The new Section 31 Drone Squadrons and new trait both feel broken. Damage/DPS is near useless

pottsey5g

These new squadron pets feel broken on my full carrier running a full pet build with all the pet boosting traits and boosts they are performing worse than the lowest basic pets on a none carrier ship with zero buffs traits or boosts. Another way to put it is the entire bay of S31 pets is performing worse than 1 fighter from 1 bay, yet alone the entire bay.

Typically, I see 100k+ pet DPS. The poor to average pets are 50k these pets are 10k. That is 10k for two entire bays with full buffs and traits.
In my first run the Rare Section 31 Drone Squadron bay was 5.2k for the entire bay. The advance Section 31 Drone Squadron was 4.3k for the entire bay. That is what we expect to see per fighter not per bay. 10k total DPS for 2 bays on a fully buffed pet build puts these pets in the bottom worse 1% of pets.

In the 2nd run I got the Rare Section 31 Drone Squadron bay 5.6k and The advance Section 31 Drone Squadron was 4.7k.
When an entire bay of 6 pets with buffs is performing worse then 1 fighter from 1 bay without buffs something is wrong.

Also Plus Friends In Unusual Places trait appears to be completely broken. It doesn’t reduce cooldown by 50% and worse it adds 40seconds to cooldowns making them longer. Activating a beacon is normally a 2min cooldown with this trait its 2min, 40sec.

Also the blog mentions “Abilities which summon Allies (Consoles, BOFF Abilities, Hanger Pets, Captain Abilities and Distress Beacons) recover their recharge faster.” https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/11507273-the-discovery:-emerald-chain-lock-box!
Yet the trait says distress beacon only?

pottsey5g

The new trait Interface Drones feels broken as well. The sample size is to small but it suggests that either the trait is not working or the damage boost to pets is to small to be noticeable and needs a boost. I will do more runs later.

With new trait Interface Drones run 1
To'Duj Fighter Squadron 67.3k (2 bays)
Operations Star Cruiser 5.8k
Presidio Class 5.2k
Federation Frigate 1.5k

Without new trait run 1
To'Duj Fighter Squadron 88.1k (2 bays)
Operations Star Cruiser 5.1k
Concorde Class 6.4k
Federation Frigate 1.2k

I think it is working its just the trait pet damage boost is so tiny it falls within margin of error and so is unnoticeable to the player.

pottsey5g

After more testing and confirmed by other people on reddit it appears as though the S31 drones are doing the animation but not being affected by Beam Overload, Fire at Will or Surgical Strikes. We can see FaW hitting extra targets but no damage is being registered in the combat log and going by the time it takes to kill the target it feels like zero damage is being done.

syndonai

Just an image for context - Drones and Tactical flyers both under the effects of Fire at Will against multiple targets. The Drones are only attacking the primary target whereas the flyers are shooting everything in range.

pottsey5g

The patch has fixed the interaction so Beam Overload and FAW now work. This had doubled pet DPS from 5k ish to 10k ish. Though 10k fully buffed feels very broken for a promo ship hangar pet. Even with the doubling of DPS this is massively below everyday pet level output.

pottsey5g

These pets still feel broken even after the fix. The Rare Section 31 Pets are outperforming the Elite Section 31 pets and the DPS is still really bad. After the patch fix on a full Carrier with full pet boost I am barely getting 11k per Bay. 2 Hangar bays of S31 pets do less DPS then 1 bay of just average everyday common pets. Given how rare and how much this ship costs it doesnt feel right that the pets are so far behind average. Plus the Elite pets are clearly broken as upgrading is making them worse. FAW and crit chance does seem to be working on them now. Its just the DPS is so low it takes forever for them to kill any target and that's on a fully buffed pet build.

EDIT: To give some background.
My typical pet build just did 135k DPS for its pets and killed the target in 16seconds.
The same build with S31 pets in the same test did 21k DPS for its pets and killed the target in 4 minuets seconds.

I don't expect S31 pets to be in the best of the best but they should at least be average surly with how much this ship costs.

EDIT2: New Trait seems to be working. This was more an update about the pets.