Bug in Gun Drone (and the fix)

I recently experienced a problem with my level 50 AR/DEV's gun drone. When summoned, the drone is supposed to follow and attack, like a troller pet. However, on indoor maps, the drone would not follow. Instead, it would simply hover in circles. Dismissing and resummoning did no good. However, it worked fine on outdoor maps.

A friend suggested that the drone acted like a minion stuck on 'heel'. However, the pet interface for the drone is like the ones for troller pets, not like the one for minions. You can't change the stance or positioning, only dismiss the pet. Technically speaking, there should be no way for the drone to get stuck in that position.

At my friend's suggestion, I tried summoning my lore pets first, then my gun drone. I don't use the lore pets that often, and when I do, the gun drone is almost always summoned. Under normal circumstances, I end up with two separate pet windows, one for the gun drone, and one for the lore pet. However, I found that if I summoned the lore pets *first*, the gun drone window combined with the lore pet window. While the gun drone did not have position/stance buttons of its own, it WAS under the 'all pets' position stance buttons.

I reset 'all pets' to 'follow', then dismissed the pets. When I resummoned, the drone worked just as it should.

Therefore, what's happening is that the drone is a pet, not a minion, but it can get combined with the lore minion interface. Once the setting for 'all pets' is changed (say to defensive rather than aggressive or stay rather than follow), the drone gets stuck, and of course, there's no way to change the stance or setting through the usual pet interface.

No idea if any of the troller pets have had this problem, or if it's unique to just the drones, but support didn't know of it, so I thought I'd share.

~Elizabeth

---

Leave the saving of the world to the men? I don't think so! -Elastigirl

The SOLUS Foundation - http://www.solusfoundation.com
A Liberty-based bastion, seven years strong.

I've not had any problems with my Gun Drone following me unless I move out of range of it too fast. Then I get the same behavior as escort pets that don't know where I am. As long as I move a bit slower initially it will stay with me on Oranbega maps, Talon Cave maps, 5th Column cave maps or anything else.

---

If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.

Black Pebble is my new hero.

Nor had I ever had any problems with drone until the last month or so. However, the problem was so pronounced as to make soloing very difficult on indoor instanced missions. I mean, imagine that you summon your drone and it just floats around in staggery circles, not attacking and not following you. Talk about a PITA. If my drone's working properly, it may take a moment or two to follow, but it'll zoom along pretty quickly. It might get distracted by a mob, but it will show up eventually, if it doesn't self-destruct first.

Basically, the bug is that the drone settings can be changed using the 'all pets' button on the lore pet interface, which, to the best of my knowledge, should not happen. Moreover, once they're changed, the drone is stuck in that setting unless and until you change the stance/setting back using the lore pet interface.

As best as I can figure, this is how it happens. When you summon your lore pets, the drone window combines with the lore pet window. [Edit: I thought the drone window stayed separate if you summoned it first, but it doesn't. Shows you how often I use my lore pets.] If you make any changes to stance or position using the 'all pets' button at the top of the interface, the drone settings will be changed as well. Therefore, if you tell the pets to 'stay', using the 'all pets' button, the drone is set to stay as well.

Let's say that you just summon your drone after that, and you don't summon your lore pets. There's no way to change the drone's settings using its normal interface. As you know, all you can do with the regular drone interface is dismiss the pet. So, you're stuck with a drone set to stay, set to passive, or what have you. My guess is that the drone continued to follow and attack in outdoor settings because MM pets end up following you anyway outdoors, at least once you get a certain distance away from them.

So. All I'm saying is: If you suddenly notice your drone won't follow you on an indoor map and/or isn't attacking, the problem is likely that you've accidentally changed its stance with your lore pets interface. To correct the problem, 1. summon your lore pets as well as your drone, so the drone appears on the lore pet interface window, 2. using the all pets button, change the stance back to 'aggressive' and 'follow me'. The problem should be solved.

Granted, it's still a bug, because the drone shouldn't respond to the lore pet interface at all, but it seems to be doing so. But in lieu of a bug fix, this at least addresses the issue. I'm sharing this because support didn't know about either the bug or how to fix it, so I'm hoping this will help if anyone else runs into the same problem I did. Better yet, IMO, I would just avoid using the 'all pets' button on the lore interface.

~Elizabeth

---

Leave the saving of the world to the men? I don't think so! -Elastigirl

The SOLUS Foundation - http://www.solusfoundation.com
A Liberty-based bastion, seven years strong.