Autons can struggle a little with howitzers and other weapons with slow shells (and the consequences for accidental friendly fire are higher with a howitzer), so possibly swap the TMA-9 over to the heavy slam cannon? Otherwise it seems reasonable (the TMA-360 may have a similar problem but that's reduced via it not putting all its damage in single shots)

My general rule is to price autons based on the normal selling price of their starting gear, which cuts back the cost while discouraging most forms of scrapping. You're gonna need to price out all of these before I can say if they're going to be attractive.

Solardragon from discord suggests possibly putting modified (anti-ship, I presume) PD units on the Mule. I think that might be an okay thing for improved models to have?

Auton sizes vs levels shouldnt be exclusive, since there should still be space for specialized early game large utility autons and small disposable late-game autons (ie, high level but very cheap for their level and still limited hull slots)

Also do you have suggestions on auton sizes in meters?
I had some earlier draft work on that, but based on rendering them up, my original 'small' auton class was too small to reliably balance gameplay wise (they were impossible to hit, or would just immediately die because of becoming overweight the moment you threw any equipment on)
I'm thinking that Small should fit within 10x10m, Medium could be 15x15m or 20x20m and contend with lighter manned craft in size like interceptors, fighters, battlepods and the like, and Large should fit in 25x25m or 30x30m and are similar to the smaller gunships in size. (Everything above that being a drone ship, for full fledged carriers to use)
Based on the above, heres some thoughts I have on the sizing -
Small should generally be very cheap (0.1-0.3 Lv Cost), very high speed, minimal or no shielding, light armor but small and hard to hit (ex, autosentinel, skink), minimal slots, but a reasonable physical mass enabling even a fighter to carry some and deploy them. Small autons fill the disposable role.
Medium should generally be average priced (0.7-1.3 Lv Cost), high speed, decent defense for an auton but they are physically bigger and easier to hit (ex, M1, Whiptail). They should be heavy-ish, but even a fighter can still carry one and deploy them.
Heavy autons (Combat!) should generally be above average priced (1.5-2.0 Lv Cost), gunship speed, and generally balanced like a strong gunship for that level, with the capability to have extra surviveability to encourage the player to invest heavily in upgrading them and keeping them above level, kind of like a playership. There can also be heavy autons that are designed for more utility roles, perhaps mining or salvage (TSB has this in the roadmap). Heavy autons are.. well.. heavy, and require considerable cargo space to buy and deploy - some smaller gunships and the like may require cargo upgrades or may not be able to carry them at all. (Similarly, they need large size landing pads on any sort of auton or full carrier)

Question: What should combatStyles be? I have considered putting 'standoff' or 'flyby' on autons designed to run away and snipe at enemies. If I put on a howitzer on an auton, I would like that auton to run away and snipe at enemies beyond their attack range, which means combatStyle="standOff". Similarly, I might want either standOff or flyby on an auton with an omni weapon, depending how much range the weapon has.

@megas Currently standoff won't work on an auton with a fixed gun, they'll put more effort into orbiting and as a result not really shoot very much. I think advanced style works as a good general one, though it would be really nice if we could set the AI style through the auton bay or the order system

@megas, @song: What I'd like to do is add one or more orders to the auton comms menus to allow for sniping/stand-off combat. Imagine the auton parking itself at extreme range from a station and sniping away.

an internal dockscreen menu for fine grained control of autons (ex, say an extension adds the ability for the player to deploy a small depot, trade, or mining station, or maybe an adventure where the player has a mothership type carrier or something to manage as well, like an adventure about being a career officer of corporate command or the fleet) and assigning (or unassigning) them from a player-owned asset could be cool

Another question, what is the standard fireRateAdj for autons? I noticed most have 20, although AutoSentinel has 15.

On some of my autons with regenerating armor, I gave them faster fireRateAdj (15 instead of 20) at the cost of a device slot (only one slot for weapon instead of two for weapon and shield).

large autons with more than 4 slots (primary + PD + shield + reactor) should have some dedicated secondary slots I feel, because otherwise they will end up with issues actually using their weapons reliably.

It would be weird for the top end to have the Katana, when a lower level one has the much better tritium cannon.

Also, advanced is currently the stupidest combat style, because it can't dodge effectively or shoot back while running away, and shields are terrible, so it often spends most of the fight getting shot in the back. Also, when engaging capital ships it tends to get caught in a loop of closing in much too close and backing off a tiny bit, and hardly shooting them at all.

Based on Proposed Auton List from my view, AutoSentinel (level 3), 1M battle (level 5), and AC-900 Battle (should be level 8) will be base auton for their upper level. Anything higher level than these three usually have stronger weapon, stronger armor, or useful abilities (e.g. point defense).

Auton supposedly tend to equips light weapon and avoid heavy weapons such as howitzer. Although they are heavy version or sentinels, they go much slower and would affected by weapon recoil. So, i suggest to replace TMA-9's weapon or might even remove it. IMO, we don't need to cover all level for autons. It might also reasonable to TMA-360 battle and AC-900 battle have same level and leave level 9 to be empty.

I also suggest some auton with missile launcher. Think about drone carries bomb on current modern day. But might would a bit hard to implement since launcher requires ammo.

For AI combat, I supposed low level auton might suited with swarming tactic (much similiar with Hornet battlepod) while higher military level adopted "Advanced" gunship style.

@ nms: Autons have ignoreShieldsDown, although I guess advanced is pointless because they only difference I notice is advanced runs away when shields are down - which ignoreShieldsDown suppresses - and standard do not. So advanced seems dumb on a ship with ignoreShieldsDown or has no conventional shields to begin with, unless advanced features some other behavior aside from running away when shields are down.

I guess the level 9 auton has Katana star because it is made by Pacific Defense and used by Commonwealth Fleet, and we know what kind of hardware they use even if it is not optimal. I guess maybe give the auton NM900 missile pod too, if auton bay can be made to handle launchers.

I would love missile launchers on autons, but the auton bay does not recognize launchers, and there needs to be a way to give ammo to autons.

It would be trivial to allow the auton bay to install launchers, and fairly simple to add a screen that allows transferring cargo to/from an auton, accessed from the auton bay or cargo hold. Is that a feature we want? Would that be overpowered? What cargo limits should they have?

It is only overpowered when compared to the current underpowered autons. External launchers have enough ammo to fire continuously for about twenty seconds. That is somewhat less than the minimum appearing for a single stack of ammo, which takes about two to three tons of cargo space. So, maybe five tons of space for a single stack of missiles.

I think disposable external launcher should allowed to be installed on auton if we don't allow regular launcher because ammo problem. Usually players avoid disposable launcher and prefer regular launcher. Disposable launcher on auton can either replaced in auton bay or automatically ejected from slot after emptied. While might not economical compared regular launcher, but it would be interesting feature and put disposable launcher more use.

I suggest that when advanced AI combat running away on shield down, they should perform zigzag and shoot back at certain turn while able to recover them-self from damage. This particularly similar with how I fight when I run away from a stronger enemies.

FYI: Support autons with ammo/missiles

The biggest problem of autons is keeping them alive. And that is very hard past St.K. More like impossible honestly. But I don't think making them disposble is great idea either. They really need to be repairable from destroyed wrecks.

Think about Volkov. His ship has Advaced Reactive Armor, Class 5 Shield, which is pretty much the best shield until level 7 shields appears and dual X-Ray cannons. This is probably better equipped compared to many of drones til AC-500 battle drone.

And despite all of that, he will still die as soon as we encounter things like Marauder Stronghold which does appear at very early post St.K system.

AC-900 battle drone is probably only drone that can last until Ares Commune/Shipyard appears.

What I want to say is keeping drones alive is extremely hard. I mean keeping yourself alive is already hard so you either put drones/wingmen on the safe side or do not care about keeping them alive. At best they are nothing more than distractions, nevermind about their damage contributions unless we talk about pre St.K systems.

So, we can make drones more disposable. That sounds great until I run out of cargo space to put drones. Also I have to keep buying drones which costs me money too. That really sounds like... the problems launchers have in this game.

People talk about enabling drones to use ammo but ironically drones are ammo themselves at the current state. Very expensive, very hard to maintain, take a lot of space and probably worse version of missile launchers' ammo. Very good candidates for being insta-sold to stations.

In order to make disposable drones viable options, a lot of things need to be implemented. It has to compete with common launchers such as NAMI, Burak and MAG. At stock unmodded setting the game is long, but not long enough to use multiple launchers as viable options unless we talk about end-game launchers after gaining access to Fabricators.

The other way to get around all of the problems is make drones repairable from destroyed wreck. Here is my suggestions:

1) Just like Fabricator, an auton bay can process armor pieces or ores to create "spare mat" to repair drones. It has to be done manually. The spare mat does not take cargo space but the auton bay can store only limited amount of spare mat at all times.

2) When a drone gets destroyed, it always becomes a wreck so it can be salvaged.

3) A ship with the auton bay can dock at the wreck. It can either store the destroyed auton back to cargo or perform repair right away. It will use some of spare mat to restore the drone to working state. Or, it can completely dismante the drone into spare mat to repair other drones.

4) The process of repair can be toggled as automatic. Once the destroyed autons are stored in the cargo, they can be automatically repaired.

5) Those without the auton bay can only store destroyed auton on the cargo. From there the a player can bring it to one of auton merchants to repair it, or decides to install the auton bay then repair the destroyed auton.

So at the start of the battle, you release drones. You fight, and maybe some (or all) drones get destroyed. You salvage drones back to the cargo, and move along while drones are getting repaired at the auton bay. At the next fight they are ready to be usable again.

The key difference between this approach and disposable approach is flexibility. With my approach it is possible to have just one drone. You don't have to worry about restocking drones, competing with other things in cargo space and money restrictions. You can easily salvage uneeded armor pieces and ores and convery them into spare mat to repair your drone.

But, all of those benefits are only available to ships with the auton bay, making the auton bay more appealing.