Drones

Dynamic Remote Operated Navigation Equipment short DRONE

As a drone operator, you can build your own drones. Your designs directly impact how the game feels and plays. Your drones can be small to medium sized or heavily armored, and you can equip them with all kinds of high tech gadgets. You can purchase blueprints from other players or use your collectibles to trade them.

Depending on the design, drones can hover, swim, dive, drive, run, jump or fly. You can even make hybrid designs. Some drones are capable of navigating in vacuum and zero gravity. When it comes to the unconstrained design process – size matters! A small drone offers more agility than a bigger one and it can escape or attack from places where bigger, heavily armored or armed drones cannot.

Drones are based on components which have different properties like weight, durability, power consumption, heat and noise production, just to name a few. As you progress, you gain access to more parts and the size and complexity of your drone builds can be increased. Creating well balanced drones presents more challenges as more parts are added. For example: weight needs to be balanced with propulsion, the center of gravity needs to be taken into account, energy needs to be managed and even noise and heat production can affect the quality of a design.

You can replicate drone parts with a Replication Unit. However, drone parts are not free to replicate, the drone federation has its hands on it to prevent cheating and warrant fair play. You can purchase the right to replicate a part, not the part itself.

The drone parts are split into the following categories:

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• Blocks

  Blocks are the basic parts, these are used to build the frame of your drone. They only have a few properties, like durability and weight. On a block, you can attach the components.

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• Propulsion systems

  These can be various different types: tank-tracks, wheels, wings, propellers, thrusters, hover-pads, etc.

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• Vital systems

  Vital parts are components that have a certain functionality. Examples are: system components, power generators, batteries, radar systems, camera systems, stabilizers, thermal regulation units, etc.

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• Weapon systems

  Various categories of weapons exists. Beam-weapons, E.M.P. guns, machine guns, shot guns, blasters, missiles, mines and parasitic weapons are just a few examples.

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• Defense systems

  These can be armor of various types: thermal protection, shield generators, countermeasures, cloaking devices and more.

All of the parts have certain strengths and weaknesses which you have to consider for a balanced drone build.  It is also necessary to adapt your drone build to environmental circumstances. The same goes for weapons, some have a high firing rate but produce a lot of heat, some need ammunition that has to be refilled and some need energy that can be generated. Some weapons are good armor piercers, while others inflict heat damage, some affect energy shields and so on. Your choice of the right weapons can decide the outcome of a battle. Finding the right balance is key and if your drone’s weapons are strongly specialized, teamplay becomes more important. Not only human weapon designs are allowed in drone tournaments, also alien weapons add to the variety of DRONE’s weapon arsenal.

Just like the weapons, the defensive components of drones are also of major importance. Heavy armor will affect mobility which could be compensated by using stronger propulsive elements. However, a well balanced drone build will increase your chances in a tournament.

Component Categories (Excerpt):

• Camera Casings – Obligatory Part (Cockpits)
• System Units – Obligatory Part (Process Player Input)
• Power Generators (Loads the Batteries)
• Power Storages – Obligatory Part (Batteries, Fuel-Tanks)
• Main Propulsion – Obligatory Part
• Steering Units – Obligatory Part (Pitch, Roll, Yaw)
• Armor (Absorbs Damage)
• Shield Generators (Absorbs Damage)
• Stabilizers (Control Aid, eg. Auto Roll Correction, Anti Drift, etc.)
• EMP Blockers (Reduces EMP Damage)
• Repair Units (Repairs Damage)
• Cooling Units (Reduce Heat)
• Wings (Affect Drag)
• Shock Absorbers (Reduce Recoil and Impacts)
• Boosters (Short Speedup)
• Main Frames (Carry Components)
• Radar Devices (Minimap)
• Radar Jammers (Reduces Radar Visibility Distance)
• Cloaking Devices (Invisibility)
• Audio Tracking Devices (Marks Invisible Enemies on the HUD)
• Energy Converters (Converts Electricity to Different Energy Form)
• Weapon Mounts (Needed to attach Weapons)
• HeadLights (Needed to see in the Dark)
• Micro-drone Bay (used to store Micro-drones)
• Balance Weights (used to affect the center of mass)

Weapon Categories (Excerpt):

• Projectile Weapons
• Particle Weapons
• Laser Weapons
• Launcher Weapons
• EMP Weapons
• Blaster Weapons
• Plasma Weapons
• Shockwave Weapons
• Ultrasound Weapons
• Thrower Weapons
• Data Thrashers
• Bombs