Khalagar

The drone seems to teleport to the player / teleports through doors / flies over obstacles etc, so I don't think it would help all that much with bandit AI pathing. It's mostly weird how much work went into the drone, then how little they seem to care about it. It would be like if one of the devs was like "I spent 4,000 man hours making a new system to spawn caves under the ground for players to explore!" and then it was never talked about on stream and no other parts of the game tied in or interacted with it etc lol I def think Woodle finding one day 1 was a bug, Misuto has been streaming like 7 hours and hasn't found one even while finding all kinds of other stuff Yeah, a lot of suggestions are just things that are a LOT of work for the devs. I feel like mine at least are just number tweaks / minor changes since they already did the ground work. Things like make the drone mod buffs scale with your perk investment to be better for people invested in it, or just change a flag on some of the PoI that are hard to be t5 instead of t4 as a temp fix for the lack of t5 diversity etc. There's a ton of little minor things that are just quality control stuff, like robot turret shells being bad or the pipe baton being a club but worse since it attacks slower and also can't use as many mods etc. Not a game breaker or anything, just polish stuff

Another thing I'm confused on as far as the "You already did tons of work so . . . why not make it usable??" line of thought, is why are there no new T5's? 200+ new POI but none are t5's even though some seem as big or hard etc. Seems really weird to me to not just flag a couple as T5 for now to expand the end game more and then work on the "story t5s" later

That sounds like it would just be covered by the vehicle skin system they talked about before. Not sure if that's still in development, but the way it was described IIRC was basically just swap the Jeep skin for whichever car you wanted, with it just having the same stats and hitbox Speaking of copied stats and hitbox, the pipe baton lol. MisutoM was testing it and it's literally just a wooden club with the exact same stats, damage, durability etc, but a slower attack speed. Not the worst though, it scales with intellect so I'm happy, just found that funny. I'm curious if pipe baton will out damage the stun baton now, I'm pretty sure a wooden club actually out DPS'd the stun baton in A19 so that'd be pretty funny haha

Have you seen anyone try to scrap it yet? It def sounds like a bug to spawn week one if it takes steel to craft It feels like there's a pretty major disconnect internally on what they are doing with the drone / what they designed. Literally no dev that I saw in any of the streams knew anything about it, as it seems Madmole led the team working on it, but even Madmole barely talked about it. It seems like one team has spent months working on it trying to get the pathfinding and bajillion implementation issues worked out on it, and then they presented their work and it was just kind of stuck into the game without much quality control or fanfare and swept under the rug I guess absolute worst case scenario it will exist as a place holder for modders to tighten up / maybe replace with followers and other random companions What does that offer over the jeep? I'm pretty sure they already mentioned just being able to reskin the jeep to look like the various car models that are in the game at some point. My point mainly is, why would a player return to this game after putting hundreds of hours into it, just because they could now drive a sedan instead of the jeep? What niche does that even cover and what value does that have

The point of A20 was mostly world gen and adding 200+ new PoI which adds waaaay more replay value to the game than a new gun or drone or car does. There's hundreds of new areas to explore, new quests I believe, more things to do etc, and with the world gen it makes much more interesting to start new worlds and try new builds and different world gen settings I doubt anyone with 500 hours in the game is going to come back if the only thing in the update was "We added one new shotgun!", and besides that, why would adding a new tier of weapons for the first week not be enough weapon updates? That's the "make it or break it" time for players to decide if they even like the game before refunding it, so padding that part out to have more content makes way more sense than adding another car to fill an already filled niche. What car would they even add? Bike early game, mini bike mid game, motorcyle late game, jeep if you are with a friend or want more storage, gyrocopter for super late game and high mobility. There's not really any more niches they can cover besides an offense vehicle like a tank which would be OP and against the game design philosophy

I feel like that probably isn't intentional, assuming you can scrap it and get robotic parts, since the devs are / were super against robotic parts week one for what ever reason. I don't know if it gives parts though, as it seems just unrelated to intellect now tbh Honestly the drone just being unrelated to the robotic line and the robotic line getting a real t3 item of it's own would alleviate a lot of the issues with it, although I do still find it really weird for it to not be marketed and more impactful for the amount of time and hype (from fans, the devs have hated talking about it since day 1) surrounding it lol If it is a t0 item it would make it a bit less sad since it wouldn't be competing with head lamp mods and pocket jeeps for utility

Any mentions of the state of the drone in those chats lol I'm glad it's finally in but so sad at the experimental version, but I had a bad feeling when every single dev purposely avoided every single drone question for over a year. It definitely confuses me on TFP spending thousands (almost certainly tens of thousands) of dollars on a year worth of dev hours + graphical design time + sound design etc to make the drone, but not make it more interesting than a flying storage box. I figured it would be a major capstone of A20 and one of the forefront "Look what we added!!" features, but it's barely mentioned at all on the dev pages and streams etc . . . which indicates to me that they kind of acknowledge it's state of being so minor. I'm pretty sure the dancing zombie twitch stuff and the pipe pistol has way more marketing than the drone lol. The drone barely got like a one line note in the patch notes, that wasn't even correct It seems like robotic turret shotgun shells where it's like, the idea is neat but the execution is ???? and could def use some tweaking to make the end result more useful / important. Not even about being "stronger' so much as more interesting and having more utility than "it's better than not having it at all I guess". Well the drone not being stronger damage wise, shotgun turret ammo does need to be stronger since that crap is flat out trash sadly

Yeah, so my point being, those don't scale with your perk investment at all, and actually nothing on the drone does, so it's weird that it was marketed as a T3 int item. I thought maybe mod slots or cargo spots or something scaled with int so that someone who actually, y'know, invested in the robotic line would have a better robotic drone than a level 1 player. The patch notes even still say "The drones abilities can be augmented and enhanced by the player’s intellect, but players can still acquire and use a Drone without perking into it." so I guess the idea for it to just be an unrelated vehicle was a pretty recent one? I dunno, it's neat to have it in the game since it's a new vehicle basically and I don't want to sound ungrateful, but it's just kind of souring when int doesn't get a t3 cool flashy end game item like everyone else does. Or rather . . . gets one that everyone else also gets for free. Like sure, I can use the t3 sniper rifle, but mine won't be anywhere near the level of a fully perked one used by a perception focused player that's shooting through a whole crowd of zombies, where as every end game player will just have the same drone following them

You probably used off build weapons like a shotgun. Int is good and bad. It's good because you can use the turrets as a back up to your actual main weapon, but it's bad because . . . it's a back up to your actual main weapon. If you try to play solely using stun baton and turrets you are going to have a really really slow, really meh time. Especially when your turrets drain 10,000+ iron to clear a single late game PoI and you have to go spend 10 minutes mining every day or two Int is good in the sense that you can use a shotgun and throw your turrets out for big fights, but it's not really in a great spot over all IMO since so many of it's benefits are invalidated by just looting, finding books, or buying from traders. A lot of your perk points feel wasted if you spend them on most of the intellect crafting perks and then you find a forge schematic right after Junksledges and the quest reward perk are the only reasons to spec into int at all IMO Maybe, I haven't seen anyone use the healing function besides asking it to heal so you might be right. Still not much different than just keeping a painkiller on your hotbar like I'd assume everyone does

Um okay, then hopefully Int gets a t3 weapon / item at some point . . . People have been using the drone as a reason why Int doesn't need a t3 weapon, but ATM the Drone is completely unrelated to any attribute and is more like a vehicle where it's just an item that all can use. I guess drone doesn't require max int / robotic perk line to use because the devs spent so much time making it and they want people to use it, but that just means it's not special for intellect investment A flashlight mod on it would be more impressive if the drone wasn't a late game item after everyone already has helmet light mods, and the heal uses your own resources you supply to heal you, so . . . it saves a hotbar slot I guess? Except since you have to talk to it to heal you, you can't do it in combat so it just saves a single inventory slot I guess? I dunno, to me it's basically just a flying storage box at this point, which is neat but not much different than just pulling out your pocket jeep and loading it full of crap outside the door to your POI Drone could have some really neat buffs based on perk investment, like if at different stages it buffed the mods on it. Like a max perk drone could give better health regen over time / chance to not consume healing items, or a max perk drone could increase stamina regen more than an unperked one does with the stamina augment etc. Upgraded flashlight could either turn into a floodlight or maybe an alarm system to warn if zombies are near etc It has a lot of options for non combat stuff, but it's pretty disappointing / confusing that they put so much work into it only for it to just be for storage late game

Streams are live and I've had them check the drone stuff and I see why the devs never answered for the last year as it was as I feared =( Answer for anyone curious is . . . intellect and robotic perk investment do not effect drone in any way. So a level 1 player with a drone is the exact same as a level 50 player with 10 intellect and all robotic perks and magazines. Seems weird to me that the attributes defining t3 capstone is not uniquely buffed for the attribute investment, since currently every build will just have a drone following them for "free" (perk investment wise). There's no reason for every build *not* to have the drone follow them, and they will all be the same as someone who fully invested into the attribute I'm confused on why the patch notes say Drone is affected by attribute, so far nothing in the GUI shows any buff to drone and Jonah spawned one in at level 3 and it was fully functional and ready to go and QB1 read through all the magazine and intellect attribute stuff and nothing said anything about improving the drone

This was a really good question that I noticed nobody answered yet, so I took the liberty of checking for you and - Guess we'll find out tomorrow when our good friend @Capp00 can do the egregious task of pressing the open perk screen button and clicking on intellect for us and reading what the robotic perk line tooltip says >_>

This is actually a fantastic question, and I'm glad you asked. I have also noticed the lack of information on this front, and I think that's odd since the devs have shown so many other areas of A20. I'm as confident as you are that a developer will see this question and answer it though, the same mind thinks alike after all

Mods will probably be updated to work on the experimental branch, depending on what they do. Most of my UI mods have worked for several alpha without me even updating them, so I guess it depends on what type of mod you are wanting to use

"The drones abilities can be augmented and enhanced by the player’s intellect, but players can still acquire and use a Drone without perking into it." Any dev able to elaborate on this? What does a fully perked drone look like compared to an unperked one? Like if a 10 int + all robotic perk and magazine user finds a drone vs a level 1 character that just spawned into the world gets handed one, what benefits does the int build drone have? Is it mod slots being tied to the drone perk , or is there something more intricate like fly speed and healing power etc?

I'm southern, so I read everything in a southern accent!

Very. There's probably less than like 50 people who regularly post in this thread, and even on the Subreddit, which is still a tiny fraction of the fanbase, they barely know what's going on with A20. Only the most dedicated fans actually go to forums and follow games Steamcharts says there's 21,000 people playing 7 Days right now, I'd say a few hundred at most are of the expectation that a20 comes out this weekend. For A19 streamer weekend most of the streams I saw were 700-1500 viewers max, and a lot of those would be new people who just saw it on Twitch and tuned in. It will take a while before the fanbase as a whole is aware A20 is out, so I'd say any backlash or controversy would just be a very vocal minority.

Y'all are way over thinking it anyway. Even if it doesn't end up happening this weekend 98% of the fanbase prob wouldn't even notice. We are a minority of the minority, most won't even know A20 is a thing until the full update is out and steam updates it for them

I love it just to spite the dev team tbh Nope, I saw a random forum post say it's coming out, and if it's one minute late I will riot and throw a tantrum and me and my 43,000,00 player server will will go play Ark instead.

Uh, a lot of "AAA" games basically don't get major updates for over a year. Cyberpunk was delayed multiple times, launched like hot garbage, and then has barely had content since. Anthem etc too 7 Days has had multiple updates to fix bugs etc since A19 launched, it's not like it was abandoned. as I said, noise and stamina on armor don't matter. Noise generation is irrelevant and you can stick noise reduction mods in if you actually care for some reason, and stamina has stamina mods and you can just take your heavy armor off when going on a 2 mile run which is the only time stamina on armor would matter. More to the point, there aren't even enough mods to fill up your mod slots currently without using the stamina and noise ones AFAIK, so you basically always end up using heavy armor with the stamina and noise dampening mods anyway Cloth armor is better than no armor, but not by much, and there's literally no situation where I'd wear it over scrap or even leather armor lol. I get that it's tier 0 armor basically, it just seems weird that there's no tier 0 heavy armor counterpart, and that even for a tier 0 it's meh

Padded isn't even worth scrapping *or* selling in it's current state lol, it's not even worth the inventory slot and cloth scraps are so abundant that even on the first day I would never waste inventory scrapping cloth armor IMO cloth armor needs some pretty big QoL buffs, even on day 1 it's basically just filler that holds a mod for you until you find quite literally any other piece of armor in the game. Light armor as a whole will hopefully get reworked to not be so "why would I ever use this?" territory. The stamina reducing mods, noise not mattering, and being able to just take your heavy armor off before going on a long 1km+ run makes light armor pretty pointless imo.

Why would we get that the day A20 launched lol Most likely they will update A20 for a while to make sure everything is solid in it, before starting to fully commit to A21, and the "roadmaps" usually just end up being a headache for everyone involved since people try to hold TFP to a tentative "Here's what we might do for the next alpha" roadmap.

I'm still upset about you guys fixing the ladder elevator. That one was a hidden feature with practical applications! I used to always live at bedrock, but haven't made a bedrock base since =( 30+ seconds and your entire stamina bar to climb a ladder every single time is pain

Time for a baptism by fire and teach him the cruelty of adults. Soooooorry son, that's sooooo weird, your bedroll was destroyed somehow right before the horde night, oh nooooo. I feel like kids now days aren't pranked enough honestly, they shut down hard the second they encounter any situation less favorable than "Completely and totally tailored to them". Gone are the days when your parents could prank you by pretending to leave you at the grocery store for ten minutes, you'd probably go to jail for that now

Happy Thanksgiving! Hopefully people can be understanding about A20 not being out . . . . . lol who am I kidding, let's start selling pitchforks and forgo being thankful to the devs