Stop Promoting Pilots - Drones are better

Yes until they nerfed it. I have half my tier 3 chips unused after nerf. That is 20 tier 3 not being used. 1500 + 200 = 1700 * 20 = 34000 gold wasted.

Been saving all my gold when drones came out and spent it on T2 chips buying slowly checking store daily for any that I need to make a set.

What about spending gold on Mk3 or buying the expensive modules like last stand overdrive heavy armor. Also buying better drones like Glider in store now for gold.

T3 pilot skills costs 2500-3500 au depending on the rank of the pilot. You may gamble for cheaper, but that can go the other way in costs too. T3 chips costs something like 1200 each, 2250 if you buy it straight up. T4 chips are expensive, sure. So is T4 pilot skills for 4500-5500 each for less improvement from T3.

I don’t think you guys have thought it through. Other than Armor Expert and Road Hog, what pilot skill is worth nearly 5K au x 5 more skills. Just get one more skill for Sergeant and you’re good to go. Or stick with AE and RH for Corporal. Skip mechanic, which used to be a staple skill, it’s junk compared to drone healing abilities.

Pilots need complete replacing every time you change robots as meta changes. Drones don’t, at worse it needs reconfiguring and at least you keep the chip you remove.

The nerfs are less hurtful if you don’t go for T4 chips. And right now it’s the absorber chip that you need to worry about.

Yeah, Absorber chip seems ripe for a quick and hard nerf. I painstakingly assembled a T4 and a T3. I’ll wait and see how bad the nerf hammer hits before doing more.

Like my weapons and bots, my drone/chip “investments” are very diversified. Full mix of def, healing, attack, etc.

I feel like you are being a bit disingenuous here. Yes, a drone is superior. But that's not the same thing as being unworthy of consideration either. Specialty pilots like bernadette are 100% worth the investment, as long as you are more on the frugal side as far as upgrading and skill selection.

But yes, for a FTP player, it is FAR more advantageous to focus on drones than pilots, as far as resource allocation goes.

Temper this with the only reliable way to do anything drone related is to spend money, which is antithetical to "FTP".

Bring your luckiest luck game, you'll need it.

Let’s take Bernadette as an example. I’ll give her Armor Expert, Tough Guy, and Road Hog and that’s it. Is there anything else after that that you can get that’s not better on a cheap Defender drone that comes with blue chip healing and healing slot and a defense slot?

Skip on mechanic or module expert that gives I think 1.5 secs of extra module heal. Not worth it IMO. Better and cheaper to get a healing chip.

Good point on good drones like Nebula taking money though. But you can get Glider for 6K. That’s still cheaper than maxing out the rest of your skills for subpar skills.

Tier 4 chips are better then tier 4 pilots skills, but there are a few mitigating factors. Free players can only collect chips for 1 bot at a time. It takes weeks to get enough Tier 2 Absorbers to make 1 tier 4 which can only go on 1 bot / drone. Pilot skills can be upgraded for all bots. 3-5 pilot skills at low tier. Random roll, get good skills for the bot and it will be worth it.

Tier 4 chips are so much better then skills and tier 3 chips, there will be rebalance. Free players take long time, so either tier 4 pilot skills get a buff or reduced cost. Or some other wholesale rebalance to waste all the tier 4 chip gold investment and make free player regret. Do not put your eggs in one basket.

So many good skills for healer and tanks. Energy shield expert, physical shield expert, true ace, defense expert, admantium guardian, … Then the one time use skills wonder worker, fool hardy, cheaper modules, reduce module cool down. Let each player decide for themselves how to best spend their gold.

If you switch out your hanger alot, go with fewer pilot skills. Just the 2-3 most important. 6000 for Glider to get 1 additional slot, that is more expensive then adding pilot slots except last one costs 7500.

Youtubers are on another planet just like billionaires shooting off to space. They’re thinking 5 gold drones filled with tier4 chips vs max legendary pilots. Reality is junky Fly drones, very few legendary pilots, and no gold to ever make 1 tier 4 chip. Basic drones are so junky, free players have to spend on pilot skills to beef up their hanger.

This cannot be overstated. For example, I liked watching Predator before he got a Creator account and started maxing the 「dookie」 out of everything and talking trash. Now I just give his videos enough time to see if I'm going to roll my eyes at him. Then you look at a player like Foggy who got off the merry-go-round for a bit and now he can't get back on. 

TL;DR - We all need to strike a balance between pilot skills and drone chips. It is true that pilot skills are rarely nerfed.

Nebula, 2 x T4 On Heal: Resistance chips are an OMG must have for what amounts to a recurring last stand when you get your timings right.
T4 On Mild Damage: Absorber are very helpful.

This is my opinion and I've been a tank/defender for a year+ now. I don't put a lot of over-emphasis on damage output. I run one ODU, but many BUs, HAKs. I used to run 5 x maxed Last Stands and now I don't have any in my #1 hangar. Multiple folks have asked me on Discord WTH am I feeding my Phantom. I hope some of you bought that $4.99 Stellar Phantom. Engage: Beast Mode.

If we could trust Pix to NOT nerf the above I would say go all-in on the above chips. But since Pix is Pix, spend your Au carefully and skeptically.

For players that actively use multiple hangars (I now have 3, Champions League worthy hangars), drones are a great “investment.”

For the F/C2P, you can put together a fully T3 Discuss w your very own magic T3 Purple Panty Bubble (which ain’t bad) for 6300 Au (or more like 8-9k for the T3 only chips). Also, you could just focus on the T3 PPB, go T2 on the others and be good to go for about 4K.

Cheaper still just forego the PPB and set up a T3 Fly for 2600 gold (4500 for direct purchase of T3 chips).

For the non-haavy spenders, I think any of the above will be better than getting a 5th skill for most pilots.

Drones confuse me. I’ve tried to try them out a couple times, even spent 5000Au on a shooter chip, but… 1) there’™s so many chips, half of which I’™m not sure what they do 2) for the chips I do understand the stats seem pretty weak 3) chip acquisition is random, can’t build something specific 4) chip functionalities are out of my control, I mean they’™re triggered by the haphazard stuff that happens so I can’t intentionally use it 5) so expensive 6) and this is probably the main problem for me: I hate that 「fluffernutter」ing dingleberry flicking next to my bot.

Pilots are simple and I can rely on their behavior to make strategy choices. Though I only ever put on 3 skills (Mechanic, RH, AdRH) and since the pilot cost increase now it’s only Mechanic, and only on bots that turn out to be fun.

As a F2P all these tertiary things aren’t really necessary. Just get a bot and weapons and try to find some fun.

Great points above.  Let's say you spend 5000 Au on one pilot or 5000 Au on one drone.  Pilots will definitely come and go but drones are "here to stay."  *cough* *gasp*  (I had to choke that one out.)

I wish everybody having a participation trophy (aka PPB chip) would go away.  It's just plain excessive to have shields everywhere all the time.  

I feel it does depend a little bit on the bot. For your average brawler, yes I agree that drones make more of a difference than all but a few pilot skills. But for a ranged bot I would argue the pilot is more important than on brawlers. Since you are further away from the action you will receive occasional retaliatory fire but often not enough at once to trigger healing or shield chips, meaning you will die a death of a thousand cuts without something like the mechanic skill. Either that, or you are rushed by a brawler, and if it’s coming at you with sonics and flames and all you have are pulsars or wasps you’ll need more than a drone to survive. Same goes for robots like Loki and Nightingale that prefer to avoid direct firefights. They lack the necessary defenses to take enough damage to trigger chips and stay alive long enough to take advantage of it. But, since high level play is mostly about brawlers, drones are on average more useful.

Good choice with the Discus. I’ve replaced my Wasp and Sharpshooter with 2 Discuss and it made a big difference. Get something with an F Type, it’s currently the way to go. The turrets seem kind of weak in comparison.

Discuss has an F Type. Basically the F Type is too powerful, specifically the absorber chip. And the other 2 chips are great. Wasp needs a turret chip and it’s special chip only affects the turret.

Note the absorber shield will be nerfed soon though.