I am definitely in favor of this. An idea sort of like this has been around in internal discussion at the beginning of the year, so I'll just repost my take on it.
Special NPCs can be set up for this if necessary. If possible without a mess in the inis, NPCs should reflect your faction but we can also make them generic drones that roam around.
Spawning these NPCs should have a cooldown and consume some sort of materials. Normal fuel at different rates per spawn or nanobots, perhaps? And also different types of NPCs would be neat, too.
- Straight-forward attack drones with weak, fast short range guns.
- (Stationary?) Artillery/missile drones that would be able to fire missiles / dumbfire torpedos or a combination at a long distance.
- Support drones to kill, dropping nanobots/batteries/fuel (should drop less fuel than what was used to spawn them)
- Suicide drones without shields, which fly close to a target and then fire a gun which immediately kills them and deals AOE damage (no instant kills on snubs though) that would require, as usual, the shield to be down before it can do hull damage.
This ability could be made available to anyone with a docking module while the cost, cooldown and amount would be improved if you have a carrier.
(Thinking of 1 ship per docking module on normal ships, 2-3 on carriers at lower fuel cost and cooldown).
I would personally prefer it on carriers only.
Right now carriers are just another battleship, and with a unique gameplay-element to them that's independent of another player's choice to dock on them, they could also see more use as utility vessels or ships that try to stay back a little.
//edit Stationary spawns can likely be implemented in a way similar to POB weapon platforms, but with obviously less potent weaponry.
