Replicator

[STM]

A module that can build/spawn sub-drones.

Some special form of decoupler or somthing like that, where the decoupled part can be replicated.

It should cost energy and time and/or a special resource.

Maybe the core has some sort of special energy that doesn't replenish over time. Could be upgraded to hold higher ammounts.

[Micha]

We have added a Factory part in the newest update. That can clone and decouple sub parts

[Lurkily]

A decoupler block that doubles as a drone core; the decoupler can only have a certain number of child parts.  You need energy, fuel, a number of thrusters, some logic, and guns or drills, whatever tools.  A limit of 10-20 child parts, with more parts available for bigger sub-cores.

You can limit the number of cores usable on a single drone, and not rebuild them until the core is destroyed/ self-destructs, and/or put a time-limit on them so you can't flood the map with drones.

[Markus]

Interesting ideas. Unfortunately duplicating and spawning of drone parts are taxing for the already taxing physics simulation - but I'll ignore that for the moment because it's interesting

What's the difference between having a satellite with a decoupler and a small, additional drone brain? The small drone brain might have additional features, but if it gets destoyed, you loose the mission (risk/reward). But now that we have a camera-part (since yesterday, whee), maybe another small drone-brain is redundant. Do you think so as well?

Spawning new parts can be probably somehow exploited if we don't design carefully and the balancing gets out of hand. I still like the possibility thou, but I'm not sure yet how it can be interestingly implemented    

[Micha]

I think it could be very fun. But it needs a cooldown or have some other cost when using it, so you cant just spam out new drones

And I agree with @Lurkily a part limit also makes sense. Or else you just use this mechanic as a respawn point for your large drones.

[STM]

Markus, to spawn small sattelites without a core would be cool enough!

As how high the partlimit per subdrone should go... Probably start small with 10-15 parts and get that number up with upgrades to 25-35 parts. 

It probably need tests to see how this would impacts performance. But as a developer you could surely make a good guess on how much this will stress the computer.

[Micha]

Well you can already build huge drones that eat your CPU alive. We don't add arbitrary limits to save performance, the limit should be your computer.  We'll maybe show a warning in the editor if we detect too many parts.

The part limit for the replicator has more a gamplay reason. If you could just replicate the whole drone without any cost or cooldown you are basically invincible  

 

[Lurkily]

The reason I suggest using the decoupler as a small drone core is so that you can't go in with an itty-bitty drone, and just manufacture thousands of little sub-drones to swamp the entire planet as a one-size-fits-all strategy.  With the exception of retrieval missions (and even those, if you have smart enough recovery drones that you dispatch first) this could easily become a dominant strategy.

For example, if your sub-drone had a manufacturing part that made a copy of itself, you might swarm the map with an infinity of drones.

By making the decoupling point a drone core, you can hold back rebuild ONLY when the drone core (thus the entire sub-drone) is completely defunct or destroyed.

By limiting the number of cores, you can limit the number of autonomous elements available to the player, as well, if that suits development goals.

By limiting the number of sub-parts, you also limit the player's capacity to make drones that build drones that build drones, as well as limiting their ability to just make their main drone manufacture itself, giving it a regenerative capacity.

[Marker Mage]

I suppose that it could require resources, either ones held on the Nimbatus or ones held in the drone's own tanks..