I liked to play Skull Merchant when she was more managable for survivors til the devs killed her. The new idea of controlling drones, to fly around, and to hit survivors with them sounds really good - especially for me who loves projectile killers. The "Red light, green light" idea sounds cool too. The new scan line idea is good as well.

Tracking via Drones:
• Glad this one didn't change. If it stays like before (letting you know that they're there and maybe even giving you an audio hint), this part will be fine.
• Lock On and Claw Traps being removed is kinda weird. I hope that changing the drone rotation will stay.

Year but it seems like this will not help her alot because she lacks the mobility to get value from - unless she can use her radar while controlling a drone then it can become good.

Removing the Lock On and Claw Trap is really weird because that was a unique to her. I understand that the whole "one scan, two scan, three scan, become hindred, deep wound, and she gets haste" was really too much, too complicated, and a little bit free but at least try to rework the part into something simpler instead of removing them. Scanning a survivor is nice but it does not give you anything because their location. Knowing survivor's location is huge but not for a killer who has no good mobility or no longer stealth to sneak up. It's just a Weave Attument basekit if you wanna call it this way.

Drone Hacking:
• Unless the hack is being omega-buffed to be insanely difficult, revealing SM's aura after is dumb and highly abusable by survivors. Not a fan.

True. There is also the issue of "In SoloQ nice but in SWF busted" and we don't need this. In addition, if the survivor fails the hacking, Skull Merchant gets killer instinct but that's it. She does not get any value like Unknown gets when someone fails the removing of Hallucinations. She lacks the mobility to make use of the info as well as the info which survivor failed.

Red Light, Green Light:
• This is Grandpa's Sonar from TCM. It will probably not be that useful, but funny regardless.

Year, it sounds really funny but compared to similar special moves (Nightfall or Main Event), it lacks more. Info is nice but it seems like she lacks something to make use of it - I know I said this the third time but it is a pretty big deal in my opinion when you have basekit info but cannot use it well.

However, I miss the Undetectable part of her and hope the developers bring it back to her. It's also awkward to call them "Stealth Dones" when they no longer give stealth. There is also the issue that she still miss mobility, so she cannot make much use of the location information. Speaking of missing mobility, I am a little bit afraid that she could get a similar issue like Twins: If she downs survivors on the other side of the map with a Drone, she won't walk across the map to hook them. No, she would slug them and controlling a new drone - similar when you down with Victor. Therefore, she needs a basekit reward for hooking survivors or an easier way to hook them. I also wonder how strong her drones will be I can assume that they can fly around and hit you through windows and over pallets - you perform a dash like wesker and survivors can react it or go down. That's sounds like a decent chase and anti-loop power she still lacks some additional chase power.

Overall, I agree with you that the changes are fine (the devs go in the right direction) but the claw traps and lock on part should stay in a simpler way. A nice idea could be if a scanned survivor gets hit by a Drone, they become oblivous or broken for like 80 seconds. That could enable more playstyles while keeping things simple and fair.