Drones are your helpers in battles. They enhance supplies, give your tank new abilities, and help in many other ways. Most can be purchased with crystals in the Garage in the “Drones” section, or for Tankoins in the Shop. You are also able to upgrade them in order to make their effects stronger.
Drones require Batteries 
- a special kind of Supply - to be used. More information can be found further below.
Contents
Mechanics
To use the drone, you need to equip it, the same as any other gear. An equipped drone will appear in battle above your tank and will follow you everywhere. Drones will automatically trigger following a specific event or action in battles - you don’t need to activate them yourself. After the activation drones will become inactive until they are automatically recharged.
Every drone has two effects: a basic effect and a unique effect. The basic effect is common to all drones: a passive increase to the strength of the Boosted Armor and Boosted Damage supplies, by the amount (percentage) determined in the upgrade level of the drone. These parameters can be upgraded; the initial value is 33%, and the maximum is 100% in the case of a fully-upgraded drone.
After the drone's unique effect has been activated, it has to charge for a certain amount of time before it can be activated again. The basic effect, on the other hand, is passively active as long the drone is equipped and activated.
Unlike turrets and hulls, drones do not have Mk levels (modifications). Instead, they can be upgraded in 20 steps. The micro-upgrades values for each drone can be found here or on the page of the relevant drone.
Classification and Types
Drones are classified into four major types:
- Passive - are drones who don't have situation-specific effects;
- Assault - are drones who help out with attacking;
- Defensive - are drones who help out with defense, and lastly;
- Support - are drones who support a player or their teammates in many situations.
Passive Drones
1 000
320 000
Assault Drones
20 000
50 000
90 000
140 000
200 000
Defensive Drones
20 000
50 000
90 000
140 000
200 000
Support Drones
20 000
50 000
90 000
140 000
200 000
Batteries
Batteries are a supply type, which will be automatically used in battles when you have any of the drones equipped except for Brutus. As with other supplies, you can purchase batteries in the Garage and in the Shop, find them within containers, obtain them through Missions and Challenges, and of course, win them in contests.
- One battery costs 300
. - One battery is used per minute by any Drone except Brutus.
History of Drones
- Drones were part of a secret project, named "Project Energizer". They were first hinted when the developers edited the Development Plans page in the Wiki, where they added a mysterious point under the Work in Progress header. In a special thread in the forum, only one tanker correctly guessed what a part of it would be, Musa.
- Initially, twelve drones were planned to be released, but only three were released in the first wave - «Assault», «Trooper» and «Mechanic».
- On the 23rd of June 2018, an additional three drones were added, namely «Driver», «Engineer» and «Supplier».
- For the duration of the 2018, 2019, and 2020 World UFO Day celebrations, the visual appearance of Drones was changed to a flying saucer.
- On November 29th, 2019, the «Hyperion» drone was added to the game during the Black Friday celebrations. The following day, it was also added to a special bundle available for purchase in the Shop from the rank of
Marshal. - The Crisis drone was added to the game on June 4th, 2020. The only ways to obtain it are as an exotic drop in Ultra Containers or by reaching the third planet in the (now concluded) Tanks in Space Minigame.
- In the past, there have been a couple of special missions that rewarded drones. Because they were available to complete at ranks lower than the usual unlock rank, you will sometimes see tankers using Blaster or Lifeguard in battles lower than the unlock rank for those drones.
- On April 30th, 2021, drones had some major changes implemented:
- The passive effects of drones were changed. Now, instead of a slight boost to damage and armor, they strengthen the effect of the Boosted Armor and Boosted Damage Supplies.
- Trickster's effect was changed completely. Before, activating Speed Boost allowed cancelled the reload on all supplies for the user and surrounding teammates. After the update, Trickster became the speed-boost-enhancing drone it is today.
- Blaster got the ability to shorten self-destruction time from 3 seconds to 1 second, and now always triggers when blowing up
Interesting facts
- Drones run on batteries, and they use them one at a time per minute, even if you're unwilling to use them. It is important to unequip a drone if you're not planning on using one, otherwise, they will waste your batteries!
- Contradictory to the first speculations, animated paints do move on the drone, but the movement is very hard to spot due to the small size.
- All drones have 20 micro-upgrade steps, and cost 1,000,000 to upgrade fully without sales or speedups. The only exception is Brutus, who only costs half that at 500,000 to max out.
- Mechanic, Defender, Booster, Trickster, and Miner don't just reduce the cooldown imposed when their supply is activated: using other supplies also speeds up the recharge! This means you can activate the associated supply much more often, and in many cases have it running continuously. In addition, when using Trickster, speed boosts don't put other supplies into cooldown.
- Drones contribute between 59 and 599 points to your Gear Score, depending on their upgrade level.
