Combat and Medical Drones Idea

[7DaysToDieEnjoyer]

I was thinking about drones, and they seem a bit forgotten, but they’re still useful. They take up little space in the inventory and alert us to enemies, which is really helpful. Everyone knows how they work with bandages and medkits, which isn’t perfect.


I came up with a rough idea I don’t know if it’s good or not: there could be two types of drones, a combat drone and a medical drone, and the player could choose only one.


Combat drone: detects enemies and warns us about them, just like now. It would have mini guns for different ammo types, but with very limited capacity. Combat mode could be activated with a button, so the drone doesn’t shoot every zombie it sees, only in “hot” situations when we want it to help. It could also have something removed in previous versions a short-range electric shock. This could be included, but with long reload cooldowns to avoid it being overpowered.


Medical drone: could heal other players like it does now, but it could also use any consumable in the game. This wouldn’t be a problem like with medkits. Cooldowns wouldn’t be needed, so it would work well. Vitamins, splints, honey anything could be given to it, and it would heal us. It wouldn’t heal every injury at once; there would be a small cooldown.


Even though using these items manually isn’t really a problem, the drone frees up inventory space and takes care of using them for us, which is convenient.


Going further, there could even be healing priorities for the drone for example, it could treat broken bones first, which are really annoying. A cooldown could apply to medkits and bandages, but I’m not sure how much difference that would make. It would be better to have a button like with the combat drone, where pressing it makes the drone use medkits or bandages on us, which seems simpler and more convenient.


Maybe it’s not the most amazing idea, but I hope that in the future drones will get a second life.

 

[bdubyah]

There's some xml for drone weapon mods, but I think they said before they didn't like the idea of it having weapons as it would be OP. I imagine with how it moves around it would be hard for zombies to target it. Though maybe with bandits coming they would reconsider it since there will be more capable threats that could target it easier than zombies.

 

[Vaeliorin]

There's a mod currently that adds a flamethrower mod for the drone. I haven't gotten the chance to use it (no drone yet) but it seems like at least something that's possible.

As for the medical part...who's physician skill would apply?

 

[ALEXZANDER]

I was thinking about drones, and they seem a bit forgotten, but they’re still useful. They take up little space in the inventory and alert us to enemies, which is really helpful. Everyone knows how they work with bandages and medkits, which isn’t perfect.


I came up with a rough idea I don’t know if it’s good or not: there could be two types of drones, a combat drone and a medical drone, and the player could choose only one.


Combat drone: detects enemies and warns us about them, just like now. It would have mini guns for different ammo types, but with very limited capacity. Combat mode could be activated with a button, so the drone doesn’t shoot every zombie it sees, only in “hot” situations when we want it to help. It could also have something removed in previous versions a short-range electric shock. This could be included, but with long reload cooldowns to avoid it being overpowered.


Medical drone: could heal other players like it does now, but it could also use any consumable in the game. This wouldn’t be a problem like with medkits. Cooldowns wouldn’t be needed, so it would work well. Vitamins, splints, honey anything could be given to it, and it would heal us. It wouldn’t heal every injury at once; there would be a small cooldown.


Even though using these items manually isn’t really a problem, the drone frees up inventory space and takes care of using them for us, which is convenient.


Going further, there could even be healing priorities for the drone for example, it could treat broken bones first, which are really annoying. A cooldown could apply to medkits and bandages, but I’m not sure how much difference that would make. It would be better to have a button like with the combat drone, where pressing it makes the drone use medkits or bandages on us, which seems simpler and more convenient.


Maybe it’s not the most amazing idea, but I hope that in the future drones will get a second life.

Good idea but TFP will find 1000 excuses for it!

 

[MiTHMoN]

Everyone knows how they work with bandages and medkits, which isn’t perfect.

No, I've only ever used the drone as extra inventory space. It doesn't really "warn" me, it tells me something about enemies being nearby only after I've already killed them. So yeah, to me it's purely an inventory extension, and that's the only purpose I have for it.