Now that PDTs with automated combat functionality have been implemented, will the auto-turret drones deployed by something like the Aegis Nautilus work in a similar fashion?
TL;DRDrones are tied to base building, and a Nautilus turret mine would have its turret work like PDTs, which the team also wants to improve with player control over targeting and threat order.
So drones are a big topic for us, and that is base building. I think we talked about that at CitizenCon, did we show? A little bit. So drones are a key or an essential part of base building. And the moment that we have that tech, that opens up all the opportunities for, again, right, so many ships. So it's basically, again, from crafting, base building into drones, into opening up all the features that we have ships with.
And for that very specific Nautilus turret mine example, yes, you would have the drone side of it, but also the turret on it would function how PDTs work. But there's also things we want to do to PDTs between now and then to make them better. At the moment they're very binary: they're powered, they do whatever they want. We want to give you the control of, maybe don't auto-engage immediately, maybe wait for my confirmation, only target select things, ignore this. Don't target fighters, don't waste your ammo on fighters, only go for torpedoes. Internally they have a fixed threat order of, like, do torpedoes first, then do missiles, then do ships, then do other things. And maybe you don't want that order. Maybe you want to have ships first. We want to give players that control. And when you have that on your PDTs and then on a drone, then in the Nautilus, then it's a much more compelling experience.