Some drone findings

Discussion
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I wanted some definitive #'s regarding various aspects of using drones however I only tested with the Grenadier. My focus was on the time it took from destroy to deploy. I also only tested the Cheetah motor, Hadron and Deadman cabins, as well as the KA-2 Flywheel and the R Type 52 co-driver. In a nutshell, the only thing that decreases the reload time of a drone is the Cheetah motor. The KA-2 does nothing and more surprising, neither cabin decreases reload time. Personally, I bought the Hadron over the cab with a shield(forget the name) because it explicitly states that it decreases the reloading time of ALL weapons. I suppose the word “all” might mean something other than the definition of all, depending on who knows what, but I admit that was slightly annoying to discover. With that out of the way, on to some #'s…
Active time of drone was 33s from deploy to destroy. Unassisted reload time was 20s. Using the Cheetah motor reload time dropped to 11s travelling ≈300m, 14s over ≈200m and 17s over ≈100m.
With the co-driver, under passive skills, I only tested the time it took for the drone to engage once deployed. W/O the co-driver the time to fire ranged from a low 2.69s to a high of 3.25s over five readings for a avg. time of 2.94s until 1st shot. With the co-driver, time ranged from a low of 2.25s to a high of 2.83 over 5 readings for a avg. time of 2.51s. I’m inclined to say that’s better than the claim of a 10% reduction but I could be the source of variability as well starting and stopping the timer.
I may do some testing of the Annihilator once I stop crying about the Hadron let-down.
Does anyone know what the drone activation time -20% means under passive skills? Drone is still active about 33s so not sure what it’s about. Anyway, carry on.

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After a drone is launched they dont activate and attack imediately. That short period is the “activation time”. The fusion cuts that period down by 20%.

Anihilators do not activate the Rtype codriver perk, however they do receive the damage buff from it when it is activated. Anihilators reload time is only affected by cheetah. Anihilators and yauguai are the steongest drones to use. Anihilayors may even be the best drones now that the munnin cab was released. However you want to keep your anihilators away from yaguai drones because yauguai will demolish them if they target them. And the anihilators wont be able to destroy them in time.

HADRON DOES AFFECT SOME DRONES. Reload does affect two drones. These drones are classified as autonomous drones. The Vulture and the yauguai. These two drones are not buffed by cheetah. Munnin also has no affect on these two drones.

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So the the time from deploy to 1st move is what the -20% pertains to, if I understand you correctly? And you’re saying Hadron has no effect on autonomous drones? Those being the Vulture and yagi I take it. That’s good to hear regarding the Annihilators though.
I reckon decreasing reload for all except 2 weapons is close enough to “all weapons” for me. I do like the game.

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Oops. Hadron does help reload for Vultures and Yagis.

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with Cheetah you may want to use Bfs (preferentially only Bfs).
that will double the cheetah’s perk cutting in half the distance it has to travel.
i say preferentially cause if you had other wheels it will diminish the impact of the Bfs triggering the cheetah’s perk.
Certain drones like falcons and hawks don’t have an activation delay “dumb” time before they spring into action.
I believe that sidekick is the “smarter” of the wheeled drones

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Yes thats the function that fusion but pertains to.

Also Im saying the only two drones that are affected by reload buffing such as hadron and flywheel are yaoguai and vulture. Your hadron will work with those two drones. Works WITH autonomous drones. Vultures or yaoguai with hadron and a king mine will give the drones 55% faster reload. Thats without even adding the flywheel. Though that also puts you at a pretty high powerscore for drones.

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Beat me to it…
Big Foot tires also give you a nice bit of clearance to under-mount things. They’re the most “sluggish” of wheels in my experience, but they’re pretty sweet so long as you keep moving.

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Not only that but they are beefy, the beefier of all wheels, only challenged by Hermits .
The rest are good only for tiny niches for specific ends , if we want absolute speed or acceleration.

Bfs are faster than tracks and in certain maps they can climb banks like those present in the Crater map

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For wheeled drones (sidekick, grenadier, fuze) this is the amount of time from release of drone until it starts actively seeking a target.

Note: These wheeled drones are “aimable”. The arrow on the box denotes the way the drone will be facing forward when released. Having this aimed at a target doesn’t guarantee that is the target they lock onto, but more often than not that target is the one chosen.

Cheetah+BigFoots for reloading on these.

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How do you guys discover all these little intricacies of the game like which drones are buffed by those cabs, etc? Through trial and error or is there a master XO rule book I can download? Thanks for all the tips.
For what it’s worth, I ran some Annihilator tests and most of the info is the same as with the Grenadier with a couple exceptions.
The active time is down 2.5s to 31.5 compared to Grenadier. The avg time to fire, meaning from deploy to 1st shot, is ≈1.86s making it about 1s quicker than Grenade. That was with the Type 52 co-d. The avg w/o the co-driver was within 100th of a sec meaning there is no benefit as far as that passive skill is concerned.
Same 20s unaided reload, no Hadron/ Deadman buff and same buff using Cheetah. I didn’t test the flywheel.

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I found out most things by:

  1. Playing since just after launch. (a lot of trial and error just like you are doing)
  2. Talking with experienced clan mates.
  3. Watching what other people play/what they build.
  4. Forum posts.
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Try Cheetah + Bigfoots + Hertz. Don’t worry about R-Type 52, especially the -20% to the activation time, or the other skills.
The Mooning’s perk requires you to stay within 30 m from the target, and it’s slow and awkward to build with, so better use the Call. The Aggressor’s buff stays after releasing, while the Jannabi requires drifting when doing damage. As for that Deadman for the Annihilator… maybe not. :wink: Reloading perks only work for the ‘reloading drones,’ i.e, the Yaoguai and the Vulture.

My use of drones has mainly been 2 Fuzes + a Clarinet. I’d release the drones to do their thing when enemies were in range, and then launch a missile to do my thing. Worked quite well for 1.5 years. Now it’d be less effective without Hans (a co-driver who had a skill increasing the flight time of the Clarinet and the Flute by 2 sec.), as well as with a faster Icarus VII, but maybe it still works.

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Trial and error. All darksouls like. Though we do have all the info in part descriptions to decipher what works with what. Its just so much info its easy to get confused and mislead. And sometimes devs muck up russian to english translations too.

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Ya’ don’t say? LOL
Too true!