Factorio Forums

After my first playthrough I started thinking about how I would like to improve the drone concept within the game. due to the fact that I´m not so familiar with all the programming work I decided to put this here as a request/suggestion, although i hope to get some stuff together on my own. If anyone feels interested in my ideas you are very welcome to add your own proposals or create a mod.
I´ll try to convert the names as best as i can(I use the german version) - feel free to correct me!

so here is the basic idea: a dronebase that produces drones, and those drones are able to fight within a certain perimeter around that base automatically any aliens or alien spawners - due to the fact that aliens will recreate spawners this could work as a harvesting method for alien artifacts

1. Building is a drone hangar/roboport (name suggestion: "Drone outpost"/"Battle station"/"Drone Base")
- abilities: production and storage of different combat drones
- powered (at least 2MW)
- recipe: 4blue assembly-machines-2/ 100 steel/ 1 Radar / 20 ElectricEngines / 2 Roboports /20 akkumulator
- size: 6x8
- drone docks - if possible 8-16
- input: normal ammo, armor peircing ammo, HE rockets, flame thrower ammo, flying robot hull, red circuits, iron bars
- output: scouting drone(4 armour piercing ammo), harvester drone(4 normal ammo), battle drone(2 HE rockets), "Hellfire" drone(4 flame thrower ammo)
- research "Combat Drones" needs Automatisation2, Military2, construction robots, Rocket technology
- Building defines "scouting area" a zone that is 2-3 times larger in diameter than a normal controlzone for construction robots
-building has a slot for "harvested" alien artifacts(can be extracted through roboticarms)
- menu with slider to set min produced drones before action/max for production

2.Scouting Drone - carries 4 Armour piercing ammo magazines range like gunturret
- randomly patrols "scouting area"
- engages detected enemies within reach
- calls in battle/hellfire and harvester drones if it detects spawners
- is able to form groups of multiple drones (1-20) in order to fight larger numbers of aliens
- will retreat if no ammo or power low to resupply
- will fight to death as long as it has ammo
- (repairs ?)
3.Harvester Drone - carries 4 normal ammo magazines for selfdefense range like gunturret
- is summoned if scouting drones detect alien artifacts within scouting zone
- will pick up and carry 1 alien artifact each
- will avoid aliens if possible
- will retreat if artifact collected or no ammo or power low to resupply
- will fight to death as long as it has ammo
- will drop alien artifact in base
4.Battle drone - carries 2 HE rockets range like rocket launcher
- will be summoned if scouting drones detect alien spawners in scouting zone
- engages detected enemies/spawners within reach
- should behave like "artillery" -- keep distance if possible while firing
- is able to form groups of multiple drones (1-20) in order to fight larger numbers of aliens
- will retreat if no ammo or power low to resupply
- will fight to death as long as it has ammo
- (repairs ?)
5.Hellfire drone - carries 4 flamethrrower ammo range like flamethrower
- will be summoned if scouting drones detect spawners
- engages detected enemies/spawners within reach
- should behave like "melee" - close in with enemy
- is able to form groups of multiple drones (1-20) in order to fight larger numbers of aliens
- will retreat if no ammo or power low to resupply
- will fight to death as long as it has ammo
- (repairs ?)


well that was a lot of text. Tell me what you think! Again sorry for any possible wrong translations or spelling mistakes!

Wow, this is a really complete concept! I would love to play with this. I also don't have much programming experience but would love to contribute to this idea. My idea includes an additional drone,

6.Miner Drone - equiped with no weapons
- Will automatically fly to nearest reasource patch and harvest ore leaving it on the ground
- Will only have charge for several dozen mining iterations per flight
- will avoid aliens if possible
- will retreat if encounters aliens or power low to resupply

The Harvester drone would become even more useful as the bot that would need to pickup the itemized ore off the ground and take it to either a storage chest or a requester chest.

Let me know if i can help with this idea!

That Mining drone sounds interesting, especially when I think of those extremely small ore/stone/coal patches you sometimes get on certain maps. and it would definitely fit into an advanced drone concept.

But due to its "peaceful" nature I think that should be a separate Branch of Technology maybe "remote mining" with a separate Drone Base that is specialised on building mining drones and collecting ore/stone/coal. This also makes sense for me if I think about how complex the "Drone Outpost" idea already is.
so yes I like your idea, but that will need a second building in my opinion.
Also I think The "harvester" drones should specialise on one item. In one way i think it may make programming easyer, on the other hand I think it is easyer to control what the drone does if the player can define what the drone does by simply adjusting what kind of drone he builds. If the drones have too much choises you will likely end up with lots of stuff you don´t need or waste time (I think of those existing logistic drones filling up storage boxes with all kind of crap - its really hard to control what they take and where they take it, if you don´t centralise all your storage boxes)

HI for mining with drones check
viewtopic.php?f=92&t=23521&p=147535#p147535
viewtopic.php?f=92&t=23521&p=147535#p147535

dewast wrote:HI for mining with drones check
viewtopic.php?f=92&t=23521&p=147535#p147535
viewtopic.php?f=92&t=23521&p=147535#p147535

unfortunately judos writes in one of the comments : "About separate mining robots: sorry this is currently technically not possible ..." --- that statement may goe for any other "separate" robot so the whole above concepts will be very hard to achieve (He does not say it is forever impossible though )