Attack of the Drones!

Okay so despite the title here they're not all about combat. In fact, fewer than half of the new drones can actually fight. From a design perspective the goal was to add drones that would be interesting as drones, providing new mechanics or supporting strategies rather than just complementary firepower.

They're all complete now, but before getting into that I did a review of all the drone-related mechanics and made a number of important changes, since these would affect the balance of the drones to be designed. This is what's coming...

Drone Bay Basics

The most fundamental change with respect to drones is that you must have an attached and functional matching type of bay in order to use them. The bay does not actually need to be active, however.

There are a number of implied changes connected to this one, including:

• Releasing a drone directly from a bay on the ground (e.g. with '>') can only be done if a functional matching type of bay is already attached 
• Zionite Recon dispatches now arrive as a Z-Drone Bay (since you can't have drones without a bay anymore :P) 
• Drone bays never autoactivate on attach, regardless of part autoactivation settings

If you remove the necessary drone bay (or it's destroyed xD), all related drones will take on the new "Unconnected" status and shut down. You lose the FOV info, but can gain it back again immediately by attaching an appropriate bay.

Drone connection demo:

Drone FOV connection demo:

One surely welcome QoL under this new system is that if you have multiple matching drone bays and the attached one is full, drones can actually return to those which are currently in your inventory.

Less Micro

Overall there'll be less micromanagement involved with drones, and in some cases other allies as well, with the biggest change being the complete removal of the GOTO order! That feature just encouraged a lot of micromanagement to get the most out of allies, especially drones which could then be carefully moved around to explore manually in some cases, and would often be optimal but tedious (i.e. not good).

This encouraged me to make some improvements to the AI as well, most importantly that unarmed followers will slightly trail behind rather than gathering around your current location. And they'll be smart about retreating ahead of you if you're retreating, too, generally keeping them out of the line of fire (unless you're suddenly ambushed from behind, or surrounded, in which case good luck :P).

Implementation: Instead of follow your precise location, unarmed followers will target a point lagging behind you, as demonstrated here during debug mode (you can't normally see the point itself):

Fleeing drones will now always RETURN automatically, rather than running around wildly, so it'll be easier to get them back and they'll be much more likely to survive longer. By extension, any disarmed combat drones will also automatically return, possibly improving their lifespan as well. The potential drawback here is that they might lead enemies right back to your position! Of course if you're not there when the enemies finally arrive then it's all good anyway...

Drone QoL

One long-requested new feature is the ability to have the map view follow a drone as it moves. You can easily cycle through your drones using the normal Enter key (or center mouse button), which highlights them and their FOV. You can just use this to more easily check where they are, or even pass turns while focused on them and watch as they explore even distant areas.

Drone cycling demo:

Drone following demo:

When active drones are offscreen, you also get a blue 'n' marker like the one you get when Cogmind is offscreen.

And there's a new type of dedicated intel marker to record the location of a drone that was destroyed when that happens outside your remaining FOV.

The allies menu system got some upgrades, too:

• Opening an ally order list via the Allies console centers display on that ally if they are outside the map view
• Accessing the ally order list via keyboard displays it adjacent to the ally rather than below Allies console

• Fleeing controllable allies appear differently in allies menu, explicitly refuse orders with a warning message

Returning drone cannot be ordered:

Acquiring Drones

A majority of the new drone bays will be available in the early game, although every single type except for one is a unique part, so you won't be seeing them all the time. Less unique drones with similar mechanics might be available in the future (for example via Merchants!), but there's currently no good place to add them yet so I decided it would be better to make the bays unique so they could be especially useful or fun.

Many will be available in the Mines via a new prefab encounter, and the rest will be scattered about in other plot areas. One is a regular 0b10 prototype bay.

The full list of new drones and mechanics can be found below--scroll down if you don't want to wait to see them in game. (I thought some people might not want to know them all right away, though I could be wrong about this :P)

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SPOILERS: Full list of drone types

• Bomb Drone: Basically these are like self-guided explosives that self-destruct on contact with a target. Big boom. Very fun. There are a lot of them packed in there, too...
• Thief Drone: Essentially like having allied thieves that you can store away in your inventory for a rainy day. As expected they behave like thieves in that they'll rush up to enemies, steal parts, and bring them back. If you've got inventory space they'll even add the stolen part directly to your inventory rather than dump it on the ground. You get 3.
• Sensor Drone: Basically an excellent sensor array and interpreter pair that can fly. You get 20!
• Decoy Drone: Does an excellent job of drawing hostile attention away from you, but each one is basically single-use. Unlike other drones they never return, instead simply flying off into a remote area to lead the enemy on wild goose chase.
• Hacking Drone: A non-hacker's best friend! This drone can use Terminals for you, and is capable of about 15 different situational hacks. It will even install some Trojans. Just lead it to Terminals and reap the benefits. This one took the longest to add by far--about a day and a half just for this little guy xD
• Minesniffer Drone: Detects, reprograms, and extracts hostile traps, then brings them to you. Basically a trap thief :P
• Stealth Drone: Just a fast and decently stealthy drone, the better to spot without being spotted.
• Army-in-a-Box: EX-BIN was having fun. This creates randomized combat drones. Quite a lot of them. Unleash the army. (And yes you can technically recall them and relaunch to get new/different drones, so for those inclined to optimize this could of course add some micromanagement, but it's a unique/uncommon part anyway, and they won't last forever.)
• Wardrone: Okay I won't spoil this one even for the people who want spoilers ;)

Note that all drones can now detect traps as Cogmind can, so this is much easier with a lot of drones.

I leave you with the new drone bay art :D