Goonhub
04-21-2023, 05:17 PM
Exactly as the title suggests, although given how uncommon railgun drones are, I suppose an explanation is in order:
Railgun Drones are very rare enemies native to the debris field (and, presumably, to some adventure zones), occasionally being spawned on station through admin shenanigans. They are exceptionally tough enemies that attack slowly with a railgun bolt that penetrates walls and deals somewhere between 60-80 BURN damage. Fighting one either amounts to a DPS race that requires that your pod has enough health and armor to facetank the shots from the drone, or a series of hit-and-run attacks. Trying to fight one of these in a civilian pod will get you killed, and trying to fight one outside of your pod will get you killed even faster.
Most drones drop a selection of random junk, including cyborg limbs, electronic parts that are best ignored (you can potentially sell them to the Flock merchant, if you're really desperate for cash), and certain loot specific to each type of drone. For example, cutter drones drop circular saws, ballistic drones drop fake predator revolvers, and hunter-killer drones drop phaser guns. Currently, railgun drones drop a random amount of cryptocurrency, an item with a randomly generated name that is either totally worthless or tied to the in-game stock market in some way. Nobody I've ever asked has known what it's supposed to do, and given that the item's name in the code is "buttcoin," it's more or less a joke item.
Given how difficult these drones are to destroy, how rare they are (only 1 in the debris field, as far as I know), and the presence of useful drops from other more plentiful drone types, I'd propose that the cryptocurrency drop from the railgun drone be replaced by a laser gun. Laser guns can be obtained via much easier and safer methods in the debris field, so this would simply make the gun a nice bonus for killing the drone (or an alternative to getting a laser gun if the others have been looted already). In case cryptocurrency has a real use, anyone that wants it can make more by installing a fancy video card into the law rack - yes, I am being serious.
(Related: the ballistic drones should drop some form of ammunition instead of the fake predator revolver. Yes, it is very funny to get punked the first time you see a revolver get dropped by these drones before realizing that they're fakes, but that leaves no real incentive to fight them. They're reasonably rare and aren't exactly pushovers in combat either. Since the other type-specific rewards from drones are things that can be obtained on-station or in alternative ways, I'd propose having the drones drop 1 mag of .22 pistol ammo, which can be obtained from hacked general manufacturers.)
Railgun Drones are very rare enemies native to the debris field (and, presumably, to some adventure zones), occasionally being spawned on station through admin shenanigans. They are exceptionally tough enemies that attack slowly with a railgun bolt that penetrates walls and deals somewhere between 60-80 BURN damage. Fighting one either amounts to a DPS race that requires that your pod has enough health and armor to facetank the shots from the drone, or a series of hit-and-run attacks. Trying to fight one of these in a civilian pod will get you killed, and trying to fight one outside of your pod will get you killed even faster.
Most drones drop a selection of random junk, including cyborg limbs, electronic parts that are best ignored (you can potentially sell them to the Flock merchant, if you're really desperate for cash), and certain loot specific to each type of drone. For example, cutter drones drop circular saws, ballistic drones drop fake predator revolvers, and hunter-killer drones drop phaser guns. Currently, railgun drones drop a random amount of cryptocurrency, an item with a randomly generated name that is either totally worthless or tied to the in-game stock market in some way. Nobody I've ever asked has known what it's supposed to do, and given that the item's name in the code is "buttcoin," it's more or less a joke item.
Given how difficult these drones are to destroy, how rare they are (only 1 in the debris field, as far as I know), and the presence of useful drops from other more plentiful drone types, I'd propose that the cryptocurrency drop from the railgun drone be replaced by a laser gun. Laser guns can be obtained via much easier and safer methods in the debris field, so this would simply make the gun a nice bonus for killing the drone (or an alternative to getting a laser gun if the others have been looted already). In case cryptocurrency has a real use, anyone that wants it can make more by installing a fancy video card into the law rack - yes, I am being serious.
(Related: the ballistic drones should drop some form of ammunition instead of the fake predator revolver. Yes, it is very funny to get punked the first time you see a revolver get dropped by these drones before realizing that they're fakes, but that leaves no real incentive to fight them. They're reasonably rare and aren't exactly pushovers in combat either. Since the other type-specific rewards from drones are things that can be obtained on-station or in alternative ways, I'd propose having the drones drop 1 mag of .22 pistol ammo, which can be obtained from hacked general manufacturers.)
