The ultimate drone R&D thread

[Thalanor]

Yup, that is exactly my battle plan :D First, a roughly 5M damage ion shot at roughly 50% pulse support (my ship can kill it's own shields in one swoop with that currently, or a manticore in three), then missile drones (and turrets and main arrays and stuff).
Wonder how much ion alpha damage you could cram into the charon :p Definitely... "enough" for all intents and purposes. If nothing exists that could possibly eat a blast and still have shields up, everything else (minus PD turrets and hangars and stuff) on your ship can basically be created with the sole purpose of critical hull damage in mind.

It also means the enemy cannot ignore the drones - if every single one of these suckers can put small ugly holes in inconvenient spots, you don't want them around your ship for long.


PS: I must test if undockable (in event of drone release) "armor plating" (ships designed as armor plates for the main ship docked to the drone hangar exit, consisting only of shields + rechargers) are viable. The armor plates would take damage very fast in battle, but they are meant only for delaying damage to the drone racks for a few seconds until someone released the drones. The same push beam mechanism that pushes out the drones could be used to push away the undocked armor cover a few seconds before drone release.

 

[Argyle_Ninja]

I'd just like to throw this out there: Your drone racks are mounted port and starboard. What if your ship had them mounted, say, internally, both racks facing center? Add a dedicated rapid fire push beam/amc array... Drone leaf blower, anyone?

 

[Krazykat]

what I can see happening is an armor plate like that directly in front of the drone, so when it gets fired the drone gets a few seconds of cover as it exits the rack to orient itself and start attacking

 

[Proxima_Centauri]

@keptick
no offense but that 6k ship must have been a piece of garbage if it got beat by something half its size

Anyone who's half decent at building turrets for their ship will annihilate small drones like they're nothing

 

[Reilly Reese]

Wrong. Turrets will get over run and then get gunned down.

 

[Keptick]

@keptick
no offense but that 6k ship must have been a piece of garbage if it got beat by something half its size

Anyone who's half decent at building turrets for their ship will annihilate small drones like they're nothing

You think so? Why don't you try it out?

And I'm sorry, but "decent turrets" (like the ones you'd expect to see mounted on a 6k mass ship) don't stand a chance against a 450k damage alpha strike from a drone swarm.

 

[Reilly Reese]

lol you renamed it to what I called it in chat XD

 

[Keptick]

lol you renamed it to what I called it in chat XD

Sounded appropriate :P

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I'm not sure if it's been discussed in the prior 14 pages but if you build a rack with the drones launching up, you should be able to attach that to any side of your ship without needing a left and right version.

 

[Gerion]

Well, I was slightly confused, thanks for that @keptick....

So... lets talk dumb fire missiles. You can fit more of them on a drone (you dont need slaves/effects) and they make decently sized explosions while also not needing power storages like missile/pulse does. Only suitable against bigger ships and stations (or planets, if you are some sort of planet hating person) of course, as you lack the lock on capability of other missile systems and you need to get down the shields first.

 

[Keptick]

I'm not sure if it's been discussed in the prior 14 pages but if you build a rack with the drones launching up, you should be able to attach that to any side of your ship without needing a left and right version.

That's a possibility! However, my latest version has The push beams mounted directly on the ship. So I can use the same rack on both sides without changing anything. Modifying it for a vertical launch would be pretty easy to do.

@Gerion I use missiles slaved to a single damage beam (with the computer). So it basically has the exact same stats as a dumb fire missile except that it gets lock-on :p.

Oh and small question: Does the push-pulse still cause that stun effect?

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

@Gerion I use missiles slaved to a single damage beam (with the computer). So it basically has the exact same stats as a dumb fire missile except that it gets lock-on :p.

I believe all you need is the beam computer slave to turn a dumb fire into a target lock missile just with no range benefit. It also works for heat seekers, you just get a single tracking missile instead of a swarm.

 

[Thalanor]

First results for dockable armor plating: "sorta". I must test this more (going to be away for a week starting tomorrow, I'll do it after that), because on one side, there is additional cost, another possible point of failure in the launching procedure and the inability of drones to get out fast when their respective docking modules were shot off the rack (and the armor plating has not been manually undocked yet), causing lag.
On the other hand, in a pure 1v1 AI situation, the plating does indeed eat the first one or two turret missiles, effectively giving a few seconds, but the missile radius bug with docked entities (does it still exist? seems so) seems to actually cause MORE damage to the drones behind the armor than if there was no armor at all. EDIT: this was tested with the armor being part of the same docking chain as the rack and the drones. I might test armor docked to mothership (if that fixes the missile bug at least), but this will likely turn out the same. Don't mess with missiles, they are evil.
The AI is rather damn derpy though; when they use my destroyer, they spam the no damage anti missile FLAK array like crazy and never have power left over for the actual ion cannon :p

@Sven_The_Slayer : Yes but... the visual awesomeness of drones leaving the ship like vipers on a battlestar starboard and port... scratch protection, I need this :D
Using @keptick 's method of having the push beams on the main ship (since push pulses were nerfed) so I can use my standard rack on both sides, too. I currently work on having a self-destruct for the rack after it has undocked all drones, so it can be undocked at less than full length, smoothly floating out of the ship without collision.

@Gerion: Yes, thats what both my drones and my small missile turrets use - one block of beam just to be sure (also w.r.t future changes). Can turrets profit from beyond 1000m range currently? As it would make sense, with a 300m long ship, to at least add the length of the ship to the turret range for back mounted turrets. 1000m range is pretty low for any medium+ sized ship considering less than 100m distance between two capitals will start the CapLag(tm). For drones, that is not needed - they float around 500m distance to the enemy most of the time anyways.

 

[Keptick]

I believe all you need is the beam computer slave to turn a dumb fire into a target lock missile just with no range benefit. It also works for heat seekers, you just get a single tracking missile instead of a swarm.

Yea, I just add a single beam module in case the computer thing gets fixed in the future.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Yea, I just add a single beam module in case the computer thing gets fixed in the future.

I don't think the computer thing is a bug.

First results for dockable armor plating: "sorta". I must test this more (going to be away for a week starting tomorrow, I'll do it after that), because on one side, there is additional cost, another possible point of failure in the launching procedure and the inability of drones to get out fast when their respective docking modules were shot off the rack (and the armor plating has not been manually undocked yet), causing lag.
On the other hand, in a pure 1v1 AI situation, the plating does indeed eat the first one or two turret missiles, effectively giving a few seconds, but the missile radius bug with docked entities (does it still exist? seems so) seems to actually cause MORE damage to the drones behind the armor than if there was no armor at all. EDIT: this was tested with the armor being part of the same docking chain as the rack and the drones. I might test armor docked to mothership (if that fixes the missile bug at least), but this will likely turn out the same. Don't mess with missiles, they are evil.
The AI is rather damn derpy though; when they use my destroyer, they spam the no damage anti missile FLAK array like crazy and never have power left over for the actual ion cannon :p

@Sven_The_Slayer : Yes but... the visual awesomeness of drones leaving the ship like vipers on a battlestar starboard and port... scratch protection, I need this :D
Using @keptick 's method of having the push beams on the main ship (since push pulses were nerfed) so I can use my standard rack on both sides, too. I currently work on having a self-destruct for the rack after it has undocked all drones, so it can be undocked at less than full length, smoothly floating out of the ship without collision.

@Gerion: Yes, thats what both my drones and my small missile turrets use - one block of beam just to be sure (also w.r.t future changes). Can turrets profit from beyond 1000m range currently? As it would make sense, with a 300m long ship, to at least add the length of the ship to the turret range for back mounted turrets. 1000m range is pretty low for any medium+ sized ship considering less than 100m distance between two capitals will start the CapLag(tm). For drones, that is not needed - they float around 500m distance to the enemy most of the time anyways.

If you place a docking port on the side of a ship anything docked to it will have the top facing sideways, this will mean the docked ships will fly out just as if you had them launched sideways from an upright docking port. The only difference will be the drones might be facing a different way and from what I've seen that should not be much of an issue as launching them causes them to flip around.

I also really hope AI gets some improvements where they can actually utilize the max range of their weapons.

 

[Argyle_Ninja]

I'm slowly working on a Cylon BaseStar, and my "drones" are a might bit bigger than a standard dock. Still working out the kinks trying to make the bays as compact as possible, but I shudder to think of what kind of physics implosion would occur if I shotgun launch all of them at once. Is there a decent way that you guys know to add the logic system delay while they're all docked directly to the BaseStar, and not in a rack? Even better probably, is that I'll have to make some monstrous Cylon Raider snack pack, and dock the whole thing behind a blast door. Anyways, thanks ahead of time guys.
I'm at work at the moment, but I'll upload the Raider blueprint so you guys can play around with it if you like.

 

[Thalanor]

A basestar, if you get that one done right, super awesome! Now if turret rotation wasn't that derpy you could have had one half ship and the other half turret, making it actually transform between cruise and battle mode (although randomly :p)

Your drones though are more like actual fighters. It will be very hard to use push effects to get them out. Maybe a massive basestar can get away with having them docked in small corridors and just letting them fly out on their own, if there is enough space to navigate between these.

 

[Argyle_Ninja]

I don't have the stats memorized on the raider, and I haven't done any push beam testing or anything yet, so I don't know what kind of launch assist I'll have to come up with. What kind of range is it for AI ships to break and attack, by the way?
If it's well outside of weapons range, then I might just be able to open the bay doors and release the docking clamps. In the deployments I've seen, all the raiders are just backed into individual docks so just the wing tips stick out.
If I can assume that they'll drive straight out on their own without banging into each other, that'll be awesome. This thread just got me thinking more about the BaseStar being primarily a Carrier, and how effective a swarm of Cylon raiders would actually be.

 

[Keptick]

I don't have the stats memorized on the raider, and I haven't done any push beam testing or anything yet, so I don't know what kind of launch assist I'll have to come up with. What kind of range is it for AI ships to break and attack, by the way?
If it's well outside of weapons range, then I might just be able to open the bay doors and release the docking clamps. In the deployments I've seen, all the raiders are just backed into individual docks so just the wing tips stick out.
If I can assume that they'll drive straight out on their own without banging into each other, that'll be awesome. This thread just got me thinking more about the BaseStar being primarily a Carrier, and how effective a swarm of Cylon raiders would actually be.

Short answer: It would wreck.

 

[Thalanor]

It would wreck both all targets ever as well as the server if the raiders got tangled up (as they aren't as boxy as usual small drones). Massive collision possible, but maximum destruction ensured :D
Plus a swarm of cylon raiders... just looks scary as frak.