I'm with Rug, chaps I know that have used the back pack remote control tank thingies have lost them and continued - if they triggered an IED they would stop to deal with it, but with a lot less excitment than if one of the fire teams were requiring urgent aid.

Though of course they are slowed down in the first place using them - but this is the future and these dinner plates are clever apparently.

Systems wise I can see teh BM for coming under fire, but not bm's for losing your robo's (has anyone on a different note got a romba yet - robot carpet cleaner, looks just like a drone...).

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I quite like Zombo's proposal of returning to the old 'half BM's and half Combat Resolution' (both rounded up presumably) for lost Drones.

That'd give you endurance at range, and a buffer in engagements.

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Alternatively, we could do what the 'Designer's Notes' claim that the army list already does: Integrate drones into the stats of the various units that can take them, recommend that drones and Fire Warriors / Crisis Suits / etc are mixed up in units when constructing your models, and forget about giving them seperate stats entirely.

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This will sound harsh but surely that's the risk you take buying an army with no commonly agreed list! And as this is a GW game many times models become obsolete as codex's change!

I can live without drones, but if they go back in make them a formation or an upgrade (with or without expendable), just not both.

"it was a risk" doesn't float well with me at all!

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I'd wouldn't want to make them completely useless to take - but there are a range of other ways they can be changed and better represented should they not be viable at present - the stats boost to the twin-linked guns the models actually carry, adjusted numbers, points and/or an independent drone formation as well as / instead of attached ones could be options.

I quite like the idea of an independent formation myself, they are quite capable of operating independently and intelligently so long as there are enough of them to network together and they seem like the sort of things that could be sent off to do particular things (they use units of drone gun-mines in AI for area denial and suchlike). Just need to be careful not to make it too small and cheap a formation to avoid 'popcorning' issues.

I'm definately in favour of wysiwyg guns, whichever direction we go with the expendable.

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