Xenon 3600 drone ships - To be used as pirates or other NPCs

    Xenon 3600 drone ships - To be used as pirates or other NPCs v1

    Game version
    0.199.646 (Classic systems)
    Just like the ship that came right before these, this was a fun little low-effort project, on which I worked for a single day.

    The idea for this project came after I experimented a bit with mass-spawning ten units of a weak, but fast little ship of mine fitted with cannons. I was piloting an under-shielded combat ship with four decent offensive turrets, yet those tiny, AI-driven wasps still managed to get out of the way of every bullet and missile, and eventually punctuated my ship into Emmentaler cheese.

    I realized the great potential in swarms of quick, small ships, so I wanted to make something specifically for this purpose, but then decided to raise the bar with a few levels.

    The result is a ship with a mass of exactly 3600 (hence the number in the name), but which has enough propulsive power for a 2.4 thrust-mass ratio, and it comes in two variants:


    Rapid-fire cannon variant
    One output / 28,000 DPS / punch-through effect.

    Continuous beam variant
    One output / 21,000 DPS / explosive effect.


    As drones, they lack several systems that you would want to have in player-controlled ships, and also AMS turrets, for good reasons. They are meant to be used in groups of 5 to 10 (and probably shouldn't be put against anything less than a decent heavy cruiser). Now I'll have to design something big with which I'll be able to effectively shoot them down in PvE battles.

    Have fun with them and please share your experiences if you test them! :^D



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    Author
    DeepspaceMechanic
    Downloads
    486
    Views
    959
    First release
    Last update
    Rating
    4.75 star(s) 4 ratings

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    these are mean! - cheers.
    Can you outfit these with mining lazers instead and they'll be just as efficient?
    DeepspaceMechanic
    DeepspaceMechanic
    Unfortunately no, that isn't really possible with this ship. The main problem is the shape. Because mining systems work efficiently when you have a lot of separate beams hitting a large number of blocks at once. For this the best is to use a ship with a very large front surface.

    Basically you need a big enough flat space at a ship's front to build a chessboard-like setup of mining lasers, the bigger, the better. But this ship's design isn't optimal for that. Maybe if you extend the front laterally. - Here's a link to a basic mining ship of an optimal design:

    https://starmadedock.net/content/asteroid-scavenger.6519/
    new swarm for my fleet
    DeepspaceMechanic
    DeepspaceMechanic
    Thanks for the 5 stars, I'm glad to know that these ships will actually fulfill a purpose, in your fleet too :)
    I like these, will make for a nice addition.
    DeepspaceMechanic
    DeepspaceMechanic
    I'm glad you like it, just be careful if you intend to make them pirate-usable ships in your universe, because I battle-tested them, and they turned out to be a little too powerful (ten of them took down a battlecruiser of mine in a few minutes) :D