What does "Drone Hauler" actually do?

[The_Final_Stand]

So, I'm considering long term plans, and a few of them involve using a drone frigate, specifically a Macanna packed with Keris drones, for defence of important assets.

The only difference between the Macanna and a standard frigate, so far as I can tell beyond the weapons/shield discrepancy and the hangar is that the Macanna has "Drone Hauler" as a built in part. What does this part actually do?

[Alan Phipps]

Drone Haulers (if you actually see one flying) are basically just a type of M4 fighter. The intended implementation of M7C with drone functions was never really realised in the vanilla game.

[The_Final_Stand]

Oh, that's a shame.

Out of interest, what would those functions have been like? And can my overall plan of "Macanna drops a bunch of drones whenever something unwanted approaches then picks up the survivors" still work?

Actually, can you pick up surviving drones? And possibly recharge/repair them?

[Alan Phipps]

If your ship has at least one vacant ship docking bay and the fighter drones (not Drone Haulers) are left on protect duties then when there are no more hostiles in sight they will autodock and be returned to cargo ware status and so fully repaired and recharged when next used. Fighter drones are not ejected automatically on their ships being attacked except in the case of freighters and Mk3 Traders.

The only problem with a big ship as a large scale drone carrier is that following the fight, collision avoidance rules apply if you are IS. With lots of drones trying to dock at once you can get a massive mutual and big ship avoidance melee such that some collide or run out of energy before they dock. If you are OOS then they redock straight away with no issues as soon as the enemies are gone.

At present a Drone Hauler would fill a docking slot just like any other M4 and would not be repaired automatically.

[The_Final_Stand]

Ok, so to be clear, at the moment, what happens is that combat drones are launched, blow stuff up, and then simply run down and explode, no matter what?

I ask because I used freight drones to great effect in TC, and those worked pretty much as my plan, outlined in my previous post, only they carried freight rather than shot stuff.

[Alan Phipps]

Yes unless you have the vacant ship dock as I said above to allow autodocking when the enemy is gone (or when you order them to follow your ship rather than protect). The only other option without the spare dock is to stop the drones and then run into them with your ship to pick them up individually as if they were floating loot.

[StarSword]

Also, it seems to me autodocking only works when the player is not in command of the ship the drones need to dock at. (I never managed to get the freight drones I kept aboard my flagship to dock with it automatically. They'd just fly up next to it and stop. But it worked fine with my TLs.)

[Alan Phipps]

Yes that would probably be the big ship collision avoidance problem I mentioned. It does work if you orient your personal big ship just so that the drone can get a straight forward run into the dock without getting too close to focal ship parts such as turrets but it takes a bit of trial and error while the drone's energy clock is ticking down.

[The_Final_Stand]

In TC, I found that it was quite possible to run into the freight drone and pick it up, because they certainly weren't docking in the way I was expecting them to.

I was flying a Griffon, for references sake. Though I think it also worked with my Tiger, which has no docks.

I believe the drones dock regardless if you are OOS. I haven't tested it in a while.

I shall do some science.

[Alan Phipps]

Yes running into them with your ship (or vice versa) always works, but we were discussing the likelihood of the drones autodocking themselves IS (or at least so I thought). I don't think that drones will redock with a ship without a free docking bay OOS, but I may be mistaken.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

As I recall in TC, freight drones for M2s would just approach the ship and automatically put themselves in the cargo hold. Perhaps this only happened if you had a Transporter device fitted to the M2 but not sure.

Could not a similar logic be used for ALL drones regardless of ship type and bypass the docking bay issues? Perhaps requiring specific equipment to be installed on the parent ship.