Drone Suggestion

[Zerinity]

This is more of a fun suggestion, so don't take it too seriously, and feel free to add your own thoughts. I think the player drone is one of the most overlooked feature in game and could use some touchup. It would be nice to have a way for the drone to progress with the player and not have to stare at the same old bland drone from the beginning. My current idea is to have one drone design per material: iron drone, titanium drone, ... all the way to avorion drone. The drone player has access to would depend on the repair dock they set as reconstruction site, so if a player set a repair dock in trinium zone as reconstruction site, the player's drone would become a trinium drone. Each drone design should have mining laser of its material type: an ogonite drone would have 2 ogonite mining laser. Each drone design should incorporate new blocks from the material if possible: titanium drone may have some armor, naonite drone would have a little bit of shield and hyperspace core, xanion drone can dock to stations from 1km away, and so on.  Having access to new mining laser as soon you set reconstruction site in a new region is quite powerful, so setting reconstruction site should only be allowed if player have excellent relation with the faction that owns the dock.

 

Optional additional suggestion: To increase drone variety further, use procedural generation to generate drone design based on ship style of the faction that owns the repair dock. Player should have the ability to create and update drone blueprint for their own repair docks, with size and block count restrictions. Drone blueprint creation would also cost money and up to 3 turrets, the turrets sacrificed determines what drone is spawned with, so player designed drone isn't restricted to having only 2 mining lasers like typical drones. The 3 turrets break down into 1 armed, 1 unarmed, 1 either.