Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This has been suggested briefly in another "drone interface improvement" thread, but I thought it was so good that it should be a separate suggestion.

Basically, allow drone groups you define to be dragged to the module slots of the ship control panel. This would create a special "Drone Control" icon and show the number of drones in the group where the ammo count would normally be for turrets and launcher icons.

Clicking the button (or pressing the corresponding hotkey) would engage the drones (each drone would do its default action: Engage for combat drones, Scramble for ewar drones, Salvage for salvaging drones, etc...). If the drones are already engaged, it would cause them to return and orbit instead.

If only some of the drones are already engaged, then clicking the button would engage all other drones to the same target. In order to recall all drones of that group, you would have to engage them all and then click again to have them return and orbit.

Hovering the mouse over the button would show a list of drones in it (with corresponding icons).

It's so obvious I've suggested it before myself.