FTL Analysis: Internal Drones
Internal Offensive Drones
Internal offensive Drones can be shot down by weapons fire like external Drones when they're on their way in. This will only rarely happen, though, even if you're obsessive about trying to shoot down Drones in this manner; the window is limited and doesn't repeat (That is, once they're inside the ship, they won't go back outside to be potentially shot down), and crucially most possible flight paths will never intersect with the target ship's firing paths; thus, even if you obsessively seek out opportunities to shoot down incoming internal Drones, it's still not gonna happen very often. (Especially since it's pretty rare to fight a ship that has them in the first place...)
Note that these are automatically considered to be destroyed when the enemy ship is destroyed, as well as when you Jump in the middle of combat, assuming they were actually deployed. As Jumping doesn't reset the 'Drone destroyed cooldown', using internal offensive Drones involves fairly regularly having to wait for them to be reusable before Jumping. I'll get into this more with the individual Drones, but they're pretty bad in player hands, and this is just one more issue they have. It's particularly striking that a combat Jump will still trigger this effect, as the same is not true with external Drones, whether offensive or defensive. So... why are these Drones in particular burdened with this extra flaw?
Note that these are automatically considered to be destroyed when the enemy ship is destroyed, as well as when you Jump in the middle of combat, assuming they were actually deployed. As Jumping doesn't reset the 'Drone destroyed cooldown', using internal offensive Drones involves fairly regularly having to wait for them to be reusable before Jumping. I'll get into this more with the individual Drones, but they're pretty bad in player hands, and this is just one more issue they have. It's particularly striking that a combat Jump will still trigger this effect, as the same is not true with external Drones, whether offensive or defensive. So... why are these Drones in particular burdened with this extra flaw?
And no, a Drone Recovery Arm won't recover these Drones in such conditions. (Or any other conditions, for that matter) So that's another strike against them.
Also note that the game will allow you to launch these Drones against an enemy that currently has a Supershield up, unlike eg Hacking Drones, but if the Supershield is still up when they hit the Shield bubble radius, the Drone will be instantly destroyed without doing even a single point of damage to the Supershield. Don't waste Drone Parts on this.
The AI, meanwhile, isn't stupid enough to waste Drones in this manner, aside the edge case of you having a Shield Overcharger Drone manage to generate a Supershield layer while one of these Drones is on its way. (And with the Supershield lasting long enough for the Drone to hit it...) Not that this is much of a delay for enemy ships, given how well-armed they usually are...
Boarding Drone
70
: 3
Launches a Boarding Drone at a random room of the enemy ship. The Drone will be destroyed if it impacts a Supershield, and can be shot down mid-flight, but cannot be evaded, and Cloak will only pause its travel. Upon impact, the hit room will automatically be breached, and the Boarding Drone will autonomously fight enemies like a regular boarder. Boarding Drones have 150 HP, move at 50% normal speed, are immune to fire and suffocation, and will never be stunned.
Sell fodder.
... okay, that's not entirely fair. The Boarding Drone is potentially pretty good when combined with a Fire Beam or Fire Beam Drone, preventing enemy crew from firefighting and so allowing the fires to grow and do System and crew damage.
Unfortunately, that also describes using a Crew Teleporter to drop Rockmen on the enemy. When a Boarding Drone costs almost as much as a Crew Teleporter up-front, demands 8 Scrap of value per use -where a Crew Teleporter is free to use, and requires less Power to run- and the Boarding Drone is entirely outside of your control.
You can, of course, combine the two in an attempt to overwhelm the enemy with superior numbers, but for one thing the Boarding Drone will often end up sitting in its initial room until killed, and Rockmen need the oxygen the breach will be taking away. So that's not actually particularly great of an idea.
In practice, the only point in the Boarding Drone's favor is FTL's randomness, as backed by different ships having different starting conditions. You can't actually guarantee Rockmen+Crew Teleporters for every ship, and for ships that start with a Drone Control the Boarding Drone is more reliably accessible.
This... isn't much of a point in its favor. A lone Boarding Drone is on a suicide mission, even against ships with no Medical or Clone Bay and no above-average fighters, and won't do much of use on its own. You need specific other things for it to be particularly exceptional, and then it doesn't make those things perform all that much better when compared against other possibilities.
So... sell fodder. It's really not good for much else.
It does provide 2 blue options, it should be noted. One is for the very common giant alien spiders event, but the Boarding Drone provides only a small reward there; you certainly shouldn't buy a Boarding Drone in hopes of making this event go well. The other is for an 'odd moon' event that only ever occurs in Zoltan Sectors, and it just results in acquiring a Zoltan crewmember. That's nice and all, but buying a Zoltan costs less than buying a Boarding Drone. So... the blue options don't really help its case any.
Boarding Drones in AI hands are better. The lack of control over them barely matters since their behavior is pretty similar to how the AI directs its crew anyway, the Drone Part cost isn't much of a strike since the AI usually doesn't have to worry about running out before one of you dies, the Scrap cost is irrelevant, the high Power requirement and Drone slots being limited and valuable doesn't matter because the AI cheats... the overall result is that Boarding Drones are a notable threat in AI hands. Indeed, they're often more threatening than the AI's Crew Teleporter usage, as the AI is bad about only sending one crewmember at a time, not to mention doing silliness like sending their one Engi crewmember on a ship otherwise crewed entirely by Mantis, and non-Lanius crew can be worn down and herded through opening external doors (An option not available to the AI; if it were, and they were vaguely intelligent about it, Boarding Drones would be much more worth considering) where a Boarding Drone is completely unbothered by atmosphere being vented.
Also note that the game will allow you to launch these Drones against an enemy that currently has a Supershield up, unlike eg Hacking Drones, but if the Supershield is still up when they hit the Shield bubble radius, the Drone will be instantly destroyed without doing even a single point of damage to the Supershield. Don't waste Drone Parts on this.
The AI, meanwhile, isn't stupid enough to waste Drones in this manner, aside the edge case of you having a Shield Overcharger Drone manage to generate a Supershield layer while one of these Drones is on its way. (And with the Supershield lasting long enough for the Drone to hit it...) Not that this is much of a delay for enemy ships, given how well-armed they usually are...
Boarding Drone
70: 3Launches a Boarding Drone at a random room of the enemy ship. The Drone will be destroyed if it impacts a Supershield, and can be shot down mid-flight, but cannot be evaded, and Cloak will only pause its travel. Upon impact, the hit room will automatically be breached, and the Boarding Drone will autonomously fight enemies like a regular boarder. Boarding Drones have 150 HP, move at 50% normal speed, are immune to fire and suffocation, and will never be stunned.
Sell fodder.
... okay, that's not entirely fair. The Boarding Drone is potentially pretty good when combined with a Fire Beam or Fire Beam Drone, preventing enemy crew from firefighting and so allowing the fires to grow and do System and crew damage.
Unfortunately, that also describes using a Crew Teleporter to drop Rockmen on the enemy. When a Boarding Drone costs almost as much as a Crew Teleporter up-front, demands 8 Scrap of value per use -where a Crew Teleporter is free to use, and requires less Power to run- and the Boarding Drone is entirely outside of your control.
You can, of course, combine the two in an attempt to overwhelm the enemy with superior numbers, but for one thing the Boarding Drone will often end up sitting in its initial room until killed, and Rockmen need the oxygen the breach will be taking away. So that's not actually particularly great of an idea.
In practice, the only point in the Boarding Drone's favor is FTL's randomness, as backed by different ships having different starting conditions. You can't actually guarantee Rockmen+Crew Teleporters for every ship, and for ships that start with a Drone Control the Boarding Drone is more reliably accessible.
This... isn't much of a point in its favor. A lone Boarding Drone is on a suicide mission, even against ships with no Medical or Clone Bay and no above-average fighters, and won't do much of use on its own. You need specific other things for it to be particularly exceptional, and then it doesn't make those things perform all that much better when compared against other possibilities.
So... sell fodder. It's really not good for much else.
It does provide 2 blue options, it should be noted. One is for the very common giant alien spiders event, but the Boarding Drone provides only a small reward there; you certainly shouldn't buy a Boarding Drone in hopes of making this event go well. The other is for an 'odd moon' event that only ever occurs in Zoltan Sectors, and it just results in acquiring a Zoltan crewmember. That's nice and all, but buying a Zoltan costs less than buying a Boarding Drone. So... the blue options don't really help its case any.
Boarding Drones in AI hands are better. The lack of control over them barely matters since their behavior is pretty similar to how the AI directs its crew anyway, the Drone Part cost isn't much of a strike since the AI usually doesn't have to worry about running out before one of you dies, the Scrap cost is irrelevant, the high Power requirement and Drone slots being limited and valuable doesn't matter because the AI cheats... the overall result is that Boarding Drones are a notable threat in AI hands. Indeed, they're often more threatening than the AI's Crew Teleporter usage, as the AI is bad about only sending one crewmember at a time, not to mention doing silliness like sending their one Engi crewmember on a ship otherwise crewed entirely by Mantis, and non-Lanius crew can be worn down and herded through opening external doors (An option not available to the AI; if it were, and they were vaguely intelligent about it, Boarding Drones would be much more worth considering) where a Boarding Drone is completely unbothered by atmosphere being vented.
The aggravating thing is that the Boarding Drone is one of the game's rare cases of providing color commentary, describing the Boarding Drone as 'awesome'. No, game, it's not 'awesome', don't lie to the player.
Ion Intruder
65
: 3
Launches an Ion Intruder Drone at a random room of the enemy ship. The Drone will be destroyed if it impacts a Supershield, and can be shot down mid-flight, but cannot be evaded, and Cloak will only pause its travel. Upon impact, the hit room will automatically be breached, and the Ion Intruder Drone will autonomously seek out random Systems and deploy an Ion pulse, Ionizing the System and always stunning non-Drone crew in the room. Ion Intruder Drones have 125 HP, move at 50% normal speed, are immune to fire and suffocation, and will never be stunned. Ion Intruder Drones cannot attack crew or Systems in a conventional manner, but can break through doors like conventional attacking crew.
Another bit of advanced edition content.
Unfortunately, it's yet another pretty bad bit of advanced edition content. This isn't terribly surprising since it's patterned after the Boarding Drone and I just went over how not-useful that is...
Anyway, note that an Ion Bomb costs 10 less Scrap, 2 less Power, also ignores shields, you have control over what it hits, and the limited resource it uses is less valuable/expensive. Yes, an Ion Bomb can miss, and yes, an Ion Intruder can potentially Ionize Systems theoretically indefinitely, but these don't really offset the advantages an Ion Bomb has. Control over what you hit is simply too important for optimizing your combat effectiveness, the high Power requirement de-facto makes the Ion Intruder more expensive and also makes it more sensitive to System damage, and for the majority of ships weapon slots have less competition than Drone slots simply because most ships have more weapon slots than Drone slots -and even for the ships that are exceptions, the slot counts are equal, so there's no ship where Drone slots have less competition than weapon slots.
I don't quite consider this sell fodder simply because it has a few edge cases it's notable in, such as against late-game Autoships that have high evasion, full Shield bubbles, and of course it's ill-advised to teleport most regular crew inside to knock out their Shields.
But I do usually end up selling it.
As with the Boarding Drone, this is okay in AI hands, for basically all the same reasons. Indeed, for the AI it's actually far more reliable than an Ion Bomb, as the AI is perfectly happy to drop Ion Bombs in empty rooms, where the Ion Intruder will always seek out a room with a System or Subsystem in it before unleashing its Ion pulse. It's usually a little less threatening than a Boarding Drone, though, simply because it will attempt to leave the room it arrived in, either immediately (If the room is empty) or after one Ion pulse (If the room has a System or Subsystem), allowing you to quickly start on closing the breach instead of having to kill the Drone before you can start on that.
Ion Intruder
65: 3Launches an Ion Intruder Drone at a random room of the enemy ship. The Drone will be destroyed if it impacts a Supershield, and can be shot down mid-flight, but cannot be evaded, and Cloak will only pause its travel. Upon impact, the hit room will automatically be breached, and the Ion Intruder Drone will autonomously seek out random Systems and deploy an Ion pulse, Ionizing the System and always stunning non-Drone crew in the room. Ion Intruder Drones have 125 HP, move at 50% normal speed, are immune to fire and suffocation, and will never be stunned. Ion Intruder Drones cannot attack crew or Systems in a conventional manner, but can break through doors like conventional attacking crew.
Another bit of advanced edition content.
Unfortunately, it's yet another pretty bad bit of advanced edition content. This isn't terribly surprising since it's patterned after the Boarding Drone and I just went over how not-useful that is...
Anyway, note that an Ion Bomb costs 10 less Scrap, 2 less Power, also ignores shields, you have control over what it hits, and the limited resource it uses is less valuable/expensive. Yes, an Ion Bomb can miss, and yes, an Ion Intruder can potentially Ionize Systems theoretically indefinitely, but these don't really offset the advantages an Ion Bomb has. Control over what you hit is simply too important for optimizing your combat effectiveness, the high Power requirement de-facto makes the Ion Intruder more expensive and also makes it more sensitive to System damage, and for the majority of ships weapon slots have less competition than Drone slots simply because most ships have more weapon slots than Drone slots -and even for the ships that are exceptions, the slot counts are equal, so there's no ship where Drone slots have less competition than weapon slots.
I don't quite consider this sell fodder simply because it has a few edge cases it's notable in, such as against late-game Autoships that have high evasion, full Shield bubbles, and of course it's ill-advised to teleport most regular crew inside to knock out their Shields.
But I do usually end up selling it.
As with the Boarding Drone, this is okay in AI hands, for basically all the same reasons. Indeed, for the AI it's actually far more reliable than an Ion Bomb, as the AI is perfectly happy to drop Ion Bombs in empty rooms, where the Ion Intruder will always seek out a room with a System or Subsystem in it before unleashing its Ion pulse. It's usually a little less threatening than a Boarding Drone, though, simply because it will attempt to leave the room it arrived in, either immediately (If the room is empty) or after one Ion pulse (If the room has a System or Subsystem), allowing you to quickly start on closing the breach instead of having to kill the Drone before you can start on that.
But seriously, why is so much advanced edition content so obviously bad?
Internal Defensive Drones
Internal defensive Drones are the most potentially efficient Drone type on their own. Once created, the Drone will remain aboard your ship until either the Drone is destroyed or you actually swap out its blueprint; you can literally deploy one of these Drones before ever making a Jump and have it last you all the way to the Rebel Flagship, just the one Drone Part actually spent on it. That exact scenario is unlikely, but the point is you don't reliably spend a Drone Part per battle you benefit from one of these Drones the way other Drones default to.
Internal defensive Drones do not benefit from a Medical Bay or Clone Bay. Instead, so long as the Drone Control is powered, any internal defensive Drones in the Drone Control room will heal slowly, like regular crew in a Medical Bay, though slower. Note that you don't need to be powering an internal Drone for this to be true; any Drone being powered will cause the Drone Control to repair internal Drones, even if no internal Drone is being powered.
Internal defensive Drones cannot be issued orders like regular crew. They will autonomously perform their primary duty, and if nothing fitting to that duty is aboard your ship they will make their way back to the Drone Control room until such time as their primary duty is relevant again. The only 'order' you can issue is that of whether they are currently powered or not; taking away their Power will cause them to stop doing anything, stopping exactly where they currently are. Note that unpowered Drones will still be attacked by hostile crew; this is less useful than with offensive internal Drones, but it does give you a little flexibility in Power crunch situations.
Internal defensive Drones are also, unfortunately, horribly underexplored, with only two types, even after the advanced edition update. There's a lot of potential to do interesting things with the concept, and the game basically just made a couple of cut-down crewmember types.
Internal Defensive Drones
Internal defensive Drones are the most potentially efficient Drone type on their own. Once created, the Drone will remain aboard your ship until either the Drone is destroyed or you actually swap out its blueprint; you can literally deploy one of these Drones before ever making a Jump and have it last you all the way to the Rebel Flagship, just the one Drone Part actually spent on it. That exact scenario is unlikely, but the point is you don't reliably spend a Drone Part per battle you benefit from one of these Drones the way other Drones default to.
Internal defensive Drones do not benefit from a Medical Bay or Clone Bay. Instead, so long as the Drone Control is powered, any internal defensive Drones in the Drone Control room will heal slowly, like regular crew in a Medical Bay, though slower. Note that you don't need to be powering an internal Drone for this to be true; any Drone being powered will cause the Drone Control to repair internal Drones, even if no internal Drone is being powered.
Internal defensive Drones cannot be issued orders like regular crew. They will autonomously perform their primary duty, and if nothing fitting to that duty is aboard your ship they will make their way back to the Drone Control room until such time as their primary duty is relevant again. The only 'order' you can issue is that of whether they are currently powered or not; taking away their Power will cause them to stop doing anything, stopping exactly where they currently are. Note that unpowered Drones will still be attacked by hostile crew; this is less useful than with offensive internal Drones, but it does give you a little flexibility in Power crunch situations.
Internal defensive Drones are also, unfortunately, horribly underexplored, with only two types, even after the advanced edition update. There's a lot of potential to do interesting things with the concept, and the game basically just made a couple of cut-down crewmember types.
Alas.
Anti-Personnel Drone
35
: 2
Creates an Anti-Personnel Drone, which, when powered, autonomously seeks out hostiles and fights them. The Anti-Personnel Drone has 150 HP, moves at 50% normal movement speed, is immune to fire and suffocation, and will never be stunned.
It's literally a Boarding Drone, but on your ship and costing less Power.
The Anti-Personnel Drone is a bit awkward, as much like the Boarding Drone it's usually better to just rely on regular crew to handle its duties. And unlike the Boarding Drone, there is no 'but what if I never get a chance at a Crew Teleporter?' You always have regular crew. Yes, the Anti-Personnel Drone is a dedicated fighter that doesn't cut into regular duties, but for most situations it's literally a bad Rockman; it kills intruders at the same speed as an inexperienced generic crewmember, it moves as slowly as a Rockman, it has the same HP as a Rockman, and Rockmen are immune to fires just like an Anti-Personnel Drone. And a Rockman is more versatile, able to man stations like Doors or Sensors when not fighting, put out fires and repair System damage, and crucially being under your control means a Rockman fighter can actually flee from combat to get healed, where an Anti-Personnel Drone will only return to the Drone Control for repairs if there's no intruders aboard. As such, Anti-Personnel Drones are depressingly prone to killing themselves completely unnecessarily. Furthermore, you can't tell them to not fight mind controlled crew; you can only turn them off to prevent this. This can create very unpleasant situations.
That said, they do have some non-trivial advantages. First of all, Anti-Personnel Drones magically know exactly where enemy boarders are, even if you have no Sensors and/or are in a nebula. This gives them an edge in getting started on dealing with boarders if your ship lacks Sensors or you're in a nebula, assuming you also have no Slug crewmember, and in particular can point you in the right direction to send your proper crew. Second, they're very useful for fending off Lanius boarders, since they don't care about the oxygen loss, and by a similar token can safely tie up Boarding Drones and Ion Intruders without worrying about the breach killing them from oxygen deprivation. Third, they can be combined with aggressively draining oxygen from your ship to deal with boarders, harrying enemies even as they try to cut through doors to escape the vacuum. Fourth and related, they go well with a Lanius-heavy crew, if you should happen to have such a thing happen, providing you additional defensive muscle that doesn't need babysitting in regards to Lanius oxygen-draining.
Fifth, Anti-Personnel Drones open up two-and-a-half blue options. One-and-a-half is honestly not reliably great, only potentially netting you a reward and always costing you a Drone Part, but the other is the giant alien spiders event, letting you spend a Drone Part to get a solid reward 100% guaranteed, as opposed to probably losing a crewmember. Note that a Boarding Drone can do the giant alien spider event as well, but provides a smaller reward; if for some reason you have both, use the Anti-Personnel Drone.
The giant alien spider event is extremely common, able to show up in most Sectors and being almost guaranteed to occur once or twice in a run (Admittedly in part because the first Sector is always the right type for it to spawn; you're unlikely to get a chance at an Anti-Personnel Drone before that particular encounter), so holding onto or even buying an Anti-Personnel Drone simply for it is actually worth considering. It's not like Rockmen provide a blue option there.
Anti-Personnel Drone
35: 2Creates an Anti-Personnel Drone, which, when powered, autonomously seeks out hostiles and fights them. The Anti-Personnel Drone has 150 HP, moves at 50% normal movement speed, is immune to fire and suffocation, and will never be stunned.
It's literally a Boarding Drone, but on your ship and costing less Power.
The Anti-Personnel Drone is a bit awkward, as much like the Boarding Drone it's usually better to just rely on regular crew to handle its duties. And unlike the Boarding Drone, there is no 'but what if I never get a chance at a Crew Teleporter?' You always have regular crew. Yes, the Anti-Personnel Drone is a dedicated fighter that doesn't cut into regular duties, but for most situations it's literally a bad Rockman; it kills intruders at the same speed as an inexperienced generic crewmember, it moves as slowly as a Rockman, it has the same HP as a Rockman, and Rockmen are immune to fires just like an Anti-Personnel Drone. And a Rockman is more versatile, able to man stations like Doors or Sensors when not fighting, put out fires and repair System damage, and crucially being under your control means a Rockman fighter can actually flee from combat to get healed, where an Anti-Personnel Drone will only return to the Drone Control for repairs if there's no intruders aboard. As such, Anti-Personnel Drones are depressingly prone to killing themselves completely unnecessarily. Furthermore, you can't tell them to not fight mind controlled crew; you can only turn them off to prevent this. This can create very unpleasant situations.
That said, they do have some non-trivial advantages. First of all, Anti-Personnel Drones magically know exactly where enemy boarders are, even if you have no Sensors and/or are in a nebula. This gives them an edge in getting started on dealing with boarders if your ship lacks Sensors or you're in a nebula, assuming you also have no Slug crewmember, and in particular can point you in the right direction to send your proper crew. Second, they're very useful for fending off Lanius boarders, since they don't care about the oxygen loss, and by a similar token can safely tie up Boarding Drones and Ion Intruders without worrying about the breach killing them from oxygen deprivation. Third, they can be combined with aggressively draining oxygen from your ship to deal with boarders, harrying enemies even as they try to cut through doors to escape the vacuum. Fourth and related, they go well with a Lanius-heavy crew, if you should happen to have such a thing happen, providing you additional defensive muscle that doesn't need babysitting in regards to Lanius oxygen-draining.
Fifth, Anti-Personnel Drones open up two-and-a-half blue options. One-and-a-half is honestly not reliably great, only potentially netting you a reward and always costing you a Drone Part, but the other is the giant alien spiders event, letting you spend a Drone Part to get a solid reward 100% guaranteed, as opposed to probably losing a crewmember. Note that a Boarding Drone can do the giant alien spider event as well, but provides a smaller reward; if for some reason you have both, use the Anti-Personnel Drone.
The giant alien spider event is extremely common, able to show up in most Sectors and being almost guaranteed to occur once or twice in a run (Admittedly in part because the first Sector is always the right type for it to spawn; you're unlikely to get a chance at an Anti-Personnel Drone before that particular encounter), so holding onto or even buying an Anti-Personnel Drone simply for it is actually worth considering. It's not like Rockmen provide a blue option there.
But while these advantages are worth mentioning, the Anti-Personnel Drone is still bad enough that I have difficulty justifying buying one, and usually sell any I loot even if I have a Drone Control. Real crew are simply far superior, and runs can often hit crew saturation before endgame -and no, using the Drone to effectively go past your limit isn't terribly useful.
System Repair Drone
30
: 1
Creates a System Repair Drone, which, when powered, will autonomously seek out damaged Systems and Subsystems, breaches, and fires, all of which it will work to correct. The System Repair Drone has 25 HP, moves at 50% of normal speed, is immune to fire and suffocation, and will never be stunned.
System Repair Drones are generally worse than an Engi crewmember, but the fact that they're immune to fire and suffocation is hugely useful. Oxygen busted and breached, with no Lanius to handle the problem? System Repair Drones have your back. Your Door Control Subsystem got busted after you opened a large chunk of your ship to the vacuum, and now you're not sure you can get essential repairs done without anyone dying? System Repair Drones resolve this easily. Fires are trashing essential Systems and your crew is all Zoltan and Mantis poorly-suited to handling it without dying? System Repair Drones don't care about some heat.
I wouldn't recommend buying a Drone Control just to get a System Repair Drone, but if you're buying one that comes with a System Repair Drone, you might as well keep it unless you just desperately need 15 Scrap now at some point. Even with how frail they are, the ability to close breaches, fight fires in awkward corners, and automatically repair secondary Systems without tying up crew is quite nice.
Furthermore, like Anti-Personnel Drones, System Repair Drones are really useful if a ship either has no Sensors or if you're heading into a nebula... and unlike an Anti-Personnel Drone, there's no caveat about Slug crew. System Repair Drones being on means you don't have to worry about discovering a stray laser shot started a fire in some out-of-the-way corner by virtue of it growing into a raging inferno you can't readily deal with; the System Repair Drone will magically know the instant there's an issue aboard the ship, and head off to deal with it.
System Repair Drones also make it a lot more acceptable to deal with serious fires by opening large portions of the ship to the vacuum. Yeah, whoops, you didn't do it fast enough to prevent Oxygen and Door Control from breaking; it's fine, the System Repair Drones will get them fixed, where a run might normally be doomed.
System Repair Drone
30: 1Creates a System Repair Drone, which, when powered, will autonomously seek out damaged Systems and Subsystems, breaches, and fires, all of which it will work to correct. The System Repair Drone has 25 HP, moves at 50% of normal speed, is immune to fire and suffocation, and will never be stunned.
System Repair Drones are generally worse than an Engi crewmember, but the fact that they're immune to fire and suffocation is hugely useful. Oxygen busted and breached, with no Lanius to handle the problem? System Repair Drones have your back. Your Door Control Subsystem got busted after you opened a large chunk of your ship to the vacuum, and now you're not sure you can get essential repairs done without anyone dying? System Repair Drones resolve this easily. Fires are trashing essential Systems and your crew is all Zoltan and Mantis poorly-suited to handling it without dying? System Repair Drones don't care about some heat.
I wouldn't recommend buying a Drone Control just to get a System Repair Drone, but if you're buying one that comes with a System Repair Drone, you might as well keep it unless you just desperately need 15 Scrap now at some point. Even with how frail they are, the ability to close breaches, fight fires in awkward corners, and automatically repair secondary Systems without tying up crew is quite nice.
Furthermore, like Anti-Personnel Drones, System Repair Drones are really useful if a ship either has no Sensors or if you're heading into a nebula... and unlike an Anti-Personnel Drone, there's no caveat about Slug crew. System Repair Drones being on means you don't have to worry about discovering a stray laser shot started a fire in some out-of-the-way corner by virtue of it growing into a raging inferno you can't readily deal with; the System Repair Drone will magically know the instant there's an issue aboard the ship, and head off to deal with it.
System Repair Drones also make it a lot more acceptable to deal with serious fires by opening large portions of the ship to the vacuum. Yeah, whoops, you didn't do it fast enough to prevent Oxygen and Door Control from breaking; it's fine, the System Repair Drones will get them fixed, where a run might normally be doomed.
The only reason System Repair Drones aren't an auto-take on literally any ship with a Drone Control is that your Drone slots are very limited and there's enough really useful Drones it can be a struggle to fit in a System Repair Drone.
That said, it's worth keeping in mind that System Repair Drones have awkward AI. Once they've picked a room to work in, they won't change task until that room has no fires, Breaches, or System damage, even if there are much worse problems raging in much more essential Systems. Even if you have three on standby, you can't just assume they'll handle everything on their own; real crew will likely need to step in at times.
Also note that a mix of Lanius and Rockmen largely renders System Repair Drones obsolete. They're still useful for nebula-diving, but aside their omniscience a Lanius is superior for closing breaches and a Rockman is superior for fighting fires. (If both are present in a room, you just send Lanius; the fires will be out shortly anyway)
The System Repair Drone provides three blue options. The first of these is an extremely common event that will provide a big reward, though Rockman crew can handle the event for a comparably great reward; the only difference is that having a Rockman handle it will give you an Augment, while having a System Repair Drone handle it will give you a Drone. The second is a Rock Sector-only event, and will always result in a big reward. The third is a common event involving protecting a ship from asteroids, and may result in you taking damage.
This is a decent enough spread for such a cheap Drone. Even if you have no intention of using a System Repair Drone, it may be better to hold onto one copy until at least Sector 7 just in case.
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On a different note, one of the more bizarre conceptual framework elements to Drones is that all Drones are framed as 'Drone schematics' -that when you loot a Combat Drone Mark I, you're conceptually just looting a blueprint your ship can use to fab up that Drone type.
On the one hand, it wouldn't make narrative sense for Drones to be presented as a singular object the way weapons are, given you can fab up copies so long as you have Drone Parts.
On the other hand, 'schematics' is a terrible explanation: it makes them eating storage space like weapons do absolutely baffling, makes the ability to sell them off and as a result lose them similarly absurd, and draws attention to the arbitrariness of needing a copy per deployable copy; shouldn't I be able to fab up as many Combat Drone Mark Is as I can control with my Drone Control, so long as my Drone Part supply holds?
Crucially, it's totally unnecessary in its terribleness. Just calling them 'forges' or 'printers' or something, anything suggesting a specialized production unit, would immediately do away with the majority of the problems. Drone 3D printers that are pre-designed to specifically build a specific Drone type immediately addresses the issues with treating them as physical objects that take up limited space, because they'd be physical objects. Same for selling them meaning you lose access to the Drone type; of course you would. It's also only a small stretch to then justify the one-per-copy limit by suggesting these Drone printers are part of the process of controlling the Drones they produce; you could suggest they have only so much processing power, or more cynically suggest the corporations that designed them coded in such a limit to drive sales.
I'm able to gloss over unfitting explanations when the game design calls for a weird set of behaviors that are genuinely difficult to conceive of a single explanation that fits the game's needs without jank. That happens, and is understandable.
I'm utterly baffled by FTL picking such a horrible fit of an explanation when there's an obvious and much better framework available.
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Next time, we cover Subsystems, as our starting point for the overall Systems concept.
See you then.
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