|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Core Class Archetype: The Engineer of the Future
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” — Arthur C. Clarke
I used this quote in my technomancer review, and it is equally important here. The Mechanic stands at the threshold between science fiction and fantasy. Where the Technomancer blends science with spellcasting to create a personal synthesis, the Mechanic externalizes that mastery through machines, gadgets, and battlefield invention. The core archetype of the class is not just that of a tech-user, but a collaborative combat engineer—someone whose skills enhance, support, and reshape the battlefield through inventive application.
Unlike the Technomancer, who channels advanced tech with the arcane, the Mechanic builds their future with circuits and tools. They are closer to the battlefield artificer than the traditional caster—their technology isn’t magical, but it can do things that appear like magic all the same. This manifests not through raw damage or spell slots, but through flexibility, customization, and interaction with the team.
Mechanics aren’t meant to be lone wolves. Their subclass options, particularly the Drone, show what the class is capable of when it's allowed to function as a team player or support specialist. Yet many of the core mechanics pull the class back into self-focus, especially Modify and its current limitations.
To fully realize this archetype, the class should evolve in the following directions:
- -More team-based Modify interactions
- -Flexible gadgetry that feels like prepping tools for the mission
- -Modular features that adapt to the situation
- -Companion integration that feels like teamwork, not micromanagement
In short, the Mechanic should feel like the party’s tech enabler—the one who rigs the breach charge, hacks the gate, retools your gear mid-fight, and sends their drone through enemy fire to turn the tide. That’s not a spellcaster with a soldering iron. That’s the magic of technology.
Introduction: Tech as a Team Player
One of the fundamental conceptual divides between magic and technology is the role of teamwork. Magic, as presented in most RPGs, is personal power—it revolves around a singular caster wielding spells, often acting alone unless ritual magic is involved. Technology, by contrast, is born of collaboration. No invention exists in a vacuum: it is built, shared, and adopted by groups.
The Mechanic class attempts to emulate the battlefield engineer or inventor—a tech-savvy operator bringing tools to bear. But its core implementation is still heavily individualistic, especially in the Modify mechanic. Only the Drone subclass captures the synergy technology often entails. I suggest re-framing the Modify ability and exocortex concepts to emphasize ally interaction, shared devices, and synergistic battlefield roles.
I will be providing a review and my thoughts on the class below. Many suggestions will be made. I do not expect all or most to get implemented, think of them as a list of options to try. Many are strong edits or shifts, which will likely prove too strong and need tuning downwards, but I find it best to start with strong changes and balance downward from there, so you don't risk getting in a design rut where nothing feels good enough.
Note: Like the technomancer review I made, I used AI to help format my review with BBCode. They like to take liberties with word changes. I cleaned it up but some of it might have slipped by and sound weird, sorry in advance.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Custom Rig
Simple and functional. It condenses multiple toolkits into one and lets you use key skills with one hand free. It works as a quality-of-life feature and sets up for skill usage. No changes needed, but it may be worth adding functionality that interacts with your Rig (e.g., daily consumable gadgets).
Modify (Core Mechanic)
The ability to customize gear, weapons, armor, or drones with tech mods is flavorful—but currently too limited:
- Mods last only until the start of your next turn, severely limiting setup play.
- You may only have one mod active at a time, and only on yourself.
- Modding grenades requires both hands free and is too slow in combat.
Recommendations:
- Mods should last until the end of your next turn, so you can set up for your next round.
- Allow multiple active mods with a reasonable cap (e.g., INT mod as a cap). Make some mods last longer (INT mod rounds, 1 minute, etc.)
- Enable modding of ally gear or weapons for team synergy.
- The constant reapplication of modify every turn, especially for simple damage mods, is extremely annoying. Imagine if barbarian had to rage EVERY SINGLE TURN, until they finally get an ability at level 13 to stay in rage. No one would accept that. Mechanic should not have to accept it either.
This would shift the Mechanic toward its conceptual space—a battlefield technician enhancing team effectiveness, not a solo tinkerer.
Mobile Exocortex (Level 1)
Currently gives either Reposition Exocortex or Synchronized Step. The latter is vastly superior. There's no reason for a subclass-defining ability to offer a clearly worse option.
Fix: Give Synchronized Step to all mechanics. Let them reposition a deployed exocortex and themselves as a Stride. This helps mitigate the action economy strain other exocortexes face.
Damage Customizations (Level 5)
Excellent modularity, letting you tailor damage types on the fly. However, these should last longer than 1 turn and be usable on ally weapons and grenades. Their utility screams "team support," and the short duration undermines that.
Remote Mods (Level 9)
Great idea that emphasizes gadgeteer flair. Would synergize beautifully with the ability to mod ally gear.
Enduring Mods (Level 13)
Allows one permanent mod. This feature feels like it should be granted at level 1, with a second instance at level 13. You have been spending 12 levels blindly applying your basic damage boost in 80% of all modding cases. It's boring. Level 13 is too late for your first permanent mod.
Manifold Mods (Level 15)
Two mods for one action—good power bump, with great action economy. If mods are allowed longer durations, might not be needed. This feature is designed to fight against your design that limits you to 1 mod and forces reapplying every turn.
Instant Mods (Level 19)
Modify as a free action. Great capstone payoff. If you change to allow multiple mods active and to work with teammates it will need balancing or it would become massively overpowered. In that case, giving it once per turn as a free action would probably be a good compromise.
Subclasses: Exocortex Options
Mine Exocortex
Initially underwhelming due to high action costs. Early game play is punishing: deploying at range (2 actions), modding for safety (1 action), then detonating (1 action) is a 4-action economy. Worse than a cantrip in terms of output.
However, many of the feats for this subclass are very good—Healing Mines, Gravitic Mines, Proximity Alert, etc. These make it viable at higher levels, and even one of the more flavorful exocortexes.
Fix: Reduce mine deployment at range to 1 action instead of 2. This smooths out early levels without overpowering later gameplay, since later levels already bypass this cost with Double Deployment.
Turret Exocortex
Feels like the turret does all the work while the Mechanic just babysits it. It uses your MAP, competes with your own actions, and requires constant modding to be effective (e.g., Pinpoint Shot).
Problems:
- You feel like a glorified gun stand, not a dynamic inventor.
- Damage mods are temporary and action-intensive.
Suggestions:
- More synergy between turret and mechanic.
- Allow turret-specific mods to persist longer.
- Rework action economy so you're fighting alongside your turret, not instead of it.
Drone Exocortex
This subclass clearly outshines the others. A full companion with 1-action command, independent MAP, and real synergy.
Concerns:
Too many mandatory feat taxes: Refined Chassis, Tactical Drone, Advanced Drone, Elite Drone, Ultimate Drone. You burn half your feat slots just to give it stat advancements.
Suggested fix: Consolidate progression at core levels. Use feats to differentiate playstyle and functionality, not just to keep the chassis up to date. Giving the core progression feats 1 customization each would go a long way. You should also axe at least 1 progression feat to give the subclass some more breathing room.
Systemic Design Issues and Suggested Fixes
Several underlying mechanics in the class's design create friction points across multiple subclasses. The following systemic adjustments are recommended to address these issues and elevate the class’s cohesion and playability. Not all of these suggestions should be implemented, some would be too powerful if combined together:
1. Drone Customizations as Daily Picks
Right now, customizations are effectively feat tax expansions, and many are extremely situational. Changing the system to let Mechanics choose a number of daily customizations equal to INT modifier would:
- Emulate familiar rules (PF2e’s Witch/Familiar system).
- Let the Mechanic feel like they’re tinkering and adapting daily.
- Increase build flexibility without power creep.
Optionally, a feat that is similar to Convertible Chassis could let the Mechanic set multiple preset configurations of customizations and swap between them with an action (transformer-style), adding more flavorful gameplay.
2. Drone Progression Consolidation
Currently, Drones have five separate feats to grant stat progression:
- Tactical Drone (Lvl 4)
- Refined Chassis (Lvl 8)
- Advanced Drone (Lvl 14)
- Elite Drone (Lvl 18)
- Ultimate Drone (Lvl 20)
This burns half your class feats, and grants zero customizations along the way.
Fix:
- Consolidate progression into three feats: Tactical Drone → Advanced Drone → Elite Drone
- Add 1 customization pick per feat to provide parallel value.
- Make the customization feats grant 2 picks.
This would free up valuable feat space and make builds more diverse.
3. Action Economy Booster Overload
The number of action economy fixes in the feat list reveals a foundational issue—most subclasses are not designed with a reasonable action flow in mind.
Fix:
- Rebuild core subclass abilities (particularly Turret and Mines) to assume more efficient default actions.
- Treat action economy booster feats (Hunker Down, Synchronized Advance, etc.) as optional optimizations, not essential fixes.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Class Feats Review (Levels 1–20)
Below is a level-by-level breakdown of the Mechanic class feats, grouped by minimum feat level. The review focuses on balance, utility, and impact within the class framework.
Level 1 Feats
Commercial Customization: Most options are underwhelming or should be baseline. Consider granting two picks to increase value.
Critical Explosion: Strong mine boost, basically mandatory for Mine Exocortex builds.
Explosive Shot: Tiny splash damage increase with poor action efficiency. Not worth taking.
High Voltage: Grants a solid AoE attack to your drone. Strong pick.
High-Tech Medic: Most effects are poor. The Healbot ability is decent but drone-locked.
Multidisciplinary Mechanic: Weak. Too minor for a class feat. Doesn't even let you craft the items for the discipline you pick.
Shielded Turret: Decent early pick for turret builds, improves survivability.
Level 2 Feats
Area Denial Turret: Adds Area trait to turret strikes. Strong, but highlights turret's MAP problem.
Biometric Assessor: Flavorful, but too weak due to mod slot competition.
Coordinated Fire: Essential for Drone/Turret. Massive value from MAP bypassing for Turrets. Basically a mandatory pick for turret operators to make it so you can actually fire your own gun.
Hunker Down: Excellent action economy. Great for any Mechanic.
Instant Deployment: Saves action at start of combat. Solid, but better options exist at this level.
Mobile Deployment: Another action economy booster. Good utility.
Modify Drone: Should be baseline functionality, not a feat.
Remote Operation: Extremely niche. Poor general value. Range limitations mean you basically have to be IN the vehicle in question for any reasonable use case.
Level 4 Feats
Adaptive Camouflage: Needs longer duration. Poor unless Modify is improved.
Concentrated Explosion: Damage boost doesn’t scale well. Needs level scaling.
Double Detonation: Solid if you can set up two mines. Setup cost limits value. Consider swapping levels with Double Deployment.
Gravitic Mines: Great tactical utility. Strong mine support feat.
Self-Destruct: Weak damage for its level. Rarely useful. Basically just a way to blow up your broken turret because the rules for bringing it to full are wonky.
Tactical Drone: Mandatory for Drone users. Needed for companion advancement.
Level 6 Feats
Auto-Target: Reaction AoO for turret/drone. Great value. Solidly balanced.
Cloaking Companion: OK concealment bonus. Could be stronger.
Defensive Programming: Solid defense utility for allies. Nice flavor.
Double Deployment: Enables significant action efficiency. Fantastic.
Tactical Customization: Good, but possibly too weak for the level. Could grant two picks.
Tactical Team-Up: Worse than Coordinated Fire due to MAP issues. Needs redesign.
Level 8 Feats
Activate Targeting System: Excellent for dealing with concealment/invisibility. Campaign dependent.
Refined Chassis: Mandatory drone upgrade. Should also grant customization.
Cloaking Field: Better than Cloaking Companion. Usable on self. Should extend sight benefit to allies.
Expansive Array: Adds two damage types. May unintentionally grant damage dice boost—needs clarification. 2d8 as printed is the base damage.
Gravitic Dampener: Excellent battlefield control. Sets a good standard for how mods should function.
Instant Install: Niche. Unlikely to see frequent use.
Transmutative Casing: Situationally useful. Mostly flavor-driven.
Level 10 Feats
Advanced Customization: It's Meh. Would be better with two picks.
Energy Expulsion: Short-range AoE tied to hitting with strikes. Conceptually odd. Why do I have to hit for it to work?
Flickering Shield: Good defensive mod, but hamstrung by Modify rules. Would be a perfect mod to give allies.
Proximity Alert Mines: Excellent tactical boost for mines. Needs clarification on triggering behavior. If you place the mine in the enemy square, can it trigger immediately? If not, significantly less useful.
Rocket Boosters: Great mobility and offensive utility. Superior to the Flier customization.
Level 12 Feats
Deploy Bunker: Better for drone than turret. Too action-intensive to maintain.
Glitch Pulse: Strong in tech-heavy campaigns. Mod limit restricts use.
Healing Mines: Adds powerful healing utility. Excellent design direction. Might come a bit too late for such a paradigm shift for the subclass.
Shockwave Pulse: Solid control. Synergizes well with AoE builds and Auto-Target. One of the best mods.
Spinning Blades: Huge AoE, but hits allies. Risky pick. Only use with certain party comps.
Level 14 Feats
Advanced Drone: Mandatory. Should grant customization.
Advanced Targeting System: Once-per-10-min bonus. Just okay.
Convertible Chassis: Fantastic concept. Limited practical use. If you could also swap customizations would be a lot better.
Synchronized Advance: Excellent action economy. Auto-pick for ranged drone/turret.
Level 16 Feats
Self-Repairing Exocortex: High-value sustain. Strong survivability buff.
Superior Customization: Requires a “superior drone” that doesn’t exist. Needs clarification. I am assuming you meant to ALSO errata this feat as well, since you errata'd Elite Drone to use Advanced Drone instead.
Terraforming Mines: Excellent battlefield control. One of the best mine feats.
Level 18 Feats
Elite Drone: Another mandatory upgrade. Still grants no customization.
Enduring Exocortex: Niche. Only useful when downed. Grants no recovery or survivability, so it's a feat you actively want to avoid ever using or relying on. Not a good design for such a high-level feat.
Permanent Mod: Finally gives a second permanent mod. Comes very late. The class should start with 1 permanent mod so that this feat, which is such a high-level feat, grants an EXTRA mod option to make permanent, instead of effectively just one (since you will be spending the level 13 one on a damage boost mod realistically).
Level 20 Feats
Auto Loop: Reaction loop for subclass reactions. Strong if used right, otherwise niche.
Multitasker: Permanent Quickened. Best use of the trait in the game. Amazing capstone.
Ultimate Drone: Power boost is fantastic, but it is yet ANOTHER feat tax for a stat boost. This one elevates your drone to fighter levels of competency (in the case of a Str build for your drone, you might actually have a BETTER attack than the fighter). It's so good you can't NOT take this capstone as a drone exocortex. I would like to see the capstones applicable to all mechanic subclasses, and provide significant shifts in gameplay power like Multitasker gives, instead of this. This feat is amazing, but a boring auto-pick for a subclass drowning in boring auto-picks. Boring is the opposite of what I hope for in my capstone feats.
Overall Feat Structure Commentary
Drone Mechanics suffer from feat tax: 5 progression feats, no added customization, and multiple action economy picks.
Turret and Mine mechanics have fewer feat taxes but still rely heavily on action economy boosters to function.
Mine builds become viable and powerful later, but early game is action-starved.
Recommendation: Reduce feat taxes and repurpose advancement feats to grant customizations or subclass-defining perks. Strengthen early Mine play with a 1-action deploy and consolidate drone feats to reduce burden.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The following summarizes each robot customization in the playtest, categorized and assessed for play value, redundancy, or suggested improvements.
Commercial Customizations
Armored Plates: An AC boost. You are going to need this. It's such an obvious and straight numerical boost it sort of violates Paizo's core design principles of not printing options like this. Near mandatory. This is very likely to be your free customization pick.
Artificial Personality: Basically Familiar Speech for your robot. It's flavorful and can be pretty useful.
Aquatic Adaptation: Extremely niche and either totally useless or totally mandatory depending on the campaign.
Cameras: Why is this an option? In what world would someone expect their robot to NOT have cameras?!?! How would it see? You took a basic roleplaying action and forced it to be a mechanical build option. There is no need for this ability—remove it.
Climber: Gives your robot a climb speed. Completely outclassed by Flier.
Flier: Gives your robot a flying speed. This is extremely good and makes your robot companion usable in Zero-G and in a huge number of other scenarios. Not mandatory, but damn is it one of the best options.
Grounded: Loses weakness to electricity. Campaign and GM dependent on how good this is. Some GMs love murdering companions, others mostly ignore them.
Integrated Weapon Mount: You get one for free, so picking it would get you the second weapon mount. It would be mandatory if you didn't get it for free, so really it's just added versatility. One pain point is that it doesn't say anything about ammo management: Does the drone power the weapon or does it need to reload it? Needs to be answered.
Light Mounts: Add a flashlight to one of your drone's weapons instead with a Uniclamp. Another one of those "Why is this an option" options. Narratively there is no reason you couldn't just duct tape a flashlight to your drone, or just assume the damn thing comes with a light on it, like your comm unit has for free.
Linguistic Upload: Your robot speaks more languages. Another super niche ability that also ignores that every AI LLM and Google Translate exists CURRENTLY. There should be a way to get this functionality that doesn't cost class feat choices. It's bad.
Manual Dexterity: Your robot can throw grenades and help you with other tasks. Flavorful.
Nightvision Sensors: Gives darkvision. It's good, but also screams a sort of ability that should be solvable with gear purchases instead of class feat choices.
Olfactory Sensors: Imprecise Scent 30ft. It's as good as the core sense is. Not sure it's worth a class feat considering vacuum and outer space are relatively common in the setting.
Skill Module: Lets your robot use one skill. This is a skill feat that needs a class feat to take it. Not good.
Speakers: Another "My pocket smartphone has this functionality, why don't you?" option. Just remove this option and allow people to assume their robots have speakers like EVERY OTHER COMPUTER EVER MADE.
Upgrade Slot: Gives an armor upgrade slot. Has a lot of utility, but should probably be baseline so you can offload several of these options into those upgrade slots if you want them.
[size=14pt]Tactical Customizations[/size]
Assistant: It's auto aid another, if you are both trained in the skill. There’s no rule your robot can't REGULAR aid you, so this is almost definitely not worth a feat pick.
Biotech Healing Circuit: Lets your robot get healed. VERY VERY good. Almost mandatory.
Burrower: You spend way too much time on metal walkways, spaceships, and building floors higher than ground level. It COULD be good, but it’s super situational.
Echolocation: Precise Hearing. Way better than scent. Pretty good pick.
Expertise Module: A class feat for an expert bump. Totally not worth it.
Emergency Reboot: Save your robot instead of letting it get destroyed and losing it for the whole day. Damn near a mandatory pick. Ridiculously good if your GM ever hits your companion with any regularity.
Hardened Chassis: More hit points. Solid pick for durability.
High Speed: Boost a speed. You’re probably gonna pick flying if you take this.
Network: Lets you hack from your robot. Useful, but also one of those "Why is this not baseline functionality? Who makes a robot with no USB port or Wi-Fi in it?"
Share Charge: Lets your robot power any device that needs a battery. If it doesn't already do this for its integrated weapon, this becomes very good for managing ammo. Otherwise it's niche but flavorful.
[size=14pt]Advanced Customizations[/size]
Emergency Repair: A self-heal for your robot. Can be pretty good. Probably better to just take healing circuits and let your healer do the healing.
Maneuver Module: A +1 or +2 bonus to combat maneuvers. Very rarely worth trying to do—your robot is not going to be good at it, even with a bunch of picks to be expert in Athletics.
Neural Upload: You take direct control of your robot and lose control of your own body. You can already just give 3 actions to your robot for 2 of your own actions, so I'm not sure why this exists. It's actually an action economy nerf since you already decide what your robot does anyway.
Optimized Avoidance: Your robot companion takes no damage on a success for the given saving throw. If you take this, it's probably going to be Reflex to take less damage from AoEs. Your robot is already immune to a lot of Fortitude and Will effects, so it’s the best option.
Recharge: Recharges your batteries for you. This is a cantrip-level effect as a high-level customization. Prismenis get this with Electric Arc at level 1. Not sure why this exists.
Resistant Panels: Give resistance to a damage type. Very campaign specific. If you’re going to be wandering the Plane of Fire, could be great, otherwise not really worth it.
Sapient: Your robot is its own person, but still must be commanded by you. This is highly flavorful, but in reality, it loses damage immunities in exchange for being able to do skill checks it likely has no proficiencies in. Only take this for the RP flavor, because otherwise it’s a bad pick.
[size=14pt]Superior Customizations[/size]
Agility Optimization: Moving doesn’t trigger and it gets expert Acrobatics. Flavorful, and somewhat campaign and GM specific. If the GM likes tossing out enemies with reaction strikes frequently, it becomes a lot better.
Camouflage: Your robot is sneaky in one kind of environment. This is a VERY late customization for a robot you need to build up for stealth.
Glow Up: Makes your robot good at talking. This could be OK if your party has no faces, but it's probably worthless—especially considering how late you get it.
Speedster: +10 to speeds. Consistently good for all robot builds. Probably your go-to choice.
|
|
Fix: Reduce mine deployment at range to 1 action instead of 2. This smooths out early levels without overpowering later gameplay, since later levels already bypass this cost with Double Deployment.The errata already changed deploying at range to 1 action (2 actions is for deploying a mine in an already occupied space)
That helps a lot with the early level mine action economy, I didn't catch that one, that's good to hear.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
This is another excellent write-up. I'll emphasize two points mentioned in it already: for starters, the drone's feat progression is literally broken, in the sense that as written it does not work or make sense, and needs a rewrite. The second bit I'd like to emphasize is that it would make a lot of sense for the Mechanic to be able to modify items for their team, and not just themselves. I can understand not wanting the Mechanic to end up like the Alchemist and turning into a mod dispenser for their allies, but I think that can be circumvented by letting the Mechanic mod one of their items and an ally's at the same time. If nothing else, a feat to enable this would be neat.
One thing that is suggested a few times in the write-up that I'd also like to bring to the forefront is more core stuff that scales with the Mechanic's Int: right now, the class's main way of making Int relevant is through some generic damage increase mods on some subclasses, which I don't think is super-interesting, and the Drone is uniquely positioned to not even need Int for their damage increase or essential stats. As a result, it's possible to dump Int on a Mechanic, pick the Drone exocortex, and not experience a huge difference compared to a full-Int mechanic, which I think needs addressing. Having Int rewarded through some universal class feature, such as by having your number of mods scale with Int, would likely be a fairly simple and effective way of addressing that.
OP discusses some issues with a few of the subclasses, and I'll also add that the Mine exocortex feels like a bit of a missed opportunity to have a grenade crafter subclass: right now, the base mines are this mechanical silo that tries to replicate a lot of the functionality of grenades, when in my opinion letting the Mechanic Craft grenades on the spot and then modify them using all of the subclass's existing mods and feats would make the exocortex far more interesting to play with right off the bat, and would let it integrate a lot better with Starfinder's itemization. In general, the Mechanic doesn't interact with tech as much as I think they should, and this could be one of many ways to start remediating that.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Dragonbane999, did you fill out the official survey? I really think you should include links to this and your technomancer write-up when you do. Today's the last day for it.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
One thing I forgot to mention is the crafting rules for Starfinder seem a bit heavy. It reveals itself when playing the mechanic since they are so crafting focused.
You have: Pharma Crafting, Tech Crafting, Machine Magic (hybrid) crafting, but then you ALSO have a few mentions to Magical Crafting.
Thats four crafting feats to make items, when in pathfinder you can get away with alchemical crafting and magic crafting to make almost everything. If you want to make items faster, Fabricator is another feat you probably want. Thats like half your feat picks just to make items. Not even get bonuses to making them.
It does help that mechanic gets a few extra bumps to keep crafting and computers leveled together, but When playing the mechanic, I noticed how heavy the feat requirements are in comparison to Pathfinder. Biotech and necrocrafts aren't even covered in the playtest, if those have their own feats then the feat taxes to unlock crafting become even more extreme in comparison to pathfinder.
Tech crafting feels unneeded, it should be the baseline: Of course you can craft tech items with skill in crafting, that is literally just mundane crafting in a sci fi world. Machine Magic feels like the replacement to magical crafting, not something that should be in addition to it. And pharma crafting feels like the replacement to alchemical crafting. Unfortunately the playtest doesn't really specify properly what is a pharma item and what isn't. We just played assuming the medical supplies section and the spell ampoules were covered.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I agree with much of what the OP wrote, but wanted to add a couple comments. First, Multidisciplanary Mechanic feels a lot more like a Technomancer feat. Second, Remote Piloting ought to be a baseline ability for Mechanics; it feels like it's replicating the Synth piloting the lander down from orbit in "Aliens," which is very cool, but you ought to be able to use it if you can "see" the vehicle, even through a computer screen. Third, the OP is dead-on about Crafting, especially as compared to PF2.
Others have pointed out the missing "Superior Drone," but the Advanced Drone feat requires ... Advanced Drone. I guess this is getting errata'd but feels almost comical that those mistakes were made :) Overall, I feel there are too many feats that are worth taking at multiple levels, but they get each other's way :(