Support drones are narrow-purpose survey and defence craft. They orbit the carrier, pick targets on their own and fire small projectiles. They draw power from the drone bay and can fire only while the bay receives reactor power. The bay is last in the allocation order, so drones are the first system to go dark when power runs short.
# Upgrades
Drone performance improves through field calibrations for damage, fire rate and swarm size (up to three projectiles per volley), and permanently through Drone Engineering research. Taking both damage and rate calibrations links the drones into a drone network, which improves their targeting further.
The drone network improves their targeting link. It does not make them conscious. Asterion staff are asked to stop saying that it does.
# Manual mode
When Marek switches to manual fire, the drone link pauses to free bandwidth for the pilot’s control channel. Drones rejoin when automatic fire resumes.
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