Gyrocopter : a scouting vehicle#126

Ok, so we know we’re going to get some kind of little rover vehicle to go around. We also know that some types of COGs will be able to fly… So, why not us as well ? The idea came to me when watching some Stranded Deep videos…
So here I am to suggest a new “vehicle”, something like a gyrocopter. However, it wouldn’t be a true vehicle. Let me explain.

It would need a “Gyrocopter Docking Module” (3 wall space). It could go on the side and ceiling, and the player could board the gyrocopter from the inside. The player cannot exit the gyrocopter without docking it. You can’t land anywhere you want and go from there, that’s the role of the land vehicle. You have to go back to your ship and dock it again. In fact, you couldn’t even get too close to the ground, the game would prevent that.
It’s use would mainly be for scouting : flying over a considerable area around your ship and seeing anything that happens on the ground. You could drive it around, but you could also stop it and make it maintain it’s position, get your hands off the driving wheel, so you can properly look around, and even take your weapons and shoot at whatever you want ! The gyrocopter would have two seats, so you can also bring your friend. One to pilot, and one to shoot, even when moving. Handy if you’re fleeing. And if you’re on an assault, you can have the firepower of two players. (Maybe you could even install weapons on the second seat, as some kind of manual turret ?)
Of course, enemies can shoot at you as well. If your gyrocopter gets to 0 health points, it will start going down, and explode on impact, dealing massive damage. So even when you’re doomed, you can still try to steer yourself towards your enemies and make them regret shooting you down. (Of course, if you were coming back to dock to your ship…. well, too bad.)
You’d have to craft the module and the gyrocopter separately : When a gyorcopter is destroyed, nothing happens to the module. You just have to craft a new one. Once crafted, it will automatically dock to a free docking module.
The docking module could not be deployed in undeground caves. Most of them are too tight to use it anyway, and it would be really op around lasers.

There is also another factor to it’s limitations : energy. It would have an energy bar, and it would continuously consume it, whether you are moving or stationary.
When the energy is completely depleted, it will be just like if you reached 0 health : it will shut down and start crashing. This is why you would get warning messages one minute and 30 seconds before you completely run out. Subnautica style. “Warning : 60 seconds of energy remaining.” “Emergency : 30 seconds of energy remaining.”
It would have multiple tiers, as everything in the game :

• Tier 1 : 200 max energy, 2 minutes max of flying, one seat
• Tier 2 : 400 max energy, 4 minutes max of flying, two seats
• Tier 3 : 600 max energy, 6 minutes max of flying, two seats

So the more it’s advanced, the more uses it can have. Tier 1 is mainly for scouting, but Tier 3 can also be used for assault.
The gyrocopter would recharge it’s energy when docked, at a rate of 10/s, no matter the tier.

But that’s not all : I think that the gyrocopter should also be limited in range. Here are two different options I thought of. You can’t really vote for them, but you can like the comment for the one you prefer, I guess.

Option 1 :
The gyrocopter has unlimited range, but the cracks dividing the areas are filled with lava, which releases hot air. This causes some turbulence in the air above, which makes gyrocopters unable to travel from one area to the other. if you try, your gyrocopter will get a little bit of damage, and will also be knocked back. (I guess you could have a little bit of heat effect when get close to the border, like you know when it gets blurry because it’s too hot ? yeah, that.)

Option 2 : (I like this one less, but I’ll share it anyway.)
The gyrocopter has a limited range around the ship. For some lore reason, it can’t go too far. Here’s an interpretation of a possible range : (the images do get messy, sorry about that lol.)

With the tadar what do you need to scout its not like you need to find landing sites for the ship they come up as you find them and say the name even if it is a mine

Sure, with a radar you could see what ships are where, but you won’t know what’s exactly on them. With the gyrocopter, you could quickly go over it and see what kind of modules and upgrades it has and prepare in consequence. It would also be a nice way to quickly see where are points of interests in an area, like villages, mines, etc.
And again, it would also be a support for assault and defense. It’s like a flying platform for shooting !

What if this is not a gyrocopter but a hot air balloon or min zeppelin

I thought about that, and it could work as well, while being way slower and bigger. But I’m keeping the hot air balloons for another suggestion…

The zeppelin could be multi purpose

I got a suggestion about the Energy bar for the Gyrocopter: you know how the Energy works in Space Engineers, right? So if you are stationary the energy is being used but just a little, when moving or panning the vehicle needs to use more to sustain in place and at the bottom right corner it says how much time left before the active batterries are fully depleted and can no longer fly (Example: Stationary - 1h, moving - 45 minutes, if carries a lot of weight - increases the energy consumption)
Same mechanic can be used with Gyropcopter’s energy, depends what you’re doing right now the consumption changes, Inertia Dampeners can also be used to change the consumption, since the dampeners use energy to stabilize the vehicle like suspend it in the same place and slow it down when moving in any direction

Well, being stationary shouldn’t cost less energy in my opinion, as you could shoot out, and that would actually be a huge advantage. If you were not able to shoot from the copter, then I guess beign stationary could use less energy than moving.

Well it could be balanced out by the copter not being able to fly for long, since if on normal mode the erruption happens every 25 minutes, being able to fly for an hour seems kinda pointless since most of the energy ain’t even gonna be used, so the copter’s maximum energy would be half the amount of time between the Volcano erruptions (25 minutes erruption -> 12,5 minutes of flying, 30 minutes -> 15 minutes, 20 minutes -> 10 minutes), which would be fair on all difficulties, on normal you get just the amount of time needed, on easy you can just scout the entire part and on hard you have just enough time to check what are the Drillships near you

Someone made a very good point about this suggestion on the Discord server, so here I am to add onto it.
Since the last “Control Bracer” update, we’ve seen that in this universe, despite being steampunk, instant live-feed video streams are possible from anywhere on the island. Given this, a lot of things suddenly become possible.

So, instead of a gyrocopter, it could be a large drone that you pilot from a distance. Using a gunner seat or something similar, you could connect to the module, deploy the drone, and do basically everything I described the gyrocopter would. It would still have health and energy, but it’d be easier to pilot and shoot with. I guess that if you stop controlling it, it would hover in place until you get back in control of it, or until it runs out of energy and falls.
This has advantages in opposition to the gyrocopter : you’re not actually in the drone, so if it gets destroyed, you don’t die with it. Piloting it would be easier since you can move and shoot at the same time, rather than having to stop and hover to shoot. And using them as giant flying bombs would maybe be a bit more viable.
However, you couldn’t have two seats, as described in my post.

So maybe we can have a bit of both : the drone version becomes available at T3 or at the end of T2, since it has more advantages. But the gyrcopter stll exists, if you want to bring a friend.

I like the drone idea 100% more it could even launch from a top slot of the drill ship

Well yeah, the mechanics in themselves wouldn’t really change. It would still require the module and all, it’s just the actual vehice that changes. Which is why it allows for both the gyrocopter and the drone to exist at the same time.

I also like the drone idea because it’s more practical, and also, arguably more cool and epic, but I dunno. The gyrocopter sounds like it has some charm to it