Some ships carry a variety of drones to enable their crew to perform tasks without leaving their ship or manoeuvring their vessel into hostile territory. Drones are piloted from their mother ship with the Electronics (remote ops) skill and can operate at up to Medium range.
Drones are typically man-sized and have gravitic drives that allow them to operate in both space and atmospheres. However, while they can land on a planet, they do not have the power to travel from the surface to orbit and must be recovered manually.
Some of the ships in the Common Spacecraft chapter carry the drones detailed here. High Guard contains more drones along with details on how they may be used with any ship.
Mining drones allow a ship to mine asteroids without manoeuvring perilously close to spinning hunks of rock. Each set of mining drones allows the ship to process 1D x 10 tons of asteroid per day (typically producing common ore). The presence of drones includes ore handling machinery, allowing the ship to take on ore and transfer it to the cargo bay.
Probe drones are for surveying planetary surfaces, and are commonly found on board scout ships. They can be dropped from orbit in disposable entry shells but must be recovered manually. Probe drones are also capable of surveying orbiting satellites, derelicts and other space debris, and can also be used as communications relays.
Carrying repair drones allows a ship to make repairs during combat, allowing access to exterior components without risking crew. They also have suficient intelligence to allow repairs to be initiated by a drone controller rather than a dedicated engineer.
Repair drones allows a Traveller with the Electronics (remote ops) skill to use the Repair System action (see page 161). The repair drones are considered to have an Engineer skill level of 1 or the level the Traveller has in Electronics (remote ops), whichever is lower, in all specialities for the Repair System action alone.