The older pilots still don't like them, despite the bump in survival rates. They say they didn't train for years and survive for decades to have their machine piloted for them. I get it, to some extent. DULLAHAN stings the ego something fierce, especially if you've gone without it most of your career. It's like learning you've been typing incorrectly for years, and now you begrudge the way you type now even though it's faster and more efficient, because the techniques were yours, not Mavis Beacon's.
The way I explain it to new pilots is this: as long as your squad is in range, DULLAHAN monitors your pulse, blood pressure, eye tracking, cortisol/adrenaline levels, everything. If you start to panic, DULLAHAN will take over part of the mech's function until you regain your composure. If it detects most of your attention is focused on evasives, it will adjust your fine aim according to your IFF logs. If there's an incoming projectile that you aren't reacting to, it will jet you out of the way. If your vitals drop, it will execute a takeover of the mech, and depending on the terms of your contract it will either evacuate you from the AO or attempt to complete your mission with whatever systems it can still access.
Every sortie you fight will give DULLAHAN data, which then partially determines your bonus payout. If we get actionable tactical data, you get paid more. If you spend the whole mission sitting on your ass, you don't get the data feed bonus, simple as. The drone is shielded with as much radar camouflage as we can manage without impacting communication, and is usually beyond visual range of the enemy, but protecting it should be priority two, just behind mission completion. Needless to say that if it gets destroyed, not only will you not receive a data feed bonus, your team will be billed for a replacement.
There are rumors that some of your comrades were replaced with DULLAHAN nodes, and I can tell you it's flatly untrue. Every sim we've run trying to train it to run missions without human intervention have thus far ended in failure, usually because it tries to either kill mission control or disable communications between it and MC, then fire on every IFF signal it can find until it runs out of ammo. Until that changes, your contract is safe.
