Drone Case
The drone case is used to build drones in the assembler. Drones are light-weight, fast and very mobile machines with limited functionality (fewer upgrade and component slots available). Unlike robots they cannot use tools, and can interact with the world only in a relatively limited manner.
They make up for their limitations with speed and lower running energy costs. They are well suited for transport of small amounts of items, and ideal for reconnaissance. Pairing a drone with a robot can be quite powerful, with the robot doing the "hard work", and the drone providing information about the environment and transporting items to and from a central hub, for example.
Like microcontrollers, drones can only be programmed using their EEPROM. Accordingly, the EEPROM can be changed by crafting the drone with another EEPROM; the existing EEPROM is return to the player's inventory.
The tier 1 drone case is capable of taking the following components: - 1x tier 1 CPU - 1x tier 1 RAM - 1x EEPROM - 1x Expansion card (tier 2) - 1x Expansion card (tier 1) - 1x Upgrade (tier 1) - 1x Upgrade (tier 2)
The tier 2 drone case is capable of taking the following components: - 1x tier 1 CPU) - 2x tier 1 RAM - 1x EEPROM - 2x Expansion card (tier 2) - 1x Upgrade (tier 1) - 1x Upgrade (tier 2) - 1x Upgrade (tier 3)
The tier 4 (Creative) drone case is capable of taking the following components: - 1x tier 3 CPU - 2x tier 3 RAM - 1x EEPROM - 3x Expansion card (tier 3)