Annoying "SPRT light patrol drone" comes from empty space to attack?

[Wastefield]

I was 26 km away from "hiding pirate station", some "mayday"s flashing at least 10 km away, had just left Earth gravity... Out of nowhere, that pesky drone shows up 200 m from me and shooting at will??
Did they add random patrols or something? No cargo ships around or anything, where did that thing spawn from? I'm used to keeping away from raiding outposts and seeing if their drones spawn flying to me from 10-15 km distance, when I want to avoid them until I'm ready and feel like going after them... So what's going on? After reloading to before it came I flew further away from that spot about 20-30 km - then after stopping, just a while later the thing showed up again!

[Buzzard]

That little drone has a nasty little weakness, and you're right close to it: Gravity. Drop down into the planet's grav well a ways, and it'll have a hard time chasing you, and a seriously BAD time figuring out how to get out before it's gone too far down.
The 'Light Patrol Drone' only has thrusters for accelerating forward, and has a speed limiter under 50m/s. The guns only seem to engage under 400m distance. This means that if you kite it a bit, you can lead it down, gaining speed all the time. At a certain point, it'll lose all ability to recover, even if it points itself straight up. Salvage it, or not, as you will.

As to where it came from... I don't know your world settings, but I do know that those drones will spawn from SPRT Raiders and a few other sources. It could be that one of those 'Mayday' signals or something else that was quiet/not broadcasting or lost that antenna, popped off your little friend at some point.
With the Econ Update, it's not just the pirates that have roving ships anymore...

[Wastefield]

Ok found this mentioning the "hiding pirate station": "The timer block on the station has them labeled "stealth drones" but their antenna says "light patrol drones"..."
Yeah, that makes sense here. My first thought was that the bastard flew with his beacon off! Or set to just 200m range. But spawns from over 25km distance and follows even 40-50km from source..? Must be breaking the rules...

https://steamcommunity.com/app/244850/discussions/0/1651045226222868531/#c1651045226223287582

[Buzzard]

There are a few ships that have a programmable block 'AI' that seems just a little too good at spotting players. Once spotted, the ship will generally follow up to ~20km distance, but may pursue you for many, many km if you don't get enough distance fast enough.
With newer designs/updates coming out with the update... You can never have guns up too early.

I just put up a shipbuilding gantry in orbit, and I had guns up and online before most of the 'basic' services were online, just because of all the wandering traffic I keep seeing. The ship that I took up for the project... well, I'd have more gun on it, but there's only so many conveyor ports to put them.

[Wastefield]

Originally posted by Buzzard:

That little drone has a nasty little weakness, and you're right close to it: Gravity. Drop down into the planet's grav well a ways, and it'll have a hard time chasing you, and a seriously BAD time figuring out how to get out before it's gone too far down.
The 'Light Patrol Drone' only has thrusters for accelerating forward, and has a speed limiter under 50m/s. The guns only seem to engage under 400m distance. This means that if you kite it a bit, you can lead it down, gaining speed all the time. At a certain point, it'll lose all ability to recover, even if it points itself straight up. Salvage it, or not, as you will.

As to where it came from... I don't know your world settings, but I do know that those drones will spawn from SPRT Raiders and a few other sources. It could be that one of those 'Mayday' signals or something else that was quiet/not broadcasting or lost that antenna, popped off your little friend at some point.
With the Econ Update, it's not just the pirates that have roving ships anymore...

Now I just HAVE to try that - even though I just got off that planet, lol!
I do have random encounters, drones,... enabled - everything except wolves,spiders and meteors to test the Economy update (and no mods either). I'm fine with having some dangers around and just trying to stay some safe distance away when I'm mining or building my base, but I do hope I don't have to constantly watch my back whatever I'm doing if something comes without any warning.

[Buzzard]

As to dangers, I make sure that even my miners/builders have ...just a few turrets. There's nothing that quite says "Lemmie alone!" like an enthusiastic hail of gunfire.

[Marco Schepper]

Just add the reavers to your mod list and have REAL fun :D Ok, seriously, nowadays you can't leave your home without a gun. A drone goes down with 2-3 automatic turrets or one well aimed missile, not really the hassle. I rarely saw pirates as a thread - at least, before I installed the modular spawner, those nasty things call for help and form a fleet to kill you. Without mods - shoot them before they shoot you. Normally there is a pretty long time before respawn at the same spot.

[baddoggs]

Originally posted by Marco Schepper:

Just add the reavers to your mod list and have REAL fun :D Ok, seriously, nowadays you can't leave your home without a gun. A drone goes down with 2-3 automatic turrets or one well aimed missile, not really the hassle. I rarely saw pirates as a thread - at least, before I installed the modular spawner, those nasty things call for help and form a fleet to kill you. Without mods - shoot them before they shoot you. Normally there is a pretty long time before respawn at the same spot.

I found a reaver frigate with tiny repair bots inside it!!!
I boarded to capture and was immediately attacked by welder/grinder weilding
bots... It was hilarious... I fair messed my pants the first time...

[Okim]

Recent update added a few new drones (like that pesky patrol drone) that are spawned by Hidden Pirate Station and other similar stations / encounters that blink signal for a brief period of time. Every pirate entity that you encounter in your world will spawn drones now. Even 'MAYDAY' wrecks and passive cargo ships have a chance to call-in a drone to aid. And if you see a pirate station, a raider carrier, a salvage station and other static pirate entities - expect guests to come...

It is now highly recommended to put weapons on any your ships since these drones have a 30km engagement radius (compared by standard 5 and 10 km for pirate stations / escort drones). While this little bugger is easy to deal with - it has it`s antenna set to 1000 m radius to surprise players.

It is also bugges since it`s gatling turret is always switched off and drone engages with just a gatling gun.

EDITED:
The mechanics that these drones are using to track players is coded via 'drone behavior' now. Drone do retain old programmable blocks with very outdated seeking scripts, but these are no longer used. Engagement range is encoded in relevant spawngroups for drones.

You can check the games files (dronebehaviors.sbc, pirateantennas.sbc, spawngroups.sbc) to get yourself familiar with SE threats that lurk there. Maximum what you can get is a large grid rocket armed drone that likes to pop up when you are boarding a private sail :)

[Marco Schepper]

Originally posted by Okim:

...

You can check the games files (dronebehaviors.sbc, pirateantennas.sbc, spawngroups.sbc) to get yourself familiar with SE threats that lurk there. Maximum what you can get is a large grid rocket armed drone that likes to pop up when you are boarding a private sail :)

The nasty part of it: They don't stop shooting if you are inside the ship, so chances are you get control over the ship and in the meanwhile they shot the thrusters into pieces, leaving you as the happy new owner of a wreck.

[Marco Schepper]

Originally posted by baddoggs:

I found a reaver frigate with tiny repair bots inside it!!!
I boarded to capture and was immediately attacked by welder/grinder weilding
bots... It was hilarious... I fair messed my pants the first time...

Nice, can you tame them? :D Must be the reaver's version of nanites, have to see them.

[Wastefield]

Yeah, it's not much of an issue to blow those attackers to bits, I've even dealt with them with a hand rifle (elite version, though). It just annoys me that ships not designed and not armored for combat will take unpreventable damage from stray shots anywhere even with decoys in place and then I have to check around the ship for damage and carry a full set of spare parts in case something essential breaks, and have projectors and blueprints on the ships... Somehow I hate the idea of repairing, maybe it's because damage is poorly visible on vanilla and I should get a script or mod to make it easier? (I've used MMaster's LCD script before, but it's been a while so it needs reading and setting up and tweaking settings etc...)

Btw after dropping the above-mentioned drone down with gravity, soon there was a Raider far away spawning Raider drone which came following me when I had stopped in an NPC space station's Safe Zone, I tricked the drone into flying in there near the edge of the bubble focused on my ship while I waited just outside for it to back through, then I went straight to its battery with my grinder. Of course a moment later I had repurposed it as my new RC drone to protect me from now on!

[Marco Schepper]

or you go for nanites, like the build and repair system. Still needs the spare parts, but at least it works automatically at a relatively low energy cost. Having a fighter and/or repair drone following your ships is an idea, too. Last time I even put a gunboat near a mining site as I had one patrol after the other. I wasted more time with repairs than I did mining. After I got 3 drones down they came back with a corvette and put my gunboat into pieces. Nice escalation