Read by Schine Long range drones

[Daniel L.]

I think that if a drone vessel has a jump drive and a scanner it should be able to detect an enemy at long range and jump to it just like the way trade guild ships spawn whenever you attack a shop, You own drones should be able to see the enemy at a distance and intercept.

Maybe there could even be a "Patrol" option in the ai window that would make your ship continuously explore the universe or at least your territory

 

[Reilly Reese]

This would be a great addition to any AI overhaul in the future.

 

[Daniel L.]

This would be a great addition to any AI overhaul in the future.

Yeah, especially if they add a home system that would allow you to set an area of space or a docking spot as the home for a drone and whenever there are no more enemys to shoot the drone will return home and redock.

 

[starhaiden]

It would be great for protecting your territory.

 

[Visitor]

It also would be great for absolutely wrecking many weaker, starting players that is far less appealing. I'd like patrolling for drones where one would specify the sectors the drone is to fly through and with said drone being able to notice and pursue some target in the proximity. After fight, unless enemy escaped - return to the patrol.
Fully automatic warping combat vessels seem like a pretty gateway for trolling people, though.

 

[CyberTao]

It also would be great for absolutely wrecking many weaker, starting players that is far less appealing. I'd like patrolling for drones where one would specify the sectors the drone is to fly through and with said drone being able to notice and pursue some target in the proximity. After fight, unless enemy escaped - return to the patrol.
Fully automatic warping combat vessels seem like a pretty gateway for trolling people, though.

It's honestly no worse than dropping off a swarm of drones in a carrier as is. People who wreck and grief starting players are always going to do so, whereas this can be avoided by just limiting it to owned sectors (a purely 'defensive' thing). Patrols are just as bad since you could set the way-point opposite spawn and have them move back and forth

If people manage to successfully troll and block spawn by using it as such, chances are you wouldn't want to be on that server anyways.

 

[Visitor]

It's honestly no worse than dropping off a swarm of drones in a carrier as is.

It would be somewhat worse than dropping a swarm with carrier - due to current limits on AI, bigger input from the player is required. With them being fully automatic, I suspect many players on many servers simply building drone factory and then churning them in hundreds to send them all over the place to shoot stuff.

I do agree however that limiting area drones can be deployed in to the ones owner by a faction would limit the issue somewhat but I also still suspect it'd lead to simply parts of galaxy on some servers separated by mobile walls of automatic sentries. There'd have to be many much more permanently-neutral areas (which wouldn't be that great) and severe limitations on amounts of drones that can be deployed per faction/player.

If people manage to successfully troll and block spawn by using it as such, chances are you wouldn't want to be on that server anyways.

You do have a point there and I would like to see a bit more intelligent/customizable AI controls but I worry that by allowing drones to operate long-range succesful trolling will occur far more often on far many more servers.

 

[Zaphord]

Definitely needs to be a range limit on this. Within the system would be good enough to protect your borders, but not beyond that.

 

[starhaiden]

what if ai ships cost faction points?

 

[Adonis0]

The way I see it, AI being able to automatically target and warp to things well out of normal detection range is a bit too much power for automation.

Patrolling drones is a pretty good idea, requires player input, can be avoided if you pay attention to where they're encountered (can scan from afar and plot route) things like that. Whilst warping drones give little to no warning, hard to track, and would be very punishing to newer players.

Perhaps allowing drones to be called through warp space? As in somebody is flying along, encounters enemies, and can send out a ping to call all/some/their own drones to their current location as reinforcements. This however is still potentially problematic, as it requires the sectors the drones are in to be loaded as well, which the game is not currently capable of allowing (over long distances) without much strain on the servers.