Drone Companion Progression?

[Arenon]

Is there information missing from the Mechanic playtest on the progression of drone companions? On a first read, I was skimming the drone companion advancement feats, since they look like one-to-one lifts from the animal companion system.

We have

- [4] Tactical Drone. Equivalent to mature animal companion
- [8] Refined Chassis. Makes your drone graceful or burly, seems a pretty clear analogue for nimble/savage.
- [14] Advanced Drone. I assumed this would be the same as 'specialized animal companion' at level 14, but all the feat says is that your drone becomes an 'advanced companion'.
- [18] Elite Drone. Now we appear to be getting the actual feat that makes your drone a 'specialized companion', but it does not say that it gains a specialization of your choice like other specialized companion feats do, and it's a later level than any of those.

Then, looking a bit further, 'superior customization' and 'elite drone' both reference the 'superior drone' feat as a prerequisite. There is no superior drone feat. Based on the levels and the continuing pattern from prior customization feats, it seems like the advanced drone feat was renamed to that from 'superior drone' without updating the references to it.

All this to say, what is an advanced companion? It seems like an extra layer was added into drone progression from mature->nimble/savage->specialized, inserting 'advanced' between burly/graceful and specialized, but this term and the benefits it gives are not defined anywhere in this playtest or the sf2e core playtest that I could find. It's also unclear if the drone can access specializations at all. Without this information, it seems difficult to give feedback on a drone mechanic.

[ssims2]

Looking at the chassis options for robot companions, it becomes even more of a mess.

Surgical Strike (advanced maneuver for agile chassis): "If your
robot companion is tactical or advanced, increase this damage
to 2d6 precision damage"

Support benefit for powerful chassis: "If your robot companion
is commercial or advanced, the bleed damage increases to
2d6."

Armored Plates commercial customization: "Your robot companion gains a +1 item bonus to AC, or a +2 item bonus to AC if it is a superior robot companion."

and possibly more - those are just the first 3 examples I found. It looks like someone did a find and replace in the document (probably due to some terminology change late in the process).

I'd suggest for the time being to just use the normal animal companion progression.

[Gaulin]

I hope we get some errata by the time core comes out. Some of the issue might just be because this information is in core, but some has to be name changes while developing. Would have been nice if the info in the core rulebook pertaining to companions was made available with this playtest.

[kaid]

It seems like they were in the process of shifting from advanced to superior or visa versa and to references to both are intermixed.

[Arenon]

kaid wrote:

It seems like they were in the process of shifting from advanced to superior or visa versa and to references to both are intermixed.

But in that case, that still doesn't explain the 'extra' level of companion advancement at whichever of 14 or 18 specialized isn't supposed to be.