Drones
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Drones are autonomous craft deployed from a ship with a Drone Bay, which can be configured to do any type of activity - Combat, Mining or Salvage.
The individual setup of drones is entirely up to player. It's quite common to use drones for defence while main turrets are dedicated to mining, or vice versa.
ECHO can use drones, and will actively deploy them and returns them to the Ship when it decides to leave a POI. Player can also deploy them manually by clicking the "Deploy" button at the bottom of the screen.
Drones can be destroyed by environmental hazards or by enemy activity. When destroyed, the Drone Bay will manufacture new ones after a short delay. Leaving drones behind when doing an Emergency Jump is also not an issue, as the drones will be reset by the time they are re-deployed.
Drone types
Available Drone types depend on the Drone skills unlocked. Basic ones (mining laser, salvage laser, combat laser) are always available, while advanced drone types (mining core, salvage harpoon, combat missile) are unlocked by Advanced Drone Access skill.
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Behaviour
Once released, drones act on their own for most activities. They can be re-focused on a single Object by double-clicking it - be it an asteroid or a combat vessel.
In combat all drones will focus the target clicked or that attacks the player first unless ordered otherwise.
While Mining or Salvage, once set free, drones start targeting everything in sight. When autopiloting/idling, ECHO will direct them to targets to focus on - whichever target ECHO chooses first.
Drone Power
When a drone fires, the game builds a shared power pool from three places, then runs the standard per-turret attack-power formula on it:
shared pool = ship's PowerStat (its CombatPower / MiningPower / SalvagePower)
+ ship's DronePower (rolled stat line on the bay or other module)
+ sum of every loaded drone's own PowerStat (firing drone included)
That pool is divided by the ship-wide equivalentTurrets (ship hardpoints plus drone slots of the same class), the stacking penalty is applied, then the drone turret's own size rating and weapon-model multiplier scale the slice.
Pools are effectively per class. Combat, mining, and salvage each see their own pool from the matching ship PowerStat. The drone-side sum has no class filter in code, but off-class drones report 0 for the irrelevant power stat, so a mixed bay's pools don't cross-pollute in practice. The DronePower stat line, when present, is added on top of every class pool the bay's drones use.
The bay's UI "Drone Power" is not the same as the formula's DronePower. The figure shown on the drone bay item (per-drone laser rating × slot count) is cosmetic — it tells you what each loaded drone's turret is rated at, nothing more. The DronePower stat that feeds the pool is a separately rolled stat line on equipment (the bay item may roll it, may not). On most bays it's 0.
Skill nodes add slots without diluting flat-stat inheritance. The Drone Squad Expansion / Expanded Drone Control skills raise the drone count without changing the bay item's underlying slot field, so each existing drone's share of commander flat stats stays the same — the new drones just join at the same share each. (The shared pool's slice per drone does shrink slightly as the bay's equivalentTurrets weight grows, but total drone-side DPS rises.)
Bay → ship is one-way. Drones' own per-turret power does not feed ship turrets — only the ship's own hardpoints and rolled stat lines contribute to a ship turret's attack power. The bay's UI Drone Power figure is never added to ship aggregate PowerStats.
For the full damage formula, the per-stat inheritance rule (flat ÷ slots vs. percent full), the blocked-stat list, player-only skill paths, and a worked example with 10k MiningPower / 6k bay / 2 drones, see Damage and mitigation § Drones.
Drone Bays and Skills
Drone Bays exist in all rarities and sizes. Depending on the Size the bay can store and control different amounts of Drones.
| Size | Small | Medium | Large |
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| Max Drones: | 3 (5*) (7**) | 6 (10*) (12**) | 9 (13*) (15**) |
| *With Aspect: | Up to 2 more Drones
with Extended Drone Bay |
Up to 4 more Drones
with Oversized Drone Bay |
Up to 4 more Drones
with Oversized Drone Bay |
| **With Skills: | Up to 4 more Drones
with the Skills: |
Up to 6 more Drones
with the Skills: |
Up to 6 more Drones
with the Skills: |
There are 2 Drone Bay exclusive Aspects that increase the maximum Amount of Drones that can be stored and controlled.
Unassigned Drones
If a Drone Bay has free/unassigned drone Slots, the game will fill them up randomly. It's best to choose Drones until all slots are filled.
Drone Bay View:
Drone Mechanics Calculations
combatDronePool = commanderCombatPower + commanderDronePower + sum(all combat drones' CombatPower) combatEquivalentTurrets = sum(ship combat turret ratings) + sum(combat drone ratings) sharedCombatPower = combatDronePool / combatEquivalentTurrets sharedCombatPowerAfterPenalty = sharedCombatPower * crowdPenalty attackPowerPerDroneTurret = sharedCombatPowerAfterPenalty * droneTurretRating * droneTurretPowerMultiplier damagePerShot = ( attackPowerPerDroneTurret / 5 ) * random(0.8 to 1.25) / defaultAttacksPerSecond damageAfterCrit = damagePerShot * (2 + critDamage)^critCount finalOutgoingDamage = damageAfterCrit * (1 + typeBonus + genericDamageBonus) finalTakenDamage = finalOutgoingDamage * max(0.2, 1 - reduction - resist) remainingDamage -> shield -> armor -> hull