[Yaifrog]

first, lets go through the existing types and what they do :

gun drone - provides extra firepower to a squad or acts as a seperate J-S-J unit
shield drone - provides additional protection
marker drones - marks things
sniper drone - snipes things
forge world heavy drones - provides lots of firepower with t-l BCs (but looks stupid )

any ideas for new types of drones?

[Kalten]

Heavy Shield Drones: Like normal shield drones, but with 3+ invulnerable save, instead of the standard 4+.
Recon Drones: Unarmed and equipped with multisensors and blacksun filter, give the benefits of this equpiment to the controller.

[alcibiates]

Ablative wound drones. Like shield drones, but a lot cheaper. All they really do is suck up wounds and get owned by template weapons. T'would be interesting to see how many people bring them, not thinking about the majority save rule :P

And I liked to be able to buy units of all of the current drones, not just gun drones. Perhaps be able to mix-and-match them could be cool as well. Like a unit of 6 shield drones and two marker drones could be fun.

[Rogen]

I would like to see some sort of suicide bomb drone (from FireWarrior book)

Something like IG democharges.

[pravo]

I would like to see a drone doctrine army. The troops, fast attack and heavy slots would all be drones of various descriptions. The HQ and Elite selections would be Tau with advanced drone controllers.

That said a swarm version of drones would be nice...
An emp toting version would be cool... better make it expensive though.
Heavy weapon drone platforms (NOT twinlinked)...similar to Heavy Gun drones with optional weapon loadouts.

And access to software/hardware upgrades.. such as BS increases, AI modifications, Stealth fields, movement modifiers etc. Analogues from the vehicle armoury as well as wargear.


My favorite would be the Heavy Plasma drone variants (both gun[troop] and (cannon)[Heavy])... same plasma as the Imperials in STR but overheats. The tau wouldnt mind losing a drone as much as they would a firewarrior for the increase in power. Would also add a medium str gun to the list.

AND the ability to mob-up. Its a collective AI that improves (or in the old codex improved) with numbers. Large units would have increased LD.

I would steer away from serious CC with them and still keep it shooty. Drone units above a certain number... lets say 10 can operate independently of a controller on a basic hunter seeker mode.

I wouldnt change the cost of a basic drone like the gun drone or shield drone and then work around that. Incorporating Greydeaths Crayfish would be nice... heavy weapons on tripod drones instead of hovering, in keeping with Broadside fluff.

well anyways, thats what i would like to see

cheers

p

[Zherroth]

I'd like to see the Sniper drones be able to leave their controller, ie. he still controlls them but can send them off to do damage elsewhere, maybe some LOS rule to control who they shoot at?

Other than that, some form of close combat drone, no shooting but ok at assault

Zherroth

[Nova]

I don't actually like the heavy drones. More burst cannons are the last thing we need as an HS choice (they're all burst-cannon only right?).

What I'd like to see:

-Drone troops: Allow a single squadron of gun or pulse-rifle (see below) drones to take a Troops, rather than Fast-attack, choice. It must be deployed normally (it cannot deepstrike).
**A full squadron is dirt-cheap but small and not really more powerful than a fire-warrior team (bit less range,more maneuverability). Between that and the fluff, it makes quite a bit of sense for them to be fielded more regularly on their own, especially now that they're not quite as 'standard' on the hammerhead anymore.

Outside of that: little idea for 'heavier' drone types:
[as for #/squadron and individual cost, I don't know enough to be the judge of that. probably 3-6 depending on the type]


-Pulse Rifle drone
Armed with Twin-linked Pulse rifles. Gives long-range pulse punch without the pinning the carbine can do. Should be same cost as the standard gun-drone, maybe 13/drone (carbines and pulse rifles are same cost elsewhere). Made for nice large squadrons of 8.

-MLRS drone
Armed with racks of small rockets.
Drone rocket pod: 30" S4 AP- Assault 2
*Death Rain: MLRS drones may, once per game, fire a massive hail of armor-piercing rockets which have the following characteristics:
(24" S5 AP5 Heavy2, Rending).
Unfortunately, this tends to overtax the drone's cooling systems, and the drone must succeed an armor-save or become a casualty. If fielded as a squadron, all drones in the squadron must use this ability at the same time.

**With an average cost, this would give us a long-range option (that's only slightly more capable than a lasgun, mind you) drone that's overall far less capable than a standard gun-drone, but with a nasty kamikaze opener... though not as "wasteful" as just blowing'em up.

A plasma-rifle/drone on a squadron of 5-6 would probably do us some good too... probably as an elite slot?

18" S5 AP2 Rapid-fire and of course NOT twinlinked? Between drone BS and the slightly lower strength, its much less likely to wound... giving us a tasty alternative to a fireknife squad? That's MEQ 2 at rapid-fire range if you have 6 drones... Cheaper and less versatile (not to mention less durable) than a group of anti-marine/termie/necron suits, but fragile and useless against hordes.


Guardian Drone (1 per army)
Assigned to a squad, this killer-drone will detonate itself when the squad is first assaulted, resolving itself before the close combat begins. The flechette burst deals a single S4 hit to all charging models, with armor saves allowed as normal.

In the case of tank-shock, the drone will attempt ram the vehicle and burn itself out in an EM pulse, similar to a large EMP grenade. This automatically hits, inflicting a single glancing hit on a roll of 4+

[Yaifrog]

i think a CC drone squad would work well. give them some sort of CCW and a smaller version of a failsafe detonator and youve got a fast moving unit that can tie up, if not destroy, a unit in CC for a couple of turns, and if they get destroyed they blow up and take a few enemys down with them

[Nova]

Well since they're big frisbees anyways, just put some spinning blades on'em.
Or a spike on the top. Drone Headbutt-rush-of-death!

[alcibiates]

Originally Posted by Nova

Well since they're big frisbees anyways, just put some spinning blades on'em.
Or a spike on the top. Drone Headbutt-rush-of-death!

That could actually be really really cool... Like take a Broadside and allow him to use his drones as a special weapon, likely a blast template sized weapon of whatever strength and AP (I'm too tired to think of balanced numbers to put in) that he can fire, but he kills off one of his drones. Any thoughts on that?