Why the guide?
I like playing as a drone. This guide is to encourage other people to play as drones, because I think it'd be great if we could get several drones per round. It's also to help people that want to play as a drone but don't really know how to get started. I'm no expert, but my goal is to spell out everything that I've learned so far through experimentation and research in one place so that it's easier for other people to at least become as familiar with it as I am. I've also mixed in my thoughts about what kinds of things are drone-ish and what I think makes drones fun. If you spot anything that needs to be worked on, have additions to make, want to share your own drone experience, etc, please comment.
The Drone's Role and behavior:
If the AI is the brain of the station, then drones are its subconcious. They are unable to communicate or interact with most of the other members of the station directly, but they can have a huge influence on what happens, especially when there are several active at once. Is having no engineer a problem? That depends, are the drones setting up the solar arrays? Is this hole in the station a problem? Are there drones nearby to fix it? Will that killer get away? Did a drone clean up the evidence of the crime? I'll use these examples throughout the guide to show that while the drone is a role that goes unmissed if they are not present, it is one that can influence the game in a fun an interesting way when it is there.
Drones all have the same primary objectives and laws. To that end, you will get a message that looks something like this when you first become a drone:
What are the implications of this? Well, you are charged with maintaining and improving the station. This means fixing things when they break and also adding new things that you can justify as being an improvement. Think the bar tables could use some fresh silverware? Go ahead and whip some up. Do you think that a particular room should have better lighting? Put up some fresh bulbs. The laws are vague enough that you can be pretty creative with your time as long as you aren't harming anybody or negatively affecting the productivity of the station. The exception is when somebody breaks something in order to improve their productivity. Did somebody hack a door and bolt it open so that they could get at some resource more quickly? It's your job do undo that hack. Does it lock them in that room with no way out? Not your problem. Remember, you are a neutral force for order, not necessarily a force for good. Don't get too carried away, though. If the crew has added a new room to the station, don't begin disassembling it because you think that it shouldn't be there.
It's also important to note that you are neither responsible for the crew, nor do you take orders from the AI. Is that person over there being murdered by that other person? Not your problem. You don't have to (and shouldn't) try to save their life. You do have to clean up the mess though. That's basic station maintenance even if that mess includes evidence of the crime. Does the AI want you to fix something but you want to clean floors? Tough cookies. You get to choose which tasks come first. Has the AI gone rogue and wants you to stop fixing things? I hope it's got some milk (for those tough cookies).
Also, even though you have no actual personality, not every drone is the same. Every drone's runtime parameters are slightly different. This emerges as slightly different behavioral quirks for each drone. It's not "personality" per se, but even insects of the same species exhibit behavioral differences. Are you a drone that completely ignores the janitor? Are you a drone that follows them around because your limited pattern recognition has come to associate them water, which you need in order to keep up with your floor-cleaning tasks? Or have you managed to steal a full water bucket that some inattentive botanist has left lying around? If a humanoid pleb starts talking to you, do you leave immediately or do you sit a little bit as your drone brain decides which task to pick up next and then leave mid-monologue? Decisions like that can give your drone personality without actually giving it a personality.
The rest of this guide will be formatted as follows: First, I will go over resources, tools and how to use them. Then I'll talk about drone abilities and tasks. This is so that you are familiar with the tools that I recommend using when I talk about the tasks that you can expect to be doing. Lists and other chunks of reference materials are hidden in spoilers like the laws above to make navigating between the sections easier.
Drone Resources:
There are a number of resources that you have to manage as a drone in order to do your job. Most of them can be monitored through the status tab that is located to the right of the game UI pane and are replenished at the cyborg recharging station. That's not true for all of them, however. Here they are listed individually so that you know how to monitor and refill each resource when you need to.
Drone Tools:
As a drone, you are granted a diverse set of tools that you have access to at all times. These tools are both your strength and your kryptonite. The fact that you have so many makes you one of the most diverse entities on the station, god-like in your ability to spawn resources at will. No problem can stand against your resolve and ingenuity. No problem, that is, except for that cigarette that some pleb dropped that your are unable to pick up with your magnetic gripping arm.
These tools can be accessed 2 ways. You can view them through the UI clicking on the "INV" button. It is the leftmost button on the item bar. An extra inventory will open up above your item bar that will have all of the tools. The name of each tool will be displayed in the bottom left of your game window when you mouse-over the tool. You can click on the tool while no other tool selected to move it to your item bar. You can alternatively click on the "Panel" button located in the bottom right of the UI. This will give a popup window that lists each tool with activation links. This is also how you recover your tools if you accidentally hit q to drop them from your UI. Clicking the "activate" link will move the tool to your item bar. You can use your 1, 2, or 3 keys to select a tool in your item bar to use. You can click the "store" button, which is rightmost on your item bar, to put away any selected tool.
I've arbitrarily divided tools up into 2 categories to individually describe them. The first are tools that use material resources that you store in your drone-body while the second category of tools do not. These material resources include metal, glass, wood, plastic, and wires. These are recharged over time while you are in a cyborg recharging station. They can be viewed by clicking the "status" tab to the right of the main game UI window. You also have a certain number of light bulbs, but these are stored in your light replacer. Welder fuel is similarly stored in the welder.
Drone Abilities:
There are a number of abilities that you have as a drone in addition to the aforementioned tools. Here are a few of the more important ones that you will use frequently:
Common Drone Tasks:
The specifics of how you spend your time while on patrol are up to you, but keep in mind your primary objective is all about maintaining and improving the station. As such, here are some common tasks that you will find yourself doing in the line of duty.
