The robotic Cargo Drone is a civilian ship in Escape Velocity Nova.
"The Cargo Drone is an inter-ship and in-system cargo transportation droid. It has a very simple Lebowickz-Huffman neural net, little turning ability and absolutely no shields. In war-torn systems these inoffensive craft are usually the first to be scrapped in a big firefight... not because they are deliberately targeted, but because one stray shot will total them." ― Buying a Cargo Drone
A drone for carrying cargo. Easily destroyed. Used as cannon fodder or as part of an early trading fleet.
Stats[]
"Cargo drones that are offered for escort duty operate a sophisticated one-time-cipher key system to tell the droid brain who its current master is. Once the term of contract expires, or the owner runs out of funds, the drone will peel off to return to the corporation that owns it. Many free traders still have suits outstanding for produce hijacked by a drone that defected mid-run." ― Hiring a Cargo Drone
Standard model (#130)[]
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Technical Variants[]
Stat changes are relative to the stats of the basic model. The basic model is Standard Model.
The following shipvariant is unavailable in the shipyard and serves a particular visual purpose.
Economy at Work (#393)[]
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This shipvariant moves between space objects in the system. You can observe this behavior in the Rautherion system.
Gameplay Analysis[]
"You can't buy it, only hire it. It's cheap. It's cheap for a reason." ― EVula Survival Guide
Cargo Drones are known to be the weakest ships in the game, even more so than the Shuttle! They have no weapons, nearly zero shields and armor and cannot move quickly at all. On the other hand they are an incredibly cheap way of increasing one's cargo capacity early in the game, costing only one-fifth of the amount required to hire a Shuttle for the same amount of cargo space. To further compare that to outfit-based methods of cargo upgrade, a Cargo Expansion costs fifty times as much for the same capacity.
An unorthodox use for Cargo Drones is to use them as meat-shields. Their hiring cost and pay per day is negligible and you pay no penalty for losing them, yet they follow you no matter how far you go despite their low fuel count. Thus, Drones may pass for makeshift cover in a tight pinch as your ship can shoot right through them without damaging them. They might not be able to take more than a single hit, but if you have a whole fleet of them their sacrifice can make the difference between breaking through a blockade and ending up as debris in orbit. They will be scattered easily by any sort of weapon with area of effect damage like Hellhound Missiles or EMP Torpedoes.
Don't bother disabling and attempting to steal the cargo from a Drone, as due to the design, cargo cannot be transferred from one to a different ship.
Images[]
The Cargo Drone was made by Scott Vardy, with a remodel and animations by Dave Williams.
Appearance[]
<ship description>
Ship Spins[]
This ship has 36 frames per set, 216 frames in total and 6 sets. The sets are shown in sequence to produce an animation of the solar panels spinning around the main hull.
- Ship: 24x24
- Lights: 24x24
- Engine: 28x28
The Engine is visibly misaligned with the Ship.
Representative Images[]
Additional Images[]
