like 900m/s. When engaging an inty you must tell your drones to ENGAGE TARGET all the time so they keep MWDing after them.

A clever inty pilot might deliberately draw your drones off and then warp away, though, leaving your drones “dead” outside of control range, so be wary of that.

The heavier and more damage the drone does the better for the most part. Hobgoblins for light, Hammerheads for medium and Ogres for heavy. This can vary depending on if you know what might get caught. If it's frigates/destroyers/interceptors, Warriors/Valkyries would be better. Sentry drones work well here, especially if you assign them to assist something fast.

During a gate camp you'll be waiting for targets to come in and be trapped by a bubble or tackled. Have your drones out and ready to go and give everyone in your camp a better chance at getting them.

Because of the bandwidth nerf on drones, it is not possible to deploy more drones than your bay can hold. Therefore, launching your own drones and picking up those from someone else is no longer a viable tactic.

If I know I'm going to do a hit and possibly run on a group of hostiles, I'll try to bring drones I consider more disposable. After warping in and engaging the target with guns/tackling/jamming or whatever gear, make launching the drones the last thing you do. Once you engage the drones on the target, forget about them. Focus on destroying primary targets as they are called and your drones will fuck shit up as needed.

If you are taking damage or targeted and need to warp out, leave the drones behind. Your ship is much more valuable as is another clone and it takes too long for them to return. Recalling drones should never be considered when you need to warp out. If you need to get the fuck out, do so.

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.

Note: Only carry ECM Drones with you, as the other forms of ewar drones (eg. Tracking Disruptor, Stasis Web) suffer from a stacking penalty and are impractical.

Sentry Drones make drone platforms viable for fleet combat, or any engagement over 30km. The furtherst-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.

Skills Required for Sentry Drones

• Sentry Drone Interfacing I
  • Drone Interfacing IV
    • Drones V
  • Drone Sharpshooting IV
    • Drones V

Faction drones can be bought off LP stores (Republic Fleet Warriors, Imperial NAvy Acolytes), and tend to be quite expensive. They do roughly the same damgae as T2 drones wiht a slight advantage in hit points.

There also are special drones that can be built from rogue drone components, they are expensive and generally not worth it.

'Augmented' are split damage type, T2 skills drones. They require T2 drones to build and the T2 skills to use them; advantage seems to be in hitpoints beyond the split damage.

'Integrated' are split damage type named T1 drones. I believe these actually do more damage than normal T1 drones, but maybe someone can confirm this. They obviously only require T1 skills also.

The BPCs drop from drone region hacking and archeology sites.

Certain drones are useless against certain classes of ships. This is a rough guide as to which ones work. Note that if you can web or slow down the ships, then Warriors become unnecessary for pursuit.