Maintenance Drone Suggestions

[StorycrafterKiro]

 

When I’m not actually playing a character in a round, I’m usually playing a maintenance drone. I have a lot of fun with them, and they’re one of the more interesting choices to play as either post-death or when I’m not interested in actively ‘joining’ a round. That said, there are a few things that sour the experience, in my opinion. Here are my suggestions to help mitigate that.

 

Acknowledgement of existence from NanoTrasen. As it stands right now, as a drone, I’m not in Space Law at all. I’m not a citizen or crew member. I have no rights. This is to be expected up until it reaches the point of at least being considered ‘property’. That means if someone is feeling like being a jerk and just destroys a drone for fun, Space Law is completely fine with that. The crab that sits in the bottom of the swimming pool in the civilian section has more rights than a drone does, as killing Coffee at least charges a person with vandalism for destroying station property. And I imagine that drones are played a lot more by actual people than most of the station’s pets. Worse yet, after being destroyed as a drone, I have a ten minute wait time before I can rejoin the round again. So because that person felt like being a jerk, I’m punished for it instead. My suggestion is to possibly lessen the wait time, or just remove it completely, and to have some acknowledgement in Space Law for drones at least being station property and destroying one without reason being vandalism, similar to a pet. Why is there a wait time at all, for that matter? If a player is abusing the rules as a drone, an admin should be notified. If it’s to encourage self-preservation due to being ‘expensive to replace’, then NT should probably at least elevate a drone to pet status.

 

The one exception to this is the newly implemented ability to emag a drone and turn it into a miniature antagonist. This is… interesting, as it switches the drone from an invisible role to an active round changer, and can be a very powerful tool for the antagonist who does it, but it’s rather unbalanced in its current implementation. The new drone is still almost invisible, looking exactly like a regular drone, maintaining all access to the station, plus the ability to vent crawl and interface with things like a cyborg. Plus they’re given a weapon that can outright harm crewmembers! This is really, really powerful, in my opinion. A suggestion here would be to not give them the weapon, maintain their inability to directly harm others, and maybe instead give them a tiny radio that can communicate with the traitor who emagged them instead. This discourages their use for outright assassination and the traitor just telling them to go murder their target, and instead encourages a more espionage and sabotage approach to things. They could be used as a spy, or to remote control things in concert with the antagonist, and code-wise, all it would take is giving them a new radio channel.

 

Another big problem with an antagonist drone is that the first and foremost go-to solution to dealing with one appears to be firing off the drone kill command, which destroys every single drone on the entire station… except the actual emagged drone. I’m uh… not entirely sure what the point of this is. Maybe to make it easier to identify the emagged drone and hunt it down, or to prevent the traitor from emagging other drones? But as it stands right now, it doesn’t directly solve the issue and instead just removes every single drone player from the round for ten minutes due to the actions of a single individual. One solution to at least attempt to validate this would be to cause it to also blow up the emagged drone. This would force the drone to be extra stealthy in its manipulations, but only would work if it wasn’t a punishment for all the other drone players. Eliminating the cooldown would be a good fix for that. Alternatively, I read elsewhere that someone suggested making the emagged drones highly visible instead and easily able to be identified. That would force the drone to apply different tactics entirely, which might not suit the purpose, but it’s a valid option. A third route would be to remove the drone destruction option completely and instead give a way to ‘check’ if a drone was emagged, either by the AI’s direct investigation or some tool given to security forces. That would probably be harder to implement, however.

 

Overall, I just want drone play to be more fun and less punishing for everyone involved. These are all just opinions of course. I apologize for being lengthy, but it’s something that’s been frustrating to me for a while now.

 

TL;DR: Remove wait time for respawns on drones. Drones should be given Pet status in Space Law. Emagged drones shouldn’t get weapons, but instead a radio link with the traitor. Destruction command needs balancing.

 

[Rumiluntti]

 

Drones were always emaggable, this is not new.

Emagged drone gets a diamond drill, it's pretty robust but it can use any of the tools it normally has as a weapon too so removing the drill does not make it unarmed.

Drones are station property, nobody just gives a shit.

The drone console is pretty useless, true.

 

[BiberDark]

 

The respect and the punishment should at least be the same level as you blowed up a borg, or the bridge equipment. To remember drones are played by human players, and no asshole has the right to kill it, without being a Antag.

 

I can only speak for myself, a drone is not a thing that i only choose to play if i died, i play mostly silicon, Ai and if there is no slot free i choose the drone.

 

The drone console to blow up all should be removed. Maybe a intern command for the AI but thats all.

 

[Rumiluntti]

 

Drones are not protected by rules, just like pets.

You might be brigged for 5 minutes for vandalism if you wreck one, no OOC punishment.