Is the combat drone too fragile for low levels to be a tank? It only gets one heal per day and only 10% and that is outside of combat only. The lack of healing really kills its utility.

At level 2, tried playing a combat drone as a melee fighter and it went down in three hits even with the extra AC mod (9 damage, 8 damage, repair 2 HP, 6 damage and it's gone). No big loss since you can rebuild it but it was fun to deal 1d12 2 damage instead of rolling 1 on the 1d4 all the time.

What's the best drone at low levels? The hover drone since it can use medium size guns without penalty and lets you do all sorts of RP stuff due to the flight ability? Is the combat drone better in later levels when it can soak up more damage?

Any spells or items or whatever I can get the party to get that would allow me to repair the drone between fights? GM said no to using my godly engineering skill to heal the drone using the repair rule.