Drone Schematics: What Are They?

[eevpix]

My friend and I were talking about FTL and he brought up an interesting question. Why can't you just copy a drone schematic and have two of the schematic? This lead us to question, what exactly are the drone schematics even? Are they a space disk with all the technical details, coding, and design of a drone, that your ship can replicate, but that the amount of information is more than your ship's computer can store itself? Or are they some sort of high tech injection mold made of a type of material too rare for you to have some lying around? So I was wondering what other captains in the FTL community thought about this. What do you think a drone schematic is exactly, and why can't you make copies of a schematic?

[Leylite]

It's also worth noting that a Drone Schematic takes up as much room in the cargo bay as a weapon (e.g. a Burst Laser III, a Breach Missile or a Chain Vulcan). I assume this is mostly for gameplay reasons and not reasons of literal volume occupancy, but it's still worth noting.

I assume the "drone schematic" includes the various assembly hardware and machines necessary to build the drone, or else it doesn't make sense to be able to buy and sell the schematics - surely the software is open-source or leaked by now, only the hardware costs money

[eevpix]

We came up with another alternative. Apart from the schematic carrying all the info to create the drone, the schematic may also contain the software to operate the drone, and the software per schematic 'object' is limited to one drone, which is why you need power to the drone bay because of the amount of processing power needed to operate the drone associated with the schematic. We think this would explain why every drone costs only 1 drone part, but varying amounts of power.

It's also worth noting that a Drone Schematic takes up as much room in the cargo bay as a weapon (e.g. a Burst Laser III, a Breach Missile or a Chain Vulcan). I assume this is mostly for gameplay reasons and not reasons of literal volume occupancy, but it's still worth noting.

I assume the "drone schematic" includes the various assembly hardware and machines necessary to build the drone, or else it doesn't make sense to be able to buy and sell the schematics - surely the software is open-source or leaked by now, only the hardware costs money

The only problem we had with something like the software being open-source is that each drone may require a specialized program to run, and that the program may be more than you can store on the computer system of your ship itself.

[Leylite]

It's also worth noting that you need two separate copies of the same drone schematic if you want to deploy more than one drone - even if you have a 4-bar drone system, you need two Beam I schematics to deploy two Beam I drones.

[stylesrj]

I originally thought the drone schematics were sort of like manufacturing plants. They take the drone part and make a drone out of it. Then they wirelessly transmit power to the drone itself (Captain's Edition even has leaky drones which makes me think it is wirelessly transmitted) with a dedicated transmitter that cannot be altered (maybe it's sensitive)

Sort of how a Missile/Bomb launcher not only targets the enemy ship but also fabricates the projectile required to launch. The higher power requirements just mean they fabricate faster/better quality missiles. Then again, why can't they be given more power to make the projectile faster? Maybe there are limiters as you don't want that ion bomb to fry out the fabricator.

But now come to think of it, it sounds like computer hardware. Each drone schematic includes a massive databank to operate the drone. Leaky drones require more power to compensate for power management calculations.
Although why does a drone designed to attack crew need more power than a drone designed to constantly target missiles and lasers and intercept them? Surely it doesn't need all 3 power bars once its smashed into the enemy's hull and attacking, right?

This of course does not explain how a "Friendly hacker" can provide you with a free drone schematic or why a station would just hand them out if it's bulky hardware/software.
Maybe there's Fabrication Rights Management (FRM) going on and everyone's too polite (even the pirates) to violate the FRM and must have a second copy if they want two of the same drone.
"Yarrr! We may loot your ship and kill all ye crew, but we'll never do something as despicable as software piracy!"

[Sleeper Service]

Maybe there's Fabrication Rights Management (FRM) going on and everyone's too polite (even the pirates) to violate the FRM and must have a second copy if they want two of the same drone.
"Yarrr! We may loot your ship and kill all ye crew, but we'll never do something as despicable as software piracy!"

I actually like that explanation the best. There might be some super advanced AI controlled software protection in place that prevents you from simply copying a schematic. Still does not explain why they take up cargo space though. That might just be the manufacturing unit then.

[r543]

I'm guessing that the Drones each have a unique MAC/IP Adress(like PC's have) or use different channels to send the data, so creating a copy would only create trouble in controlling them. They probably also need a computer or something to control them and I guess it's difficult to create something like that, or maybe the Schematic is a machine which creates the Drones and controls them at the same time(with all that technology inside the drones you would need to be very exact in recreating it).

And about them taking up space, I think that the drones get built before they get used, think about it, if you activate it, it's right there without any delay, but if it gets destroyed it takes some time to rebuild one. You might ask why that doesn't reduce the drone counter by one, but if you have the recovery arm, you can move it back to the ship and board drones never take more after getting started once. I'm guessing that the parts can be reused to create a different drone as long as it doesn't get powered, because that activates the drone(even if it's away from the ship, as soon as you power it up again it continues to fight), so I'm guessing that it's using some kind of backup battery while offline, which gets activated once the drone gets powered for the first time ?