Drones

**Drones** appear in the sky randomly and can be tapped or dragged on (to avoid mis-tapping a building), knocking them to the ground and giving you a cash/Golden Egg reward. They used to be extremely important but were nerfed in update 1.9. It's helpful to use Farm to Table when taking down drones because the camera can be moved freely and you can see your entire farm at once.

Since update 1.12, the active running chicken bonus affects farm value and hence the value of drones. Specifically, your bock earnings from drones will be multiplied by the square root of your running chicken bonus, so maintaining a running chicken bonus of x400 will yield drones with an x20 value over no running chickens. As the value of the drone is calculated when the drone hits the ground, you have a small window of time to raise your running chicken multiplier between the time you hit a drone and the time you get the reward.

## Drones

The epic research Drone Rewards works as follows: from 10% to 100%, that is your chance of doubling the downed drone's reward. From 110% to 200%, subtract 100 to get 10% to 100%; that is your chance of doubling the reward again. This makes upgraded drones one of your most reliable sources of small amounts of golden eggs - at maximum upgrade, drones that drop golden eggs will never drop less than 24 at a time.

Because of how drone cash rewards are calculated, in addition to the above, you can raise the amount of cash drones drop with the epic research Accounting Tricks. Drones spawn at a rate of about 154 per hour (actually one drone every 23.375 seconds, on average). Neodymium Medallions modify this amount per hour directly, although note it is not exactly 154. Of these, 92% are regular and 8% are elite, i.e. about 141.69 regular drones per hour and about 12.32 elite drones per hour.

### Regular Drones

Regular Drones are extremely common and quite slow. Each wave is 1-3 drones and they spawn about every 30-45 seconds; you can expect about 142 per hour.

* **Cash Rewards:** A very small amount of bocks, with higher rewards more likely with higher drone research). Unmodified by artifacts, 70% of regular drones carry cash. Assuming a drone is both regular and carrying cash, its drop rates are as follows, across three tiers; note that for chicken farms with very small populations, drones carry *fewer* bocks relative to farm value (and, of course, farm value is also smaller due to said smaller population), but this very quickly becomes meaningless, so the full formula is abbreviated here:
	+ The *base* value for a drone is based on Farm Value multiplied by the square root of your running chicken bonus when the drone hits the ground. Call this your modified FV.
	+ m = 1+drone research/100, so 1 at level 0 and 3 at max level.
	1. With percent probability 100 - m\*10 (100% going down to 70%), a drone drops .01% of your modified FV.
	2. With percent probability 7m (0% going up to 21%), a drone drops .05% of your modified FV.
	3. With percent probability 3m (0% going up to 9%), a drone drops .25% of your modified FV.
	+ This means that at maximum upgrade, a regular cash drone drops, on average, 0.04% of your modified FV.
* **Golden Egg Rewards:**6 or 12 before upgrades, 24 or 48 when fully upgraded, with odds of 99% of being the smaller value and 1% of being larger. Unmodified by artifacts, 30% of regular drones carry golden eggs. Unlike with cash rewards, drone research does nothing to impact the odds either will drop. When either one drops, its value is randomly modified.
	+ m = drone research, so 0 at level 0 and 200 at max level.
	+ When a regular golden egg drone hits the ground while m is from 0 to 100, with odds m% (0% to 100%), the egg's value is doubled.
	+ When a regular golden egg drone hits the ground while m is from 100 to 200, the egg's value is *always* doubled once, and then is doubled again with odds (m-100)%, so 0% to 100%.
	+ So a fully upgraded regular golden egg drone drops, on average, 24.24 golden eggs; each regular drone has a 30% chance of carrying this, so said drone drops 7.272 golden eggs on average.

### Elite Drones

Elite Drones, added in update 1.1, are very fast and can turn mid-flight, making them harder to catch. They appear approximately once every 4 minutes, but two Elite Drones *can* spawn at the same time. You can expect about 12 per hour (statistically, one every 5 minutes).

* **Cash Rewards:** A very large amount of bocks (typically 5% of Farm Value multiplied by the square root of your current running chicken bonus, which does not seem to be modified by drone research at all).
* **Golden Egg Rewards:** 24, 48, or 96, scaling up to 96, 192, and 384 after drone research. The odds of each dropping from an elite golden egg drone (without artifacts, each drone has a 30% chance of being a golden egg drone) are 70%, 29%, and 1%, respectively. When fully upgraded, an elite golden egg drone drops, on average, 126.72 golden eggs.