It seems that, in a lot of the Lets Plays I've seen, people generally snub the repair drone. Personally, I rather like the idea of them, but I guess I can see some of the pros and cons:
Pros:
It runs around your ship autonomously repairing without you needing to do anything.
While you have less than five crew, a repair drone allows you to avoid taking anyone off station to do repairs.
It (hopefully) does not need oxygen, making it ideal for sealing hull breaches or otherwise working in air-free rooms.
It just costs one drone part and (I'm guessing) it does not keep using parts once already generated unless it is destroyed and needs to be regenerated.
They're cheap - if you see one in a store, you can probably afford it.
Cons:
It uses precious energy to operate.
It requires a drone slot to operate - this is actually three cons: a requirement to have a drone bay, the repair drone taking up a space you may want to use for another drone, and if the drone bay is knocked out the repair drone is no longer active.
Repairing with repair drones means no crew is going to benefit from learning to do that repair.
I hear that repair drones are rather vulnerable to fire.
(I'm assuming) you can't manually assign them to specific repairs.
Still, like I said, I like the idea of repair drones. Any thoughts on how to make them more viable?
Here's a few ideas:
Make the repair drone self-repairing as long as it is powered.
Make the anti-personnel drone (also sort of snubbed) pull double duty as a repair drone mk 2, doing what a repair drone does whenever there are no boarders to repel. ("Crew" drone.)
A rare and expensive mk3 drone that does all that and is self-powered and operates even if the drone-bay is damaged. ("Steward" drone.)
They can save your bacon in some circumstances such as when your O2 and doors systems are both destroyed and the airlocks are open. That said, they're strictly worse than Engies, simply because they're too slow, even with the drone reactor booster augment, and they become a waste of space when you've got more than 5 crew. Same issue with anti-personnel drones.
I think the solution for the system repair drone is to make it only take one power or to speed it up to something like 150% human speed. Ludicrous speed with the drone augment, but I think that's okay, given how otherwise useless the augment is.
They're better than nothing, but I never use them if I have an alternative. Drone slots are so valuable, as is the scrap it takes to upgrade both it and your power supply.
I don't think they need anything to make them worthwhile. They are nearly essential for some ships in the early game. Just like the dumpy weapons you start with in the beginning. I don't think they are really meant to be a late game item. Unless you need them for lack of crew.
As for the energy cost. With the exception of breaches/fires, generally if a system is in need of repair, the energy the system cant use due to damage can be used for the drone. And once the system is operational, if you disable the drone it just sits there dormant on your ship, and if another system needs repair you dont pay more drone parts to reactivate it. So the drone parts cost is a one off per jump when used, and the energy is essentially free.
Note: I am not in the beta and base most of my perception of the game come from a massive number of YouTube playthroughs and reading of patch notes/changes.
I think the best way to make drones more viable, is to actually make them a drone. When the drone is injured use scrap to repair itself (automatically), the power consumption should be lower then now, it should always repair stuff on its on (without the player interaction) going from the most vital or the most damaged system to the less damaged or less vital systems.
