Drones (Basic)
Drones are discontented, undereducated citizens which appear as a result of population pressure and other social forces, Drones occupy the space of other base inhabitants.
If a base has more Drones than Talents, a Drone Riot will result. A base will continue to feed itself, but manufacturing, research, and energy production are all halted. There are a few different approaches to ending Drone Riots depending on the play style of your faction.
The Good: Increase the number of talents to match or exceed Drone activity.
- Building Secret Projects such as the Human Genome Project or Clinical Immortality, or base facilities such as a Paradise Garden increases the number of talents in a base.
- Increasing the budget for Psych on the Social Engineering menu can encourage your citizens to become talents. Base facilities such as Hologram Theatres increase the Psych output at a base.
The Bad: If there are far too many Drones that happiness is out of reach, you can settle for contentment.
- If your social engineering Police rating is high enough, combat units stationed in a city can convert drones into workers. Building The Ascetic Virtues or training units with Non-Lethal Methods can aid in this pursuit.
- Building secret projects such as The Virtual World or base facilities such as Recreation Commons reduce the number of Drones. Setting drones to work as Specialists to produce Psych can also pacify other drones.
The Ugly: "Failure is always an option." -- Adam Savage, "MythBusters" or "I have become comfortably numb." -- Pink Floyd, "Comfortably Numb'
- Costly Secret Projects such as The Telepathic Matrix, or base facilities such as Punishment Sphere prevent Drones being able to riot. But they don't come cheap.
- Nerve Stapling can also be used to quell drone riots. Each Stapling stops drone riots (and golden ages) for ten turns. After being stapled once, drones can become immune to being stapled. But you can try again the same turn, and it might work. (Which is probably a bug). Eventually the drones become permanently immune. Each time you nerve staple it counts as a minor atrocity. And other factions will impose ten turns of trade sanctions. Nerve Stapling incurs no Ecological penalty, as it is a minor atrocity.
The base Governor can be instructed to manage only the population of a base (using advanced settings on the ‘Base Control Screen’) and will automatically minimise the number of Drones at a base.
