Will assisted drones follow a guarding drone into a fight?

Question

It is possible to instruct your drones in EVE to 'guard' or 'assist' players when in a fleet. I've noticed that when you set drones to guard individual players in your fleet, only the drone that is currently guarding the player that is attacked will engage the enemy attacking that player.

If I were to set one of each of my drones to 'guard' an individual in my fleet, and then each player in my fleet set their drones to 'assist' me, would all drones assisted to me attack if one of my drones engaged an enemy?

Answer 1

In short, no they would not.

From the Uniwiki:

Assistance and Guarding

The 'Assist' order will make your drones follow the gang member you've ordered them to assist, and attack whatever that gang member attacks.

People with drones assigned to assist or guard them have no direct control over those drones.

In short, the player's ship has to attack the target, their drones will not trigger the assist. This is why drones are commonly assisted to ships with insanely fast targeting. Additionally, the drones will engage regardless of whether said ship actually hits the target - the act of aggression is enough to trigger the drones.

Note, however, that the drones must still be within the control range of the owner's ship and skills to deploy properly.

Answer 2

From Evelopedia:

Assist

Assign your drones to one of your gang members. The drones will then engage automatically any object the gang member attacks. The gang member can't control them directly. Warning: if the gang member commits an aggression in high-security space triggering CONCORD to intervene, your ship will be targeted and destroyed as the drone owner is responsible for their behavior.

Guard

Guard a target fleet member, thus the drone will automatically retaliate on any threat attacking against that ship. Note that the target fleet member in question has no control over the drone.

So it appears as if the drones would attack what your buddy is attacking, but not necessarily what his drones are attacking. That being said, the drone interface is archaic and full of bugs so YMMV in a big way.