Drones

Drones are autonomous craft deployed from a ship with a Drone Bay, which can be configured to do any type of activity - Combat, Mining, Salvage, or utility.

The individual setup of drones is entirely up to the Player. It's quite common to use drones for defense while main turrets are dedicated to mining, or vice versa.

ECHO can use Drones, and will actively deploy and return them to the Ship when it decides to leave a POI. The 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 types depend on the skills unlocked in the Drone Tree.

Basic Drones (available with out Skills)
Advanced Drones (unlocked with Advanced Drone Access skill)
Combat Laser	Fast Short ranged laser Drone.
Mining Surface	Surface mining laser Drone.
Salvage Surface	Surface Salvaging laser Drone.
Combat Missile	Long range missile Drone.
Mining Core	Drills into the Core of the Asteroid, Core mining.
Salvage Harpoon	Harpoons onto Wreackiges, Core Salvaging.
Utility Drones β (unlocked With Utility Drone Access skill)
Painter	-15% Damage Reduction on target, Won't stack.
Scanner	Increase yield by 20% on target, Won't stack.
Shield Repair	Repair Beam, restores Shields.

Advanced/Utility (beta) Drone Access skill

Behavior

Once released, drones act on their own for most activities. They can be re-focused on a single Object by 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 UPDATED IN BETA 0.8.1.23

Drones don't have their own isolated Power. When a drone fires, each drone fights with its own attack power built from three sources by a per-turret formula Power:

The drone's own Power, the rating of the turret loaded on that individual drone.
The ship's matching activity Power (Combat/Mining/Salvage) - added in as a per-turret share, normalized by the ship's own turret count.
The ship's "Drone Power" stat - split into an equal share per drone.

In rough terms:

Each drone keeps its own loaded turret Power in full, plus a share of the ship's activity Power, plus an equal slice of the ship's Drone Power. It is not one big pool that gets divided up between all drones - a strong drone stays strong.
Adding more drone slots adds firepower overall. Only the slice of the ship's "Drone Power" stat gets thinner as more drones share it; a drone's own turret Power and its activity Power share do not drop.
The bay's tooltip "Drone Power" figure is a live computed sum of these sources, not a fixed cosmetic number.
Drone shots feed off the ship's matching activity Power (a mining drone would use Mining Power). The reverse is not true - drones' own Power does not contribute to ship turret damage.

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.

Drone Bay Slots Base off Sizes
Size	Small	Medium	Large
Base Drones	3	6	9
Aspects	2x Extended Drone Bay +1: +2	2x Oversized Drone Bay +2: +4	2x Oversized Drone Bay +2: +4
Skills	Drone Squad Expansion / Expanded Drone Control: +2	Drone Squad Expansion / Expanded Drone Control: +2	Drone Squad Expansion / Expanded Drone Control: +2
Hull Milestones	+3	+3	+3
Total Drones	10	15	18

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: