====== Pulse Drone ======
[{{ :guards:portrait:pulse_drone.png?168|Pulse Drone portrait}}]
[{{ pulse_drone.png?168|A Pulse Drone.}}]

**Pulse Drones** are [[:guards:#utility drones]] which can appear in all types of mission at [[:mission difficulty#mission difficulty 2]] and higher. They have no [[:vision]], but can detect agents with their [[#Pulse Scanner]], which they use at the start of their movement on every enemy turn.

Pulse Drones are found in the [[:Contingency Plan]] DLC.

<WRAP infocard>
^  [[Class]] | Common Drone |
^  Movement | 8 [[:AP]] |
^  Base [[:firewalls]] | 1 |
^  Weapon | --- |
^  [[:Armor]] | --- |
^  [[:Vision]] | None (see below) |
^  Other traits | Immune to [[:KO]] damage \\ EMP vulnerable \\ No [[:noise#hearing]] \\ [[#Pulse Scanner]] \\ [[#Focused AI]] \\ Controllable (2 turns) |
^  Loot when [[:stealing]] | 1 [[:PWR]] |
^  Loot when [[:stealing#expert stealing]] | --- |
</WRAP>

Despite having no vision under enemy control, hacked Pulse Drones still provide full 360° vision to the agency.

A Pulse Drone can still "see" an agent on exactly the same tile as itself, and becomes [[:guard behaviour#alerted]] if it does. Due to a bug in the game, a Pulse Drone also "sees" the two adjacent tiles in "front" of it when moving diagonally, or when "facing" diagonally after its movement. This bug is fixed in the [[:mods:Community Bug Fixes]] mod.

> {{pulse_drone_sees_diagonally.mp4}} \\ Clip from [[twitch>qoalaty_engineering]]

===== Pulse Scanner =====

At the beginning of their movement during each enemy turn, a Pulse Drone performs a scan to detect nearby agents. The scan can detect agents in [[:cover#soft cover]], but is blocked by [[:cover#tall cover]] and [[:cover#hard cover]]. The in-game tooltip misleadingly describes the scan's radius as "5 tiles", but the true radius is nearly 6 tiles; specifically, a tile is in range if its [[wp>Euclidean distance]] from the Pulse Drone is less than (but not equal to) 6.

Pulse Drones have the Pulse Scanner ability instead of the [[:Local Scanner]] ability which other drones have. In particular, Pulse Drones only scan at the start of their movement, not when reaching an [[:guard behaviour#interest point]].

The scan also detects a rescued [[:Courier]] or [[:Prisoner]], but not agency-controlled [[:drones]]. The scan detects a unit even if they are [[:KO|knocked-out]] or [[:lethal damage|lethally-wounded]]. Pulse Drones do not scan while controlled by the agency.

===== Focused AI =====

Unlike other drones, Pulse Drones do not become [[:guard behaviour#alerted]] when they wake up after [[:rebooting]]. If a Pulse Drone is hacked or disabled, then afterwards it will simply return to its original [[:guard behaviour#patrolling|patrol route]], unless the Pulse Drone was already [[:guard behaviour#alerted]] beforehand.