Vanilla Quests Expanded – Drone Factory
[www.patreon.com]
Vanilla Quests Expanded is a brand new series of mods that aims to add some interesting quest chains to the game, encouraging world map travel and quest interactions in order to obtain powerful rewards. Ultimately, it allows us to add some really cool mechanics without making an entirely separate Vanilla Factions Expanded mod for them.
In the Drone Factory mod, players are thrust into a rust-choked industrial conflict as the planet’s dormant war machines mysteriously blink back to life. The escalating crisis begins with expeditions into derelict drone scrapyards – valuable but perilous dens of discarded military hardware. Here, colonists must dismantle erratic, half-functional defenders to scavenge fragmented command cores and proprietary blueprints once thought lost to time.
However, the threat quickly reaches your doorstep when a rogue long-range transmitter begins broadcasting an awakening signal across the region. As relentless waves of vagrant drones besiege your settlement, your caravan must mount a strike against an abandoned robotics warehouse to silence the long range transmitter and stop the awakened drones.
Tracing the origin of these rogue broadcasts leads to the campaign’s grand finale: a massive, ancient factory repurposed by a powerful pirate gang. These raiders are mass-producing drones for a lucrative black market, guided by a captive genius known only as The Tinkerer. During the siege, your forces must breach the factory’s heavy fortifications, battling a lethal combination of seasoned pirates and fresh, off-the-line drone defenders that are continuously manufactured during your approach.
In the heart of the facility, a critical choice awaits: rescue The Tinkerer from captivity to fully unlock his ancient knowledge, or eliminate him to ensure the blueprints never fall into the wrong hands again.
The emergence of the drones allows your colony to reverse-engineer the technology, giving you the ability to construct your own mechanized workforce: a tireless, automated industrial constructs and a loyal defensive force to protect your colony.
We have tested the mod with a group of trusted testers, but in case any issues occur, please use Vanilla Bug Reporting Expanded google form to report them. We don’t respond to bug reports in the comments and will remove them when we see them.
[forms.gle]
Graphics are created by Oskar Potocki.
Code is done by Sarg Bjornson and Taranchuk.
Writing is done by Ferny.
Storyteller artwork by vitalii.
(CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)[creativecommons.org]
Q: Where can I find change logs?
A: Check change notes, or Github.
Q: Can I just make drones and not bother with the quest?
A: Yes you can! The quest exists to give you an option to unlock some new types of drones, but generally all drones that were previously available in VFE-Mechanoids are here now. Simply complete the Dronetech research project.
Q: Can I put any turret on top of the mobile turret?
A: No, that is a legacy feature in the old mod – and it was buggy as hell. Now the mobile turret has a military turret attachment on top of it.
Q: Why bother with drones when mechanoids are better?
A: Drones are a precursor to mechanoids – and if you have mechanoids and a mechanitor in your colony, congratulations, you may not need drones anymore! Drones work slower than mechanoids, and don’t deal as much damage. Their strength lies in the fact that they require no bandwidth, they don’t need to charge, they produce no wastepacks and they don’t need a mechanitor. Simply make a drone whenever you need one!
In addition to that, disassembling them refunds 100% of resources spent to make them, making them effectively free.
Q: Can I dev-trigger the quest chains somehow?
A: There is a button in the dev menu called View Quest Chains. It will allow you to view and trigger individual quests as well as auto-complete them. It can also tell you when the next quests will trigger.
Q: You’re adding 3 new quests. Won’t it dilute the quests I get?
A: No. We have made a brand new system decoupled from the storyteller. These quests are not taken into account by the storyteller and are triggered on timer and conditions instead. Once you meet the requirements for the quest, it will trigger after the internal timer ticks down.
Q: How can I obtain drone cores?
A: Drone cores can be made by the Tinkerer unique drone, but they can also be obtained from drone scrapyard and drone emergence quests! They are valuable, treat them as such!
Q: Can I expand a drone’s lifespan somehow?
A: No, lifespan is just that: lifespan. Eventually the drone will need manual shut down.
Q: Do I get a 100% resource refund when I disassemble enemy drones?
A: No. Only colony drones refund all the resources.
Q: Does it work on existing saves?
A: Yes it does! The first quest should show up within 90 to 120 days from game start!
Q: Where can I find the special character?
A: They appear in the final quest.
Q: Will you add more quest mods?
A: Yes! If you think it’s the right idea and you like this mod, make sure to leave a comment telling us so!
Q: CE compatible?
A: No idea. Ask CE.
Q: I liked the drone implementation from VFE-Mechanoids better.
A: I personally think it was very dated. RimWorld changed tremendously since that mod released – we even got player-controlled mechanoids as our automated workforce. Drones needed to adapt, so adapt I did.
