The ultimate drone R&D thread

[Thalanor]

I'll have to come up with a Mark II version of my current drone after reading this, thanks

BTW, it should be possible to chain-dock racks to that in theory, you could have a rack connecting to another rack to another rack etc., with core pushing being the method of transmitting the signal along the rack chain. That makes for arbitrarily long drone racks, all built from one standard rack segment :D

 

[Malacodor]

BTW, it should be possible to chain-dock racks to that in theory, you could have a rack connecting to another rack to another rack etc., with core pushing being the method of transmitting the signal along the rack chain. That makes for arbitrarily long drone racks, all built from one standard rack segment :D

The drones won't even need weapons, they'll simply destroy the universe (= crash the server).

 

[Gerion]

Thousands of drones spewing forward from racks multiple kilometers long..... Begun the drone wars have.

 

[Keptick]

Unleashing minion army over the universe: ✓

 

[Thalanor]

Oh god... what have I done! Rackception will be on it's way. Infinite drone goodness as long as the credits keep flowing..

 

[Gerion]

I think I figured out why turrets loose so heavily against the drones. Its not lacking durability, the turrets just dont kill quick enough, even if equipped with perfect weaponry. The main reason? When finishing off one target, they dont switch to the target closest to the previous one, they switch to ANY target in range and only shoot after having turned towards it, even if its not required (swarm missiles) or if they cant even shoot at it (obstacles or trajectory to high/low). Therefore, drones have the advantage, since their attacks concentrate on the same target over a long time and even if they have to switch target, AI ships do that almost instantly. This makes my previous point even more valuable: The best way to avoid death by drones is your own drone swarm.

Also a nice suggestion for schema: Tighten the turrets AI a bit. It works well against single targets (capital ship battles) but fails against swarm attacks.

 

[Malacodor]

Also a nice suggestion for schema: Tighten the turrets AI a bit. It works well against single targets (capital ship battles) but fails against swarm attacks.

Absolutely, I don't want to be forced to use drones. Drone attacks should remain a viable strategy, but it shouldn't be OP.

 

[Keptick]

Oh look! What's this?

Spoiler: >:D

 

[Thalanor]

Smooth as hell @keptick. Smooth as hell.

Working on an animated launching process after relocating the drone rack hangar and doubling it's size. The idea is to always have the drones visible, but use the plex door mechanisms (WIP) in the floor of the rack hangar to believably get the "acceleration coil" thing working.
Doesn't look very finalized yet, partially because of the large raw system blocks 3/4 of my ship still consist of :D

 

[Keptick]

Christ, how many drones do you even have on that thing? @Thalanor

Also, thanks :p . The rack is actually fully embeded inside the ship, everything you see in the first image is actually part of the ship, including the doors. I actually fit the rack in from an opening in the front of the ship, it's a bit like cartridge to be honest :p . After it's depleted it can simply be ejected and be replaced with a new one!

Now, I just have to install the ejection system, sync everything and figure out how to make a proper smooth gif.

 

[Thalanor]

Looking forward to your GIF @keptick! Take your time, make it awesome :D
I'll also be providing a GIF once the hangar section and my rack are finalized, which still takes some amount of time.

BTW, you actually do see most of the drone places in the image - its 24 total (12 on each side). That should be enough, considering its a destroyer, not a carrier :D (although none of my larger ships will ever not have a drone rack from now. Perhaps the rack of 24 is going to be my standard rack even, with dedicated carriers just using multiple ones.
After the moving of the hangar from the rear to the front (core launcher and everything was successfully moved already too, yay!), I got double the space now while being able to shape the final ship exactly how it originally was planned (the old rear hangar looked way off even after multiple redesigns...). And its going to turn out juuust as planned - looking forward to present it when the entire thing is finished (may be some weeks )

 

[Gerion]

Christ, how many drones do you even have on that thing? @Thalanor

Also, thanks :p . The rack is actually fully embeded inside the ship, everything you see in the first image is actually part of the ship, including the doors. I actually fit the rack in from an opening in the front of the ship, it's a bit like cartridge to be honest :p . After it's depleted it can simply be ejected and be replaced with a new one!

Now, I just have to install the ejection system, sync everything and figure out how to make a proper smooth gif.

Does it automatically eject the "cartridge" when its emptied? Because what you do then is: Jump to target destination. Unload drones and cartridge. Jump back to base, put in new cartridge. Rinse and repeat.

 

[Thalanor]

Wouldn't it be possible to just undock the rack, then jump away? You wouldn't even have to eject it.

 

[Gerion]

Wouldn't it be possible to just undock the rack, then jump away? You wouldn't even have to eject it.

Well, ejecting optional I guess... Has anyone ever tried big ships (as in: multiple ships in a convoy formation and outfitted with turrets) against a drone swarm attack? Because I am legitimately concerned about the fact that the game could drop down to the worst of numbers game: Who brings more drones to take down the drones? If its just "single ship is fucked when attacked by drones" I am fine. If its "any number of ships is fucked against drones" its unbalanced....

 

[Thalanor]

My uneducated guess is that mass drone tech is relatively new, as such it may be rather powerful against some existing ship designs (and thus a fleet made up of them), but these can be fixed by adding/replacing some turrets with anti drone systems (punch-through seems to do well). It would still require multiple ships to work because of how the BOBBY AI works. The AI seems to quickly drop to abysmal performance when outnumbered, as targeting confusion sets in. As such, the amount of drones in weapon range of turrets would have to be "sort of equal or lower" than the amount of turrets in weapon range of the drones. This is likely to be the case with multiple ships, because turrets usually have longer effective range as they do not waste time moving or evading, only having an "aim and fire" option in their entire behavior tree.

Then again, a simple test conducted with a few people would be a much better test than my lousy theories :D

 

[Thalanor]

Spoiler: Are these the drones you are looking for?

Still very WIP, everything, but even though it is messy I like the brute force launch :D (looks slightly faster in gif)

 

[Keptick]

grmmbl, gif too big to upload... gnagnagna must reduce gif fps by 17%...

I'LL GET IT!!!! (eventually)

 

[Thalanor]

I used "gfycat.com", that one at least somewhat worked for me

 

[Keptick]

Take all my "useful"s @Thalanor

The actual ejection speed is actually a lot slower (like 3 times slower), the gif tool just likes to accelerate said gifs.

 

[Thalanor]

that looks alot less hostile to the poor drones than my method :D
Very smooth indeed. I guess I just have to make sure my old drones never survive, or they'll tell the ones on the replacement racks how the launch procedure actually takes place. "Wait, did you say push pulse? I thought we're going to be smoothly beamed ou-------------------"