Drone

Overview

 * The Drone is an unique tower, capable of damaging infinite-armoured enemies, that most other towers can't hurt. It sends a group of small, flying drones to attack a single enemy for 15 seconds, dealing constant damage. Each rank up adds another drone to the group, but this does not increase the total fire rate of the drone group.
 * While at the very last seconds of firing, a Drone group visually disappears, actually it is still dealing its last ticks of damage a bit after.
 * A sent drone group will deal 100 hits of the current damage displayed - this means a level 1 Drone will deal a total of 30 x 100 = 3000 damage, a level 3 - 130 x 100 = 13000 total damage & so on.
 * The real fire rate of a sent drone group is ~ 6,67 hits per second (100 hits per 15 seconds), which is just slightly faster than a Gatling.
 * A single enemy cannot be attacked by multiple drone groups at the same time. If the enemy dies before the 15-second lifetime of the drone group, the drone group is destroyed.
 * A new drone group can be spawned every 5 seconds. This means that there can be up to 3 drone groups out at the same time and the tower can attack up to 3 lumes at once.

Notes & tactics

 * Usage vs enemies
 * The shots from a drone group ignore armor. This makes it great against armored enemies, the only non-dispenser tower that can hurt Bobble Heads & Fiskeplaske. Hoverers are also pretty susceptible. Hoverer queens & Fiskeplaske would usually not die solely from this tower, but it can deal some good damage to them, especially if it is properly overcharged and buffed.
 * Soakers as enemies, susceptible to any rapid-fire damage are highly vulnerable to this tower and would easily get very exposed by the drone groups and would take more damage from other sources, although they would usually not die from this tower alone, since this would require high overcharge.
 * The tower is good mainly vs ground lumes due to its low range, while Bliskeblaskes, Fiskeplaske and the other flying enemies are trickier and require either assistance with a Range spire, or positioning of the tower exactly below the path of the air lumes. With Spitflies some kiting can be helpful to get them in the tower's range.
 * It's effective against single troublesome enemies, but not the crowd or weaker ones. Despite of this, if there are multiple Drone towers and if they are assisted with towers such as Range spire, Mind control spires & Slow fields, they can damage more enemies and to still keep some capability vs small to average crowds.
 * Drones are a reliable way of intercepting single fast enemies that slip through your player frontline and break away from the main mob, or of dealing with fast enemies in general, since they always apply damage to targets for 15 seconds, regardless how quickly the targets passed through the tower's range.
 * If Hydra Hunter is active and you want to fine-tune the total damage of a drone group to the hitpoints of the imminent enemies, assuming no damage from other sources is applied to them, you simply need to subtract 2250 from the total damage; this is the amount of health enemies will regenerate during those 15 seconds the drone group lasts.
 * All in all, the Drone tower is flexible in the terms of how many towers should be used. If it has to be guaranteed that it can kill an enemy, it might need some more overcharge and to be just in numbers of 1-3 in total, especially if the player is trying to utilize the Tinkerer or Engineer perk. If, however, there are multiple enemies that would take lethal or heavy damage from the tower anyway, or there are crowds that make the tower's focus harder to apply, more might be needed. Also the lack of support towers like Range spire, Mind control spires & Slow fields might occasionally become a need for more Drones in order to improve the chances that they'll hit the key targets. While one Drone is usually enough, having more is also an option, depending on the usage and purpose.
 * Like all projectile-using towers, the Drone suffers from some sight obstructions like walls & rocks, so it is good to place the tower carefully. In this particular case towers usually aren't much of a problem, since the Drone tower appears to just send its drone groups above them and even over smaller obstacles. If there are high solid wall/rock obstructions, the tower would not send drone groups. Clearly, the sent Drone groups continues their fire and damage, regardless of the tower's sight - the obstructions make issues only in the terms of sending drones.
 * Projectile-towers are the Scatter lasers & the ones with targeting system.
 * If the target gets killed, the drone group gets disbanded on the ground. It might be occasionally good to leave a drone group finish off an enemy if it is guarateed to die from them, since this sometimes can win some time and concentration vs the other lumes and could randomly utilize better the tower damage potential.
 * Some comparisons with other towers
 * The Rupture mines also ignore all types of armour and can be effectively used vs Bobble Heads & Hoverers, but they should be put exactly on the path where the targeted enemies pass, although if used properly, on random maps can show more satisfying results, although this is more valid for the Campaign & Easy modes. Opposite to Drones, the Rupture mines need the targets to move for a better amount of damage dealt. Their usage vs Fiskeplaske appears too tricky, since for such a thing one player would have to put these on another player 's head and the one with the "hat" then would have to jump into the boss.
 * The Gatling has almost the fire rate of the sent drone groups. However, it cannot damage Bobble heads, Fiskeplaske and has its damage blocked if it meets the fronts of Hoverers & Hoverer queens while having trouble vs armoured enemies, especially if not overcharged. Its anti-crowd action, however, is better since it has greater range and if its target dies, it just changes the target. The Gatling would, ofc, keep its fire to a single target infinitely if it has to, while the Drone groups would fire for 15 seconds and then they stop or have a delay before the drone group arrives to the target. The Gatling has more issues with blocking towers and other nearby structures that reduce its sight.
 * This tower can find good use in all game modes and even in all maps, although if the map doesn't have Bobble Heads or other lumes with partial invulnerabilities, the usage appears more limited to help with making Soakers more vulnerable, which would somewhat require Range spire for a better target access, at least in a part of the maps. In Survival the Drone tower might occasionally be a must if the player(s) want to survive longer, since otherwise the increasing health of the lumes would sometimes mean unkillable Bobble Heads or Fiskeplaske at a certain moment and it could also be a great help vs Hoverers & Hoverer queens.
 * Overcharging the tower gives 20 damage per 100 resources, which is the same as the amount, gained for overcharging Rupture mines. This is 86,21% of the damage, gained by building level 3 Drone towers. However, one should be wary that an enemy would usually be damaged only once by Drone tower(s) per wave and an overcharged tower would easily deal more single-targeted damage.
 * Amp spire correlations
 * A level 1 Amp adds same amount of damage as overcharging a Drone to more than 185 damage and makes for a bigger damage gain if being put before the overcharge.
 * A level 2 Amp adds the same amount of dmg as overcharging a Drone to more than 232 damage and adding such Amp before further overcharging makes for a bigger damage gain.
 * A lvl 3 Amp adds the same amount of dmg as overcharging a Drone to above 313 damage and adding such Amp before further overcharging makes for a bigger damage gain.
 * Overcharging the Amp adds the same amount of damage as overcharging a Drone to above 1000 dmg and from then on, max damage gain can be reached by putting equal amounts of resources between them.
 * These correlations are in action for the damage, reached only via overcharging, without Tinkerer, Engineer, Core-tower synergy or already existing Amp spire. If any of these buffs is in action, it is needed to calculate the damage, gained by pure overcharging (or to remove the buffs) to see the real efficiency stats. These 4 mentioned buffs stack additively with each other.
 * The fire rate of the tower in-game is converted into shots per second this way: One in-game speed unit is 1/60 shots per second and therefore come the calculations:
 * The Drone sends 12/60 = 0,2 drone groups per second (= 1 group every 5 seconds = 12 per minute), which is almost the fire rate of the Lightning.
 * About the sent drone groups themselves, their fire rate is ~6,67 shots per sec (=400 shots per minute = 1 shot per 0,15 seconds). This is technically 400 game units, which means slightly more than the Gatling.