I wanted to say thank you for adding the hand deploy option in the most recent update. It was sorely needed and I hope you all keep up the good work!

Dont worry mod author, i've come to help! All these people complaining about drone and ai? drongos drone tweaks........

Your flying drones are LITERALLY just copy pastes of dlc but they take up more space in the bag, and your AT drone drives terribly, LOVES to flip upside down (GREAT design btw battlebots), and is instantly aimbotted by tanks from a football field away anyways. Discovering the arma 3 modding community has raised my blood pressure and im 24 LOL.

Had a combat testing of the Black Hornet 4, got a couple of issues:

1) thermal sensor and gunner position:
IRL it does have thermal sensors (product by FLIR) and in game the pilot camera has thermal mode as well. Reason why this is brought up is because the thermal sensor gives the drone AI, hence the drone controller, of target knowledge.

2) Visibility: the black hornet is targetable by MRAPs on distance over 300m.

3) Auto-pilot: if on autonomous mode and waypointed to follow unit, the black hornet will climb unlimited altitude if unit being followed stays still (I have a blackhornet following myself flying at 1200m and climbing).

And please dont nerf the drones too much? Because single players or small scale multiplayers need this, and the IRL ones are created for an advantage, aka OP.

Any chance of adding more camera options / gimbal camera on the Black Hornet? As in real life it has 3 modes including a 45 degree downward facing camera.

@Turnip Good Mod, big thanks to you

It would be great to add a limited control range for these drones with the visual interferences appearance, as implemented in Crocus drones

GOOD

Any chance of a variant/update to the Black Hornet that reduces its visability to AI? Just seems a bit weird that a drone the size of my hand is being spotted by John Rifleman at almost 200m in the middle of the night. Makes using it a pain since it doesn't get a coaxial camera, so you have to fly it in closer to see much of anything, which runs the risk of alerting the terminator-level AI.

(this is probably a hard cope, but never hurts to ask anyways.)

would it be possible to create a armed or kamikaze naval drone? :3

hello, love it ;)
small question how do your display the droneRC laser sight into your NVG?

Can I repost just the honey badger into a private mod with credit

@Turnip If you want something heavier/deadlier than the D40, consider systems like the Teledyne Flir Rogue 1, or Andruil's Bolt, or maybe ask Napalm, who made the Switchblade loitering munition on the WS if they'd be willing to give you those assets/ targeting .sqfs, since the mod has not been updated since 2023.

@Turnip

I'm actually quite fond of the current Drone 40 strength. But that comes primarily because my group deals with a significantly increased enemy force, and we have a role that currently needs access to an easily deployable explosive and recon drone.

If you do end up nerfing it, I would love for an alternative that is still as effective as now. Being able to deploy these with simple ace interactions and have them be as effective as they are is a massive benefit for my group currently.

@Multicellular Organism, appreciate the feedback, we're glad you're enjoying it so far!

We're looking to make some changes to D40 especially, ideally lowering its explosive power and adjusting its weight (its already 4-5x the mass of the real life product) which should make it a bit more balanced. As this is supposed to be launched from 40mm, we might just look for a different UAV platform to fill gap of something more heavy/deadly.

We'll keep in mind the thermals for the black hornet (the real life equivalent does have some form of thermals), though ideally its niche should just come from being small / controllable to traverse through buildings etc.

Awesome mod! ARMA 3 needed this drone variety boost, and this mod is fantastic. My friends and I have some feedback after testing it out:

Black Hornet:

Overall, the Black Hornet is well-balanced. However, for such a small drone, I believe that removing the thermal camera would be a more realistic choice. This adjustment could enhance gameplay realism.

Drone 40:

Drone 40 is currently the worst offender in terms of balance. The warhead is too powerful, especially considering we already have 40mm RC drones in the DLC that are well-designed.
I suggest transforming Drone 40 into a heavy, hand-launched FPV drone that can still be carried in a vest. This drone should resemble 40mm RC drones from the DLC but with increased weight, blast radius and worse manuverability. These changes would help it stand out more in gameplay.

Honeybadger:

The Honeybadger is well-balanced and stands out due to its heavy weight and powerful capabilities. That makes it an unique addition to the game.

A little "light" for the Hornet would be nice so that you can also lighten a room. And also a little "beep" sound after landing, otherwise you can't find them in a high gras anymore :D

@Twisting, this is something we're aware of and will look to solve hopefully soon!

@Lihan for now you have to manually disconnect from any drones first before those options show up, something we are changing in the next release.

the black hornet seems to flip on it's side every time I deploy it. I just use zeus to adjust it, but maybe modifying the model to have some gears it sits upright on would help

not sure if im dumb but how do you pick up the wasp after deploying it using ace?

Nice

Duuuuude =)

ah nice, thanks a lot for your response. Yeah, maybe the UAV battery is too big for the hornet. The uav battery takes also a lot of space in the backpack. But it's great that they recharge when you pick it up.

Nice mod now i can use less rockets...maybe if use Grenade Drones (HE) against Anti-Air xD

@Turnip, Yeah i see now it's working...thanks for the tip & help

@Knight ⚔, the honeybadger's explosive is identical to a standard M15 AT mine and is able to blow up/disable pretty much all MBTs. Obviously not sure what mods/assets your going against here.

As for the hornet recharging, we can look to maybe do something with the UAV battery, though as for right now you can just pick up the hornet again (disconnect first) and place it back down and it will have full fuel again.

I think the honeybadger's explosive is good for light vehicles but ineffective against heavily armored vehicles, correct? I wasn't able to destroy a heavy tank with it.

Another question. Is it possible to re-charge the hornet or is this planned? Atm it is just a one time utility, right? I've tried to re-charge it with the UAV battery but didn't see any option.

@Fat_Klever, added this to our known issues, we can hopefully have a fix for this on the next update, thanks

@🦇 Nocturnal Vic 🦇/Knight ⚔, thanks both for the feedback, we have it on our list to tune it in the coming update. Trying to balance it to be able to take out mortar positions/light vehicle wheels has been a challenge for sure!

Would love to see a switchblade 300 deployable. I feel like that would be a lot of fun.

Awesome mod, we really love it! <3 But yeah, the 40mm Drones are really a bit overpowered I fear.

Hi there. Extremely cool mod, nice job!

The only thing I would comply about is Black Hornet's tipping issue upon assembly. It rolls extremely easy and breaks. As I see it could be fixed by making a delta-shaped invisible base for it so it could easily spawn and land or make it throwable like a grenade.
I didn't test it with ACE yet so I cannot say whether the issue is the same there or not.

Once again, very good work, thank you a lot for it!

I have feeling that 40 mm HE is a bit overpowered.

@neretropazanchic, The Pike is more a weapon or ammo really and not a drone. Its basically a tiny laser guided missile that shoots out of a GL. So it's not really something that we are looking to add into our drone pack.

You can add 40mm Pike because a lot of people play without ACE.

"Thank you very much for your reply! Could you explain how to open this interaction menu? For example, what key needs to be pressed or what conditions are required to access the self-actions menu? Once again, thank you for taking the time to help me."

you guys are all keeping this game alive and fresh for so many years. ur the best

@neretropazanchic, this should just be standard with ace

"Thank you very much for your reply! Could you explain how to open this interaction menu? For example, what key needs to be pressed or what conditions are required to access the self-actions menu? Once again, thank you for taking the time to help me."

40mm Pike where can I find it?

@498701682, Its a bit too long to post it all in here. But its basically just this here in CfgVehicles:

class Man;
class CAManBase: Man {
class ACE_SelfActions {
class ACE_Equipment {
class ACE_GX_DRONES {
displayName = "Drones";
condition = "[_player, '', _player] call GX_fnc_drone_canPlace";
exceptions[] = {"isNotDragging","isNotSwimming","notOnMap","isNotInside","isNotSitting"};
icon = "a3\ui_f_curator\data\cfgwrapperui\cursors\curatormovein_ca.paa";
showDisabled = 0;

//Black Hornet 4
class PLACE_BLACK_HORNET {
displayName = "Deploy Black Hornet 4";
condition = "[_player, 'GX_DEPLOYABLE_BLACK_HORNET_UAV'] call GX_fnc_drone_canPlace";
statement = "[_player, 'GX_DEPLOYABLE_BLACK_HORNET_UAV', _player, true] call GX_fnc_drone_place";
exceptions[] = {};
showDisabled = 0;
icon = "GX_DRONES\Data\UI\map_uav_black_hornet_ca.paa";
};
};
};
};
};

"Could you share the complete code for the self-actions interaction menu from your video? Please provide a link for me to download and study. I can only set up first-level ACE submenus, but the setup for multi-level submenus (like your 3-4 level actions) has been a long-standing issue for me, and I haven’t been able to resolve it. Thank you very much for your help!"

@498701682, the self- interaction thing is a ACE feature. They have a wiki page that explains it pretty well: https://ace3.acemod.org/wiki/framework/interactionmenu-framework

@Lexx, you mind accepting my Steam Friend Request so we can have a chat about this?

"Hello, could you please tell me how to bring up the self-actions interaction menu? Where is its code located? I’d like to study it. Thank you!"

Woah, is this like an RC-XD in Arma 3? Bro, you're amazing!

@Voiden Venari, can you explain a bit more? You should be able to drop the item by dragging it out of your inventory and scroll wheeling to get the Deploy/Assemble actions.

@Knight ⚔, these should be under misc items in the arsenal. The same place you'd get toolkits for the honeybadger and black hornet. The drone40 will be found in the magazines, and can be loaded into your UGLs.

I cant drop Honeybager UGV in vanilla even pressing middle mouse button

Thank you everyone for all the positive feedback, we are happy you are enjoying the mod.

@Stonezy, we are using vanilla sounds as much as we can to keep the mod size down. I don't think it should be louder than lets say a Darter.

@Catbug, this was our minimum viable product. We wanted at least 3 drones in the pack to make it worth the download for you all :) That said, we do have some ideas for other drones that we could make some which are much larger than these. But both Turp and I are involved in a lot of projects, so its a bit hard to say when and if we will make more additions right now.

good