[2020] repairing drones?

Maybe this could be an option if and when we get more friendly NPCs. The junk drone is already neat to see as a companion, and loading it with repair materials seems both technically plausible and quite handy for larger bases.

Originally posted by JimmyIowa:

Originally posted by xerxius: Not so sure if i think it would be that effective though. If it was, why don't all players do that in multiplayer games (one player shooting and one player repairing)?

They do. What makes you think people don't repair a block or trap during blood moon hordes? It takes a few clicks. Thing is though, adding another player to do repairs, doubles the number of enemies you face (horde scale with number of players). Adding a drone doesn't. Making the drone even more powerful than a human partner.

Frankly, I'm not seeing any possible way how having instant repairs of everything being performed full time with no effort during blood moon wouldn't be severely overpowered. :)

It wouldn't be instant; it would go block by block similar to repairing by hand.
It wouldn't be everything; it would only be blocks the drone could reach, which would probably have limited range like other junk weapons (perhaps the range would be your LCB instead of relative to you).
It wouldn't be full time, if the drone had limited capacity for fuel and/or resources.
It wouldn't be no effort, because you still have to work to provide the repair materials.

Let's reverse the roles. One could argue that turrets are overpowered, because they can shoot at the zombies while you, the player, stay inside and keep making repairs. And these turrets, unlike another player, don't increase the number of enemies.

I often wonder about a horde defense strategy of simply standing behind a steel wall or vault door, armed with nothing but a nailgun and stacks of steel, and simply repairing the obstacle in the zombies' way as fast as they can damage it. I haven't tried this on purpose, because I would find it a boring playstyle. But it seems like it would work, even on Demolishers if you really put all your skill points and effort into it that you'd normally put into guns, ammo, armor, etc.

We'd want to watch for new imbalances and exploits with a repair drone, for sure. But it'd be a nice perk to clean up all those cracks in random places from cop spit, stray bullets, explosions and whatnot.