it's taking me 10 or so minutes to kill the unarmed drone and then the armed drone doesn't show up.

what am i doing wrong? i still have my newbie ship and weapon. did i miss a weapon upgrade perhaps?

the drones in this mission seems to have 10 time the HP

Did you perhaps switch autoaim off?
I could see how it would take a good deal longer to kill the damn bots if that had happened. If your lead-off crosshair never turns yellow, try typing "/toggleautoaim" into the chat box.

I just ran through the mission, and each drone took twelve hits with the training blaster to kill, which was the same as my count in the newbie sector.
Note that to get the last set of drones to spawn you have to click a button in the mission prompt.

Edit: By the way, the government issues plasma cannon, which is free and has no liscense requirements, will deal twice the damage of the training blaster and damage players to boot.

Are you using a Training Neutron Blaster or Training Drone Blaster? The bots in the training sector drop them, and they only do 1 point of damage. It would take about 3,000 hits to kill the drones with.

I recommend using a better weapon than even gov't plasma. The Plasma Cannon HX is decent and is available with low licenses. It uses less energy than the gov't plasma cannon, does slightly more damage, is faster, and has a higher rate of fire.

When the drones don't show up (and you have clicked the button in the mission log), it is probably because you have drifted too far away from the center of the sector and aren't seeing them on your radar.

One trick to help avoid drift in an empty sector is to plot a new course shortly after arriving. That way a jump point marker will be created near your current location. If you drift far away, you can just locate that marker on your radar and fly toward it.

It would be nice if the game had a command that would display a marker at the center of the sector, to be used in situations like this.

yep i'm using the training blaster. and yeah by the time i follow the drone around i'm prolly way off. how do you get the licence for the hx cannon?

I'll try autoaim. and try to get the traing blaster to work better first. but the drond stays still about 150 away and i i just keep charging up and shooting through yellow. no way it could be a training blaster cuse thts what i got

Just go to a station and get the Gov Issued Plasma Cannon.

I did and it worked! I thought it was just another training gun. had no idea it was such a big step up.

thanks guys

The plasma hx gun is available at combat license 1, which is what the basic flight test mission takes you up to. So, the suggestion to use it was a little... premature.

Oops, I was thinking basic combat training, not basic flight