Frontier- A Case for Persistant Drones
- Thread starter Frenotx
- Start date
Is there much of a difference gameplay wise between carrying 5 reusable drones and carrying 40 non reusable ones? Assuming they were the same price of course.
Last edited:
His, and thank you.
Depending on how the mechanics are designed, then functionally, not necessarily. Emotionally though... well, see the original post.
I think I've found the perfect clip for this thread.
imagine a discussion on mining and drones before watching this clip.
[video=youtube_share;dUW8AJCPVvU]http://youtu.be/dUW8AJCPVvU[/video]
imagine a discussion on mining and drones before watching this clip.
[video=youtube_share;dUW8AJCPVvU]http://youtu.be/dUW8AJCPVvU[/video]
Unless they want to add massive amounts of customization, most people won't become attached to their drones. We don't see anyone becoming attached to their weapons, heatsinks or shields, why would they become attached to a drone?
Because unlike a weapon a drone is more like the future equivalent of a pet, guardian, or servant, depending on its design and level of intelligence. Those are things you can form an emotional attachment to, even if they're not particularly humanlike. Even without customisation your drone is still your drone, even if it looks like everyone else's. Just like your ship and its Commander, depending on the capabilities that the drone has, it will have its own unique set of adventures and stories that no other drone will have. I think there's a lot of opportunity to expand Elite's drone mechanic from just a basic tool to exchange money for convenience, to a full fledged onboard companion that can assist you in whatever you manage to get up to out in the black. NASA already has spherical drones onboard the ISS that can fly around, interact with the crew, and perform mission assignments on or off station. It's not a huge stretch of the imagination to assume everyone would want something like this on their ship for long duration deep space assignments of any kind, and that opens a lot of opportunity to bond with your personal drone that's lost if they're nothing but another consumable that carries out an assigned task and then dies. The current iteration of drones in elite is a good start, but like every other mechanic there's an infinite depth of expansion options to enhance the game that possibly weren't considered before.
I'd personally really enjoy if drones became ED's "ship's pet" mechanic proper. It'd be a unique twist on the formula that feels very in character. No sapient AI though. A robot dog is a friendly companion for any environment, a robot human is a potential threat you can never be sure of.