#Deployable Drones - Answering the question "You and what army?"

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

shy canopy
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I think it would be cool to have a way to summon "minions" to aid you in battle. Here's how I think they could work:

  1. The weapon itself would be known as a "Drone Controller." It would be a Secondary weapon with a somewhat high energy cost. On it's own, it does nothing, and does not need line of sight, so it can be buried inside your build. You can have up to 6 Drone Controllers on a build.

  2. Once a drone controller is mounted, you gain access to a smaller garage (or section off a section of the main garage) to build your own custom minion. Minions would have a 500 Energy limit as opposed to your 2000, and can't mount secondary weapons.

  3. Minions spawn instantly when you join a battle, and last until either they or you are destroyed. Destroyed minions can't respawn until you die.

  4. By default, your minions will follow you loosely within 50 meters, attacking enemies that attack you or your other minions. However, if you switch weapons to the Drone Controller, you can give orders to your drones. This is accomplished with a simple primary fire, using what you target to determine the order:

  • Terrain: Your minions will move to that location, wandering no more than 50 meters from it and attacking nearby enemies.
  • Ally: Your minions will follow that ally instead of you. You can also target yourself.
  • Enemy: Your minions will chase that enemy, attacking them with extreme prejudice.
valid marsh
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I like it, but in my opinion, feel there it is a couple details that can make it too broken: 1) extremely tanky build surrounding the drone controllers, making extremely difficult to disable it
2) Having access to all primary weapons throw giving a different one to each drone.

Ways I see to balance:

  1. the drone controllers will need a minimum exposition to the exterior for the "signal" to reach the drones, with no signals, they will not spawn, so for example of the controller is totally protected by a cube, there will be no drone spawning, untill a hole is opened either by erasing a cube or getting damage in game

  2. all drones need to have the same primary with each other, it can be different from the main bot tho, so still a way to get access to two primary

worn kraken
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I like the idea of drones you could summon or move around or have do tasks, but i dont like building custom robots, its too much for one mechanic.

valid marsh
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I like the custom bots, but like pmuz day, it could be too much for one mechanic. Ideally making your own would be so fun, but sound like just making a regular dron entity for standard would be more efficient and easier

blazing mantle
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making your own drones would be fun but you run into issues regarding how their AI would even work or not work depending on how you build it
IE if you build a plane drone and there's no plane AI it's just not going to work, or if you have a plane with drones then how would that work for your drones, and in general some designs that may work with a human the AI may have issues with

i personally would find it fun and unique as building small designs that works is a challenge in itself i really like but current procelio i feel that small designs are simply not viable compared to everything else

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otherwise i do support this idea even if it sounds somewhat filly and a nightmare of an implementation

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also, on respawning drones, it would be better if you could restock them on spawn rather than needing to die and respawn yourself, or perhaps a very high cost to use with loaders, essentially making a "factory bot" of sorts given enough investement

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also another thought, rather than a secondary, it could also be a sort of passive module similar to PSG (effectively giving a design choice of accessible drones for passive support, or drones tied to secondary with more hard focus on drones), depending on how people/the devs feel this sort of thing better fitting

worn kraken
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Tbh I think that this concept as a whole (drone launcher/ summoner style stuff) could extend to both primary and secondary weapons, it's actually very interesting.

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Any sort of drone launcher is potentially extremely interesting weapon concept that could be decent against air too.

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Plus being totally outside the RC formula would be 😎 for once

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Just a case of making like a more supportive defensive weapon

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If it's a primary weapon needs to be something interesting enough where the strategy required makes up for the loss of skill shooting or whatnot

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Or, maybe you can generate drones and aim them. Infinite possibilities

blazing mantle
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nah i don't think it should be a primary