[R#198] Musings and a Bug Report: Drones

[ISAS]

Okay, I don't know if there's a list of currently known/under review bugs etc for the test server beyond what I scanned through in patch notes and stuff (Like the alpha textures appearing all weird and black) so I'm just gonna report the things I notice until someone points me to a list of things that need tested on the test center.

Musings
So today I thought to experiment with the Drone profession. It was certainly an experience, as I tended to fly the drone into the ground and get stuck briefly until I learned to use things to bounce off of and gain some altitude (Maybe implementing a means of direct vertical thrust could be considered in the future, i.e a sudden burst of downward directional force to raise the drones positional height, but with a cool down timer and resource cost to prevent it being abused simply to go higher and higher into the air to avoid taking damage?)

On that note, it might be worth considering a maximum height ceiling for drones? I was able to take some up to considerable heights an still manage to target and hit ground based targets and only receive a few hits in return from mobs with ranged capability, potential to exploit this fact exists)

Bug Report
So during my field testing, I noted a few things, some of which I brought up in my musings, re: the potential for height exploitation, however more importantly I noted that some drones weren't taking any damage, and one was taking very little at all.

The Raptor, the Particle Nemesis and the Mosquito took no damage from mobs at all, and I tested them against multiple mob of varying attack type and level (Mainly groups of Two ** fire mobs at the Canyon Reloading Point and One * Launcher Cyclops outside the Army Base).

Another drone, the Hew Advanced Particle Beam PB-20 did take damage, however it was seriously limited. Against roughly 8 Launcher Cyclops, a few flame thrower mobs and a pair of Butchee at the Army Base it took maybe 2% damage total from their combined attacks, whereas the other drones I was testing took considerable damage, enough that I lost a few and took synaptic damage before I could get my finger up to hit the Esc key to drop control of the damaged drones, so there's an obvious issue in that.

Another problem I encountered with drones was the tendency to get 'caught' in the environment and not manage to get free. I had to drop control of many drones because of this, however I lost two of them to the world, one after I got stuck in a tree and once when I got stuck atop a fence. The drone that I dropped atop the fence I was able to recover through some jumping around, however the drone I dropped on a tree was irrecoverable as, while I had got stuck in the tree's branches, the drone itself had fallen through the tree texture and was sat on the ground inside of the tree, where it was effectively outside of clickable range.

Thus concludes my musings and report on my brief testing of the Drone profession.

[Drachenpaladin]

IIRC in the last patchnotes there was mentioned that drones are not properly reworked or something... so, not sure if the hight ceiling and so on is really representative yet.

Regarding the controls: god yes, i wish they would implement a feasible control scheme for them, like properly raise/sink movement instead of the atrocious backpedaling.

[Vampslord]

The losing drone to environment as been in the game since drone existed. Fence, box and door are a plague. But water is the worst. It just destroy a drone without any chance of getting out of it.

[Vampslord]

As for the rare drone i hope they do receive less damage from mob in general since it's easy to loose them compare to a normal weapon wich does not received damage aside form using it. Also there are some type of damage that dont affect drone at all. Poinson is one of them. Then the Launcher cyclops they do miss lot when they try to fire a missile at a drone. It's normal they dont hit all the time: the missile is AOE damage and like every other AOE it's not always on target. A runner hit box is bigger then a drone, so they will miss more often.