This is my understanding of it. (If I've got any of it wrong please feel free to correct me as I'm no expert. Just trying to help out.)
To get the Drone you need 4 BP parts. Each BP part is obtained from
different types or presents:
Silver Gray presents - These spawn randomly any place on the surface of any planet (Sirius excluded). They look like large canisters. Shoot the Canister once and you will see a Silver Gray present which you can collect. You need to find 20 to get this part of the BP.
Sky Blue presents - These are dropped by Mantis Scavengers, a small pink ship that has a constant shield up. As with the Silver Gray presents they spawn randomly on the surface of any planet (excluding Sirius). Shoot the mantis once to remove the shield then shoot again quickly to kill the mantis. You will then see the Sky Blue present which you can collect. Again you need to get 20 presents to complete this part of the BP.
Saffron Yellow presents - These are obtained via a mission on Kabalesh. When u kill the storage tower the present will drop. You need 10 presents to complete this part of the BP. You can solo this one in a SC-X Thunderstrom in about 30-40 mins. The more people you have in a squad the quicker it will be to finish. Only problem is there's only one present drop per mission so, if you have 5 people in a squad then for everyone to get 10 presents you will all have to do the mission 50 times. I expect a squad of 3 maybe quick enough to do?
Cobalt Blue presents - These are obtained via a mission on Aurora. You have to kill a Mantis Araneas. I've not tried this yet but I hear you need 5 people in a squad and it's still hard. Either 10 or 15 presents needed and only one present drop per mission, so I guess your squad does this 75 times.
Alternatively, if you don't want to do the same 2 missions 50+ times each, you can just buy the presents with gold. The Saffron are 2,950 Gold per present and the Cobalt are 1,450 Gold per present.
Once you've got all 4 parts to the BP I guess you get your Drone. I have no idea if it will then cost any cryonite or even how it works.
To your question Creamy_II of have the Dev's thought this one through? Based on the very large incentive to complete it by buying and spending Gold then I would say yes, they have thought it through very well. =p