Drone Sector : futuristic gunship game

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Drone Sector is a futuristic gunship game. Provide close air support by firing variety of weapons at the enemies and guide your allied troops via commands. Keep your troops alive, complete objectives, collect resources and recruit engineers. Research better weaponry for the gunship and the troops.


Home page
Steam
Single Player


Drone Sector - Demo Trailer 2026

About



Futuristic Drone Gunship
Drone Sector fuses the gunship close air support role with the drone's observation and mission command. Inspired by the real-life AC-130 gunship and MQ-9 Reaper drone, it merges these powerful roles in a futuristic setting, where advanced technology and heavier firepower enable you to take on more complex and dangerous missions. While not a pure military simulator, the focus remains on tactical planning and execution, with greater flexibility in mission design and weaponry.



Mission Control
Guide your squads as they advance through hostile environments to achieve mission objectives. Command with precision, helping them avoid traps and eliminating high-priority threats with your overwhelming firepower. Outnumbered by enemy forces, you'll need to maximize your technological superiority to turn the tide.



Mission-to-Mission Progression
During each mission, you'll need to make strategic decisions about resource gathering. Send your ground squads into buildings or key areas to collect vital resources and research documents—but this comes with risk. Stay too long, and you may lose your squad to overwhelming enemy forces. Decide when to extract and when to push your luck for valuable rewards.

Between missions back at base, upgrade your gunship, squads, and weapons. Manage your ammo production and research new technologies to improve your chances in the field.








Key Features

• Fluid, responsive gunship weapon controls
• Multiple camera modes: color, night vision and thermal vision
• Commanding self-sufficient squads on the ground
• A variety of infantry and armored unit types
• Resource collection and ammunition management
• Weapon research and manufacturing
• Squad building and upgrades
• Handcrafted levels with randomized missions

AI Generated Content Disclosure
The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

No AI-generated content during gameplay. Non-English text localizations are AI-translated placeholders.


Mature Content Description
The developers describe the content like this:

Military combat involving firearms and explosions, resulting in enemy casualties. There is no depiction of blood, gore, or sexual content. Players engage in tactical missions where combat is between military forces. The game does not include depictions of drug or alcohol abuse, sexual assault, or self-harm.

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v0.1.4 - Pathfinding Update
Fri, July 31, 2026



This update reworks the tactical pathfinding and vehicle movement systems, alongside several map, balance, and UI changes.


A new previous-version branch is also available on Steam. This allows you to return to v0.1.3 if the latest update causes problems. It can be selected from: Steam - Drone Sector - Properties - Game Versions & Betas - previous-version

Added
Added a public previous-version Steam branch containing v0.1.3.

Changed
Adjusted the lighting on the Patagonia Heights map.

Added more roads to the Flatland Airbase map.

Added large rocks around the starting areas of the Dry Foothills map, providing additional early cover and concealment.

Changed the HUD toggle key from H to Numpad 0.

UI
Hid research options that have not yet been implemented.

Increased the maximum gamepad aiming sensitivity to 100x.

Smoothed the squad movement lines displayed on the HUD. These lines are intended as loose guides rather than exact representations of the paths squads will follow. Squads retain some autonomy when moving, and short sections of the line may pass through walls or buildings.

Fixed
Vehicles now slow down more cautiously before making turns.

Balance
Direct hits from the railgun now deal armor-piercing damage instead of high-explosive damage.

Increased the railgun's area-of-effect damage.

Disabled ground-to-ground friendly fire on all difficulty levels. It remains available as an option in Sandbox Mode.


Technical
Reworked the tactical pathfinding layer. It now pre-calculates more navigation data, and the tactical navigation graph is generated automatically. This allows for faster iteration, improved consistency, and denser pathfinding data.

Reworked vehicle movement physics and AI. The new configuration provides finer and clearer control over vehicle behavior, making adjustments easier and addressing several weaknesses of the previous system.

Possible Issues
The higher-resolution tactical pathfinding data may have a greater performance cost. There are several potential ways to optimize it, but the current priority is to verify that the new system works correctly and measure its actual performance impact.


Known Issues
Infantry squad formation direction does not yet adjust to follow the shape of the path.

Vehicles may occasionally become stuck moving back and forth near trees, rocks, or other small obstacles. Issuing a new move order will usually resolve the issue. A fix is planned for the next update.

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v0.1.5 - Combat Systems Update
Tue, August 11, 2026



This update reworks several of Drone Sector's underlying combat systems, including projectile damage, explosions, and weapon configuration. Explosions can now use separate near and far damage areas instead of relying on a single explosion radius, providing more control over how different weapons deal damage.

Weapon and ammo selection UI has also been expanded to expose more of this information to the player. The new combat system is easier to balance and expand, and serves as an important foundation for more advanced damage behavior and potential weapon-stat modding in the future.

Vehicle movement and pathfinding also received another significant reliability pass. Vehicles should now handle corners more carefully, collide with walls less often, and recover from problematic movement situations much more reliably.


Added

• Restart Mission button.
• Difficulty information for Career Mode save slots.
• "Career Saved" HUD notification whenever the active career slot is saved.
• Player and enemy unit health multiplier sliders for Sandbox Mode.
• Aim and zoom inversion settings for mouse and gamepad.

Changed

• Renamed "Heat" to "Escalation" as it better describes what the system represents.
• Firefights between ground squads should last longer.
• Structures are more durable.

Combat

• Reworked projectile ballistics, ammo execution, and damage systems.
• Explosions can now use separate near and far damage areas instead of a single explosion radius.
• The new combat system makes weapon balance easier to adjust and provides more room for advanced damage models in the future.

Pathfinding & Vehicle Movement

• Further improved vehicle cornering and path-following reliability.
• Vehicles should slow down more appropriately before sharp corners, reducing sliding and collisions with walls.
• Reduced cases where vehicles get stuck in repeated movement loops or unrecoverable states.

Fixed

• Career Hard difficulty now shows the correct hint about friendly fire.

Balance

• Career Normal difficulty starts with Thermal Vision unlocked instead of enemy tracking boxes.

UI

• Weapon, ammo, and squad selection now uses a two-step selection process. Clicking an option first shows its information in the main panel, after which it can be equipped separately.
• Weapon and ammo selection now shows more information about the selected option.
• Weapon selection warns if no ammo exists for the weapon.
• Ammo selection shows the available amount of the ammo type relative to maximum ammo.
• UI view scrolling should no longer be blocked or overridden by selection.

Save Compatibility

• Existing Career Mode saves automatically convert to version 2 and gain the new difficulty state variables. This should not break existing careers.

Known Issues

• In rare cases, vehicles can still get stuck oscillating near obstacles or repeatedly driving into a corner. Moving the vehicle away from the obstacle and trying again usually helps.
• Ammo Manufacturing UI currently shows less information than the Loadout Ammo Selection screen.

Technical

• Career save files now contain difficulty variables directly instead of relying on hidden in-game logic.
• The "Heat" to "Escalation" rename is visual only. In save files and internal code it is still called heat.
• Projectile ballistics and damage code received a major cleanup pass. The previous system was unnecessarily modular in some areas while still making balance changes and more complex damage models difficult to implement.
• The new combat system is easier to expand and is a stepping stone toward potentially allowing weapon statistics to be modified through mods in the future.

[Asid]

v0.1.6 - Anti-Air & Weapon Balance Hotfix
Mon, August 17, 2026



I originally planned to move straight from v0.1.5 into the larger v0.2.0 update, which is mainly focused on vehicle mounting and dismounting. However, after quite a few reports about anti-air balance over the past week, I decided to pause that work briefly and push out one more smaller update first.

v0.1.6 focuses mainly on making flak and missiles fairer and more reliable to fight against, along with a few weapon balance changes. Work on v0.2.0 will continue after this.

Changed

• Improved enemy flak targeting behavior. Flak now aims for randomized burst points around the predicted drone position instead of relying primarily on projectile spread.
• Improved anti-air missile flare behavior. Missiles now continue tracking the oldest active flare until it burns out before switching to the next one.

Fixed

• Flares now work more reliably when multiple flares are deployed in quick succession.
• Weapons now trigger alarms more reliably.

Balance

• Reduced enemy flak AA accuracy.
• Reduced enemy flak explosion radius and damage.
• Reduced enemy missile AA damage.
• Increased enemy missile AA maximum velocity and acceleration.
• Increased 40mm HE and HE-FRAG primary and secondary damage.
• Greatly increased Glide Bomb cluster HE explosion damage.
• Increased 150mm Railgun damage.