Gear Item - Salvage Drone

[Xyngrr]

In my experience, when choosing between using a Kubrow and a Sentinel it really comes down to one question - do I want loot or not? The lack of a vacuum on animal companions is the single most limiting feature, so much so it actually defines the choice. It's not a question of ranged or not, no maintenance vs healing interplay,  or even the damage either will do.  'Do I want loot from this mission?' turns it into a non-question for the vast majority of situations, and Kubrow ( and to an extent ) Kavat use suffers for it.  Chesa helps, but it's still not in the same league as the allsucking vacuum.

What if we had a consumable gear item that provides only that functionality for a limited time?

- Starting with build cost , it should probably require a vacuum mod, a remote camera, a control module, and a small amount of oxium ( it's a drone, corpus tech ).
- Lifespan once deployed should be more than fleeting, maybe 3-5 minutes? That's enough for it to do it's job but still short enough many missions would require more than one deployment for fulltime use.
- Drone is completely unarmed - also causes no aggression, but can and will still be targeted if there's no higher priority targets in sight.
- Re-uses the AI from shield drones, but instead of trying to keep all friendlies in range, it tries to keep all pickups in its' vacuum range. Given that it vacuums them up once they enter range, it will run from pickup blob to pickup blob within 25m sensor range hoovering them all in, but will not be  the most efficient in getting everything in a fast moving skirmish as a sentinel would be. This mobile behaviour will also send it into danger more often than a sentinel is subject to.
- Vacuum range is 7.5m-10m - smaller than the average sent, but still larger than the default player pickup radius.
- Has a vacuum transfer link range of 40m-50m - the player stays mobile, but beyond that range the drone cannot deliver the goods to the player, so it will vacuum and hold them suspended until it re-enters transfer range. Drone death drops undelivered loot. An maximum item capacity held in this manner might be in order during lootsplosions, making the drone require a few trips to recover the loot.
- Has a hard range tether limit from the player of 100m - beyond that it stops vacuuming and hauls carapace to its' owner so it doesn't get left behind. #DroneLivesMatter
- On violent death the drone just explodes dealing no damage and dropping any carried loot
- On lifespan time limit it slowly settles to the ground, feebly trying to reach the player in small pathetic selfdrags and failing power 'oh god help me!' hops. If the player picks it back up, maybe they can recharge it and not lose the gear charge? That would make them more expensive to field but also another asset to lose in a match. Personally, I vote for this option, but realistically most will prefer disposable drones because ain't no rushing ninja killing machine got time for that.
- IF reuseable, the cost to build should go up. Something like a (max rank?) vacuum mod, 5 control modules, a remote camera, and 250 oxium.
- IF reuseable, hitting the gear hotkey when one is deployed should recall it, putting it into 'out of range' recall mode and auto-retreiving it once in arms' reach.
- IF reuseable, entering the end mission exit should put the drone into 'out of range' recall mode.

Edited February 19, 2018 by Xyngrr
typos, mechanics evolution

[Ragingwasabi]

or just have universal vaccuum on our warframe

[Xyngrr]

I searched 'universal vacuum' a while ago, found it comes up alot and is always answered the same way - ' DE says no to wider range warframe universal vacuum. '  I haven't seen any other solution that mitigates the easy mode one would provide, or that helps make the choice between Sentinel and Kubrow an actual choice worth making.