Vertibot

Vertibots are vehicles encountered in Appalachia in 2103.

Background
Developed before the Great War, vertibots were utilized by the Strategic Air Command and part of a canceled Sugar Grove project, LOCUST, planned to create a bugging network swarm capable of covertly accessing enemy installations, hacking into mainframe systems, and extracting data of interest. However, research indicated that a Vertibot of such size would be around the size of a Corvega Sedan. Vertibots were also used to defend cargobots, as well as to survey local regions.

Characteristics
Vertibots are an automated version of the standard vertibirds. Autonomous in nature, they appear similar to the piloted variants. Vertibots can be visually distinguished from vertibirds by their opaque windows and inaccessible cockpits. Vertibots are usually found escorting cargobots and will turn hostile if either the cargobot or the vertibot itself is attacked by the player character.

Gameplay attributes
Vertibots are high level robotic enemies, challenging to fight due to their generous armor, health pool, and ability to fly. If attacked, the vertibot will continue attacking until it either is destroyed, kills the attacker, or loses interest. In that case, it will not respond to any harassment fire. Survey vertibots identical to the regular ones appear during the Fly Swatter event in the Ash Heap, allowing for a near-constant supply of vertibots to shoot down. Three under the Strategic Air Command will usually appear escorting a SAC cargobot carrying a nuclear keycard and will attack anything that either attacks them or the cargobot.

If a player character controls a public workshop with a vertibot landing pad, the pad can be repaired to spawn a friendly vertibot, which will automatically take off and attack enemies. Vertibots can be summoned by vertibot signal grenades collected from a yellow box near the landing pad, and will arrive to assist the player character in combat. However, the assisting variant has lower stats. Vertibots are resilient to ballistic attacks but explosive and energy weapons prove effective against them.

Locations

 * They are most often found near former military camps and Brotherhood of Steel installations, such as Camp Venture and Fort Defiance, and in the Mire and Savage Divide regions of Appalachia.
 * A vertibot landing pad with a crate of vertibot signal grenades can be found just outside the entrance to the converted munitions factory.
 * Some of the public workshops come with a vertibot landing pad as part of the area the workshop covers, such as the Poseidon Energy Plant yard or Wade Airport, but will need to be repaired to spawn the vertibot, which will defend the workshop and general area until all threats are eliminated, at which point it will return to the landing pad to repair and recover health until attacked again, or it is destroyed, requiring the landing pad to be repaired again to spawn a new one.
 * Two more are crashed into Morgantown Airport.
 * One can be found crashed into Wade Airport.
 * One is crashed in front of AMS corporate headquarters in Watoga.

Appearances
Vertibots appear in Fallout 76.