[MAJOR UPGRADE] [[ROBOTICS]] Drone Research

[APARTHEID]

Given the greater push to give Medical Doctors more to do with bleeding and the upcoming Pathology wing and ISaidNo's recent endeavors with Genetics, what is Robotics doing? Skulls for a throne that can't be built? Guardbuddies on an upcoming map without DWAINE access? Robotics used to have research and it is thoroughly without.

Thankfully, there is something already in game that can fill Robotics' time without much due extra effort.

An onboard Drone Lab!

Much like the derelicts encountered on various TeleScience locations, the Drone Lab is dedicated to creating the best in remote robotics technology for the crew. With a bit of scrap and shit brought back from the debris field, you too can have a CR drone cutting up Hemera! Or an SC drone that you can remote-control!

On the plus(?) side, due to drone technology, the VR pods and glasses on station can be networked to be used with drones. In addition, Sec probably gets one or two pods or pairs to let them coast about in silence. Nerds.

[BaneOfGiygas]

I definitely agree on the point that Roboticists are in dire need of more shit to do. I like the idea of playing as a Roboticist and have tried it, but unless I end up rolling traitor, I have absolutely nothing important to do since no one wants to be borged, the cyborgs tend to be self-sufficient enough, and no one ever tends to need more secbots/medbots/firebots/whateverbots, which inevitably results in me doing shenanigans like trying to assemble the medzord as opposed to actually helping out with the station.

In short, it's a very situational job, and it's a situational job that is best suited for situations that almost never happen.

I should mention that the station already has a bit of a drone problem due to those occasional asshats in telescience who like to spawn the X-Drone every damn round with no one's consent or awareness, nor with any plans of actually bothering to kill the thing. Furthermore, Syndicate drones are basically death to anyone who isn't in a pod, and being able to unleash those things on the station with a bit of construction would be really, really bad, to say nothing of the precariously close medbay.

However, I like the idea of this because it gives the Roboticist something to do in emergency situations. If it's a wizard round or a syndie round, most of the time, you can basically kiss any hope of usefulness that round out of the window, except for maybe your supply of flashes, and something that allows the Roboticist to hunt down antagonists that are unfortunately still human would be very appreciated.

To counteract the potential overpoweredness of this idea, the actual bits and pieces for drone production should be kept by the command, possibly locked up in the armory, so that they can be brought in if there's a really big emergency. Or, instead of this or in addition to this, put some parts out off-station for the adventuring roboticist to find and make cool shit with.

If drone production ends up being a thing, traitor Roboticists should be able to order a fairly pricey item that basically lets them make a more deadly drone, maybe even a direct Syndicate drone.

[KikiMofo]

I'd love this but I'm not sure how hard this would be to code. Sounds like alot of

[babayetu83]

not too crazy about the drone part but the synchronizing vr to pods/etc might be cool

[APARTHEID]

I'd love this but I'm not sure how hard this would be to code. Sounds like alot of

As far as I understand BYOND, every time you enter something like a pod or an AI shell, you're put into a container.

It'd just be more of these, except due to the new fancy pod HUD that Marquesas introduced, it wouldn't be too much trouble to retool a few mini-putts into drones and let VR pods/glasses connect to 'em.

At least, not concerning the whole spiel with pod construction. That's probably similar. Why not just have drones be reskinned pods and do that?

[Frank_Stein]

Screw mini-putts, I wanna drive bots around as Roboticist in a fancy VR pod

[Captain_Bravo]

What if you roll together Robotics and pods? Give roboticists an assembly they can construct that can be installed into the secondary systems of a pod, and allows you to link it up with a modified VR headset. Using one of these, you can remote pilot a pod. Then add a podbay to medical, with a couple miniputts for Roboticists to mess around with, and an ambulance pod for the rest of the doctors.

[Amuys]

I don't mind Robotics getting more things to do considering all the turbo OP poopsock stuff that was added to Genetics.

[Sam Guivene]

I don't mind Robotics getting more things to do considering all the turbo OP poopsock stuff that was added to Genetics.

please PLEASE add more to robotics, I'd love to have a reason to pester mining for more than just mauxite, pharosium, and whatever glass is

[atomic1fire]

You do realize that combining robotics with pod research would let roboticists design their own spaceships and tanks right.

And by that I mean I am completely for giving robotics a space pod fabricator and drone research.

Also I could see some completely cool uses of drone research, like oxygen tankless mining, and location scouting in telescience.

Not sure if some place is safe? Have robotics make you a minipod outfitted with a vr headset, then send your pod lander to the moonbase to deal with any zombies that might attack so it's safe for a human party.

[Marquesas]

There are at least a couple of people I need to talk to before I can get on with this.

However, balance considerations: Robotics can make an army of unkillable killer drones. That roam the station. How prevent?

[LinkDaWolf]

There are at least a couple of people I need to talk to before I can get on with this.

However, balance considerations: Robotics can make an army of unkillable killer drones. That roam the station. How prevent?

add utility functions to drones (repair, etc) and make weapon drone parts roboticist traitor items. or make drones only fight hostile mobs unless emagged/used with a special roboticist traitor item?

[Sam Guivene]

There are at least a couple of people I need to talk to before I can get on with this.

However, balance considerations: Robotics can make an army of unkillable killer drones. That roam the station. How prevent?

You could always make EMP weaponry or an EMP chemical reaction that does high damage to robots. On that note, electrical weapons should do damage to robots by causing them to short circuit, meaning if you stun glove a robot it will damage it, as would several other proposed improvised weapons. Of course, the majority of such weaponry is mainly meant to stun people, and as such it shouldn't do stuns on borgs or robots.

[Frank_Stein]

The drones would need to be piloted in VR, right? That would at least make the robotocist a stationary target while they were out doing drone shit. We should also probably limit the drone VR to a special pod like the ones in the arcade. Having them tied to goggles might make it too easy to just hide somewhere, unless there was some kind of range limitation to how far the drones could get away from the pilot.

[Erev]

As Frank Stein mentioned you'd be a stationary target in the goggles, which is huge in SS13.

To make the VR operators easier to find, perhaps a PDA program that will let you track a VR signal - on one end you have the drones (whoops!) and on the other you have the guy piloting them. Traitors might have an item that would obscure them a bit to prevent people from homing in on them immediately but could still be overcome (perhaps using multiple people to triangulate his position?)

And, of course, EMP weaponry is another option though we don't want it to be TOO easy to kill the roboticists minions and must also consider the fun of the borgs cause that would probably mess them up bad too.