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Combat Drones

Combat drones are one of the ways to fight starship combat on Cosmic Rage. They are autonomous craft you launch from a drone bay on your ship. Once deployed they hunt and engage hostile ships in your sector. You can let them run themselves, or, with the right crew aboard, shape exactly how they behave in a fight.

What are combat drones?

Combat drones are small craft kept in your ship's combat drone bay. When deployed they fly into space alongside your ship and engage anything hostile that comes into their sensor range. They will not target your allies. Each drone has its own hull, weapons, and engines, and returns to your ship when recalled.

How do I get a combat drone?

You need a ship with a combat drone bay (either built-in or installed as an upgrade). Once the bay is fitted, buy combat drones from the appropriate shop and install them in the bay. You can expand a bay's capacity up to 10000 units.

Who can operate the drones?

Two crew postings can issue orders to deployed drones from inside the bay:
Chief Drone technician (senior posting)
Drone bay technician (junior posting)

Your Captain and First officer can also operate the bay as a fallback. Assign these postings from the control room using the assign command. If nobody with the right role is aboard, drones still work, they just fly on their default behavior.

Bay commands (basic):

install Install a drone from your inventory into the bay. Drop the drone first.
install-all Install every drone currently in your inventory.
deploy Deploy drones of the named type into space. You will be asked how many.
recall Recall all deployed drones back to the bay. They need to be within sensor range.
drones Show an inventory of drones currently held in the bay.
slideout Uninstall a drone from the bay back into your inventory.
reorder Reorder the drones in the bay.
repair Begin a repair task on damaged drones in the bay. Uses 10 metal panels and 10 plastics per cycle to restore 100 hull every 5 seconds, until resources run out or all drones are at full hull.
crush Destroy a drone if you no longer want it and do not want to sell it.

Operator commands (control deployed drones):

dstatus Show a per-drone status report for everything currently deployed: name, current mode, hull damage, current target, and distance to your ship.
dmode Pick drones, then pick a behavior mode. If the mode needs extra data (coords for hold, targets for manual) you will be prompted.
dtarget Pick drones, then pick a list of targets, then optionally reorder them. The selected drones switch to manual mode and work through the list.
dhold Pick drones, enter coordinates, and the selected drones lock to that position.
dclass Pick drones, then pick a target preference: none, biggest, or smallest. Layers on top of the current mode.

Drone modes:

auto Default behavior. Engage the nearest hostile in sensor range. Follow your ship when nothing is in range.
chase Aggressive pursuit profile. Close to weapon range on the nearest hostile and stay engaged.
tank Sit between an attacker and your ship. The drone draws fire away from you and physically intercepts cannon and warhead fire passing through toward your ship.
hold Park at a fixed coordinate. Engage anything that comes within weapon range without leaving the spot.
guard Stay close to your ship. Intercept anything that locks on to you before going for other hostiles.
manual Work through the priority list you set with dtarget. If a target is out of range or destroyed, fall through to the next. If the whole list is exhausted, the drone reverts to auto behavior.

Class sort:

When set with dclass, drones bias their target selection by ship size:
none No bias. Pick the nearest hostile (or whatever the current mode dictates).
biggest Pick the largest hostile in range.
smallest Pick the smallest hostile in range.

Class sort layers on top of auto, chase, and guard. It does not override tank or manual, which have their own targeting logic.

Tips:

Drones will not chase cloaked or docked ships, and will not engage anything allied with your ship.

If your ship is destroyed while drones are deployed, the drones self-destruct.

Tank mode works best with one or two drones per major threat. Stacking many tank drones on the same attacker gives diminishing returns since they cluster at the same midpoint.

Hold mode is good for setting an ambush at a known choke point or guarding a piece of wreckage,important station. Drones in hold will not chase visible targets that wander out of weapon range.

Manual paired with class sort is useful for prioritized engagement: dtarget sets the order, dclass biases the within-list pick toward the biggest threat first.

The drones command shows the bay inventory. dstatus shows the deployed ones in space.

Welcome to: Cosmic rage!

By Nathan Tech!

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Combat Drones

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