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Synthetic Swarm

Spawnable Drone Swarm Factories


The self-replicating robot swarm is upon us! Who built all those factories? They appear to grow stronger every second! How will we stop them? Could we make use of that technology to fight back? So many questions and so little time... Get back to work!

Huge thanks to Ethanol for the Drones and Factory models. Also thanks to StrawParrot9171 and Bandi for the demo videos ;)

SPAWNABLES
- Drones Factory (Enemy): A fully automatic factory producing Enemy Drones on its own.
- Drones Factory (Friendly): A manual factory where you can pick what Friendly Drones to produce and when, or let it build on its own.
- Drones Mini Factory (Enemy): Same as above, but 4x smaller.
- Drones Mini Factory (Friendly): Same as above, but 4x smaller.
(see each drone characteristics below)
- Enemy Fighter Drone MK1.
- Enemy Fighter Drone MK2.
- Enemy Fighter Drone MK3.
- Enemy Miner Drone MK1.
- Enemy Miner Drone MK2.
- Enemy Miner Drone MK3.
- Enemy Decoy Drone.
- Enemy Hacker Drone.
- Friendly Fighter Drone MK1.
- Friendly Fighter Drone MK2.
- Friendly Fighter Drone MK3.
- Friendly Miner Drone MK1.
- Friendly Miner Drone MK2.
- Friendly Miner Drone MK3.
- Friendly Decoy Drone.
- Friendly Hacker Drone.

KEYBOARD CONTROLS
- [1]: Build Miner Drone MK1
- [2]: Build Fighter Drone MK1
- [3]: Build Miner Drone MK2
- [4]: Build Fighter Drone MK2
- [5]: Build Miner Drone MK3
- [6]: Build Fighter Drone MK3
- [7]: Build Decoy Drone
- [8]: Build Hacker Drone
- [9]: Enable/Disable auto-build

CHARACTERISTICS
- Energy shields can only be damaged by regular bullets or rockets/explosions because of a limitation of the current modding API (any weapon using MakeHole() for damages won't work on them), hopefully a game update will let me detect those too one day... In the meantime you can disable the Drones shield in the options if you really want any weapon to damage them.
- A Drone Factory will slowly produce voxels and build Drones out of it when it has enough.
- A Factory produces various types of Drones:
-- Miner Drones: Will drill voxels from the land and bring them back to the Factory.
-- Fighter Drones: Will defend the Factory and Drones from threats.
-- Decoy Drones: Will turn itself into a Decoy Factory that will distract enemies.
-- Hacker Drones: Will hack enemy drones and add them to its Team.
- Two types of Factory can be found in the spawn menu:
-- Enemy Factory: Will produce Enemy Drones automatically.
-- Friendly Factory: Will produce Friendly Drones automatically, or you can chose when and what type of Friendly Drone to produce.
- A Drone Factory is protected by an energy shield making it invulnerable until it is broken.
- The Factory energy shield will recharge faster based on the number and level of drones it has.
- The Factory Drone production cooldown is reduced when it takes damages.
- When a Factory is destroyed, it will implode into a black hole and all of its Drones will shutdown (Mini Factories will just explode, with no black hole).
- Each Factory spawns in its own team.
- Team can be changed only before starting the Factory.
- Drones spawned by a Factory will be in the same team as that Factory.
- Miner Drones can be produced at 3 different levels:
-- Miner Drone MK1: Can drill only soft materials.
-- Miner Drone MK2: Can drill up to medium materials.
-- Miner Drone MK3: Can drill up to hard materials.
- Fighter Drones can be produced at 3 different levels:
-- Fighter Drone MK1: Will attack using bullets.
-- Fighter Drone MK2: Will attack using rockets.
-- Fighter Drone MK3: Will attack using laser.
- A Drone is protected by an energy shield making it invulnerable until it is broken.
- Drones of higher level have a stronger energy shield.
- Drones in the same team won't attack each other or Factories also in the same team.
- Miner Drones of higher level can carry more voxels.
- Fighter Drones will select their targets based on their threat level.
- Fighter Drones will consider other Factories and the Drones they produced as enemies.
- Enemy Fighter Drones will attack the player.
- Decoy Drones will fly around until they find a clear spot to unpack into a Decoy Factory.
- Decoy Factories have 1/4 of a regular Factory shield and does not produce any Drone.
- The price of the next Hacker Drone will be reduced when ally Drones are being destroyed or when the Factory takes damages.
- Hacker Drones will target an enemy Drone and convert it to its Team.
- Hacker Drones will prioritize targeting Fighter Drones and higher levels of Drones if they can, but won't change target until their current target is destroyed.
- Hacker Drones move faster then regular Drones and will attempt to dodge attacks when hit.
- Hacker Drones cannot hack Factories or other Hacker Drones.
- Hacker Drones can hack some non-Drone entities too and will mess with their movement.
- Fighter Drones being hacked will not change their behavior toward the player.
- Miner Drones being hacked stop bringing the voxels they collected to their home factory and discard them instead.
- Friendly Drones spawned by the player will act as their own faction (attaching any other Drone or Factory but not each other).
- Enemy Drones spawned by the player will act as their own faction (attaching any other Drone or Factory or player but not each other).
- Miner Drones spawned by the player will drill any voxel they find and discard their cargo when it's full.
- Friendly Fighter Drones spawned by the player will patrol near the player.
- Enemy Drones spawned by the player are always in team 0.
- Friendly Drones spawned by the player are always in team 1.

KNOWN BUGS
- Digging holes into a Factory can be quite laggy.
- Destroying a Factory lags a lot: that's what the black hole implosion is for, wait a little and it will clear the Factory debris (or use Mini Factories instead).
- Drones may look like they are stuck doing nothing: they should get unstuck after some time passes.
- Fighter Drones may stop attacking a target before it is completely dead.
- Miner Drones may fail to drill some materials: they will not attempt to drill it twice though.
- Drones may teleport around in a way that looks glitchy: this is the anti-encroaching mechanism doing its thing, if you don't like it it can be disabled in the options.

DEV NOTES
Description was too long, so I moved it here