[GI] Why do drones get destroyed? What's the point?

After just having my 8 Iris, Apis and Zeus popped this morning, I began wondering ... Why do drones get destroyed? What's the point?

I understand there should be some initiative to get people to repair their drones so they have to spend money when getting killed, but I think it is too drastic to remove the drones ... it removes almost all of your progress. I could get killed by a guy with 2-3 Iris drones easily.

Plus all of my max lvl dones are lost, even more progress down the drain...

 

You pretty much answered your own question. Its pretty much something that makes you think about the status of your account. If you lost 10 drones at the same time, you clearly had not been paying enough attention to them and a wake-up call was in order. I keep my flaxes at the same damage level so when its time to repair, I repair them all at the same time, and I am good for at least a week. On my main, I have all 10 drones and my apis and zeus never see the 90's because when my 8 iris make the 90's, all of them get repaired. My startup process is pretty much, log in, do transfers, check drone damage and repair if needed, then daily. I lost 2 iris once and will never loose another because I pay attention, and progress is kept.

 

I had drone repair CPU, however when I was just about to swap to my regular ship on 5-2, I lost demilitarised zone out of nowhere and got shot by a barracuda at 99% on all drones.

 

Ouch. I hope you are able to get everything back in short order. Although the cpu has helped me when I had overlooked my damage level a few times, stupid stalkers lol, I would not leave it to be the repair device as others have reported it slacking on the job.

 

I think the system is actually pretty useless. People have thousands or repair credits so it is not bringing any extra income to BP at all. When someone loses 10 drones at level 16 that can even make the player quit the game forever and BP actually loses money. Of course there are also plenty of people who buy their drones back with $€£ but not all. Game would be better without drone destruction. Just imagine being a beginner and grinding credits for full iris in Ge1 for 2 months and then the next day you notice that all of your drones are gone. What good does it do for anyone?

I think it would be better if drones would lose one upgrade level when reaching 100% instead of destruction. And if you have not upgraded your drones at all it would just drop the drone exp level from 6 to 1. If you have upgraded them it would take one level from those and the exp level would stay at 6. It would still keep UFE's at their toes since upgrading 10 drones from 15->16 is pretty expensive so people would keep repairing their drones.

 

Kinda hard to believe m89 lost all 10 drones at the same time when Apis and Zues drones take less damage then iris so there is almost no way they could all reach 99% damage at the same time. Also if you leave your drones till their 99% damage before you repair them that will teach you. When i see my drones getting to 60-70% damage i repair and you can repair them with repair credits for free, and repair credits you get for free from completing daily quests. So maybe next time you will repair them before something like this happens again. And yes i also lost 1 iris in 4 years of playing and realized it was my own fault for not paying attention and like PSK~SUNDANCE says it won't happen again to me. Enjoy, sorry your account is set back a bit now but like the rest of us had to do is just deal with it.

 

I disagree, an iris takes 60 pops, an apis/zeus takes a 100 pops, so on your 300th pop you could lose all your drones, as all drones would be at a 100%. (assuming you use the cpu).

 

No by the time your iris drones are at 50% damage your apis and zues would only have maybe 35% damage something like that, thay all don't take the same amount of damage when you get destroyed. Your Apis and Zues drones are stronger than iris.

 

Me thinks you repaired your original 8 irises and forgot your Tech irises, right?

 

I agree entirely.

My startup is almost like chores
-Log in
-GG spins
-Skylab transfer
-Sell resources
-Check ammos
-Check new missions
-Configure for the day
-Check drones
-Check techs
-Check auction
-Play

I repeat this almost every 6 hours from check drones down. This is the list I gave my younger sister, who is 9 years old and is already full elite with 17 LF4. She's been playing free for a year.

 

What I'm saying is that once your iris's hits 100% your apis/zeus will be at 60%, then when your apis/zeus hits 100% your iris's are at 67%, then when your iris's are at 100% your apis is at 20%, then when your iris's are next at 100% your apis/zeus will be at 80%, then when your apis/zeus hits 100%, your iris's will be at 33%, then when your iris's hit 100% your apis/zeus will be at 40%, then next pop they will both hit 100% at the same time!

Some people only use the CPU to repair so yes it is possible, therefore your initial claim, that you don't believe that they can't have popped at the same time is invalid.

Also when your iris drones are at 50% your apis/zeus would be at 30%

 

Sure thing I would quit if my drones pop. This is one of the main reasons I clear my cache so I have the real damage value instead of locally stored one and lose the drones. I've even asked support for the damage level confirmation so I could start tracking the damage manually.
And I agree that drones should not pop, reducing their exp level if not repaired is enough of a punishment for those that do not repair them.
The drone damage is one thing that makes me avoid high risk situations, as sometimes re-leveling on an active server can result in taking enough damage that the drones have to be repaired very soon after leveling was done. That is assuming drone repair CPU is unreliable and all damage control and management is done manually.

 

Ok i was basically saying if you use repair credits to repair your drones by the time your iris hit whatever percent you would repair them at using repair credits, you would repair all 10 drones so your apis and zues would never be close to popping. Also i was only using the damage as an example but thanks XeonXS for giving the exact % of damage between iris and zues. Enjoy

 

The whole thing is if you do not want to lose your drones then you need to repair them. This is something that has been there since the game started and we used to have to spend millions of credits in Trade hoping we would win them without having to lose the credits bid. Now with the Auction you get the credits back and you can see what the bid is instead of hoping you have a high enough bid without being too low to be overbid. YES you now have Upgrades that are done to them and it is a little more expense being lost so it is even more necessary to repair them before they pop. IF you have the repair CPU equipped and you lose them then Support can replace them as long as it is equipped on both configs of the ship being used when they went poof, but again it is your responsibility to prevent these from going pop, if they are at 90% then the D R CPU has already failed to do the repair and you need to manually repair them before they do go away.

 

Thanks everyone for your assistance.

m89, any further questions or can we close?