Drones

Drone modules release small attack units that have varying weapons and abilities depending on model.

## Gameplay

To produce a drone in combat, a ship required to have a *drone bays* placed on the ship. Then the drone bay can be assigned to one of the Command Button or set to automatic spawn in the ship editor.

### Drone Behaviour

The drone also has two behaviour setting which are:

* **Offensive** behaviour makes the drone will chase and attack any enemy entering a certain range from parent ship.
* **Defensive** behaviour makes the drone only attack and chase any enemy aiming directly to the drone or too close to the parent ship. If the enemy aiming at other drones or do not have aim at the parent ship, it will just circle and tailing the parent ship.

### Respawn and Drone Capture

The number of drones maximum can be produced depends on the drone bays placed on the ship. Any drone destroyed requires at least one of any *Drone factory* to be respawned. If a drone factory existed, then the ship can respawn any drone destroyed. However, only one can be respawned in succession and any later destroyed drone will be assigned a queue timer which cycles according to the drone respawn time stats.

If a drone is captured by enemy instead, it can not be respawned. So either player destroy it or re-capture back the drone.

The ship initially will spawn drones at the rate of 0.X drone per second regardless the drone respawn timer, starting from first placed drone bays to the last one as long the energy requirement met. However, any drone destroyed can be produced simultaneously with initial spawn queue.

If the parent ship is destroyed, the remaining drones will go astray and may still attacked enemy last targeted. However, if the parent ship escaped the battlefield, the drones will follow.

## Drone Bays & Stats

The *drone bays* are the drone module which to be placed on blue area.

### Stats of Drone Bays

* **Small Drone Bays** takes up 2x3 blue slots, deploy one drone, have a base energy consumption of 2, range of 20 and 300 weight.
* **Standard Drones Bays** takes up 3x4 blue slots (one cut out in the bottom-right corner, total of 11 slots), deploy two drones, have a base energy consumption of 4, range of 25 and 550 weight.
* **Large Drone Bays** takes up 5x3 blue slots, deploy three drones, have a base energy consumption of 6, range of 30 and 750 weight.
* **Interceptor Hangar** takes up 5x4 blue slots, deploy one drone, have a base energy consumption of 6, range of 60 and 1000 weight. Multiplies respawn time by 10.

Each drone bay has two kinds of energy costs: Energy cost to the ship's energy regen rate which always active and energy cost consumed to spawn the drone. The drone bays energy consumption to the energy regeneration rate scales according to the parent ship's overall sizes, where bigger ship costs higher. Meanwhile, each drone spawning costs about 8 to 10 energy, scaling with parent ship size and if there is not enough energy left in the reserve then the drone can not be produced.

### List of Drone bays

**Notes:**

* **Drone M41** is a living ship thus can regenerate HP if not damaged for awhile and upon destroyed releases a small AoE gas zone that deals little damage.
* **Drone M81** if set to *defensive* will attempt repair it's parent ship hull HP whenever damaged. The effectivity of this attempt depends on the parent ship movement and the drone speed.

## Drone Factory and Boosters

Drone factory and booster modules are modules placed on the green area of the ship. The modules offered features for the drones such as allowing or hasten the drone respawn time and enhances the drones performances.

### Stats of Modules and Drone Performances

The modules literally separated into two kinds:

* **Drone factory** module which affects the drone respawn time.
* **Drone upgrade** modules or usually called *booster* which affected the drone performances.

Drone performance can not be upgraded past a certain limit just like normal ship. For example, drones are limited to velocity and turn rate of 20.0 stats.

Drone performance also affected by the parent ship performance. For example, high level parent ship's drones will be able to deal and sustain more damages then a same parent ship with lower level.

## NPC/AI-Only Drones Modules

*See this page for more information.*
Non-player controlled ships or enemies often have special drones limited to their use and unobtainable for players.

## Gallery

### Drone Layouts

Drone S1Drone M11Drone M21Drone M22Drone M31Drone M41Drone M51Drone M54Drone M81Drone A1Santa Drone
### Drone Appearances

Drone S1Drone M11Drone M21Drone M22Drone M31Drone M41Drone M51Drone M54Drone M81Drone A1Santa Drone