The ultimate drone R&D thread

[Keptick]

I'm currently making a new ship which will have an external rack hardpoint. Think like a fighter hardpoint, can be used for lots of things ^_^

 

[Plazmatic]

I'm currently making a new ship which will have an external rack hardpoint. Think like a fighter hardpoint, can be used for lots of things ^_^

Can you update your original post about your more recent findings (that have since been discussed in this thread)? I just found this post and I find it hard to wade through 33 pages of posts to find the best stuff you guys have done. BTW great job figuring this stuff out!

 

[Keptick]

Can you update your original post about your more recent findings (that have since been discussed in this thread)? I just found this post and I find it hard to wade through 33 pages of posts to find the best stuff you guys have done. BTW great job figuring this stuff out!

Good point, I'll do that when I get the time (so probably tomorrow).

 

[Top 4ce]

I'm currently making a new ship which will have an external rack hardpoint. Think like a fighter hardpoint, can be used for lots of things ^_^

That's exactly what I was making! A hanger point of sorts. Can either be used to have a hanger with a corvette size ship (~40m), a plate with different turret configurations, or a small drone rack. I was think of having two for a frigate sized craft and expanding it as the ships get larger. Makes outfitting a ship and changing roles easier. Also using it to set up outpost stations faster.

 

[Gerion]

so far my results from doing noncreative production runs;

mass amounts of weapons computers- neglible impact, they use the same resources as thier actual weapons blocks. once up and running its a minor cost difference.

effect computers however are much more annoying to mass produce. they often require odd combinations of materials to create and require you to search all over for additional resources. should the player have a massively well established production lineup this isnt such a big deal, but its certainly not a cheap thing. In light of this, I will probably be updating all my drones to become cheaper.

Single-rocket drones without shields maybe? That would cut down on cost quite dramatically, and drones really dont benefit from protection. The rockets are there to tear enemy ships apart when you killed its shields.

 

[Thalanor]

Hmm Gerion, good point. I haven't actually considered that yet. Before, we did opt for at least a few thousand shields on average with our medium sized drones. Everyone's drone stats had at least 2k shields (up to 10k). It may just be the time has come for completely shieldless drones with very large weapons (but no tertiary effect). Both tertiaries and shields are no longer automatically justified for use on drones.

It is time then to come up with a new standard drone for my shipyard It will make use of either basic hull or standard armor (it can just be the latter considering how I actually use standard armor as "standard" now), weapon master/slave, 1:1 thrust (that one is still the most recent knowledge), and power. Nothing else. Should be easy to produce these drone(rack)s in ridiculous masses then. Looking back, my old drones all had far above 8k shields and overdrive effects. I guess that luxurious time is over now..

.. then again, drones do not need shields to survive some stray missiles anymore if they are stored halfway safely.

 

[Loadout]

Hmm Gerion, good point. I haven't actually considered that yet. Before, we did opt for at least a few thousand shields on average with our medium sized drones. Everyone's drone stats had at least 2k shields (up to 10k). It may just be the time has come for completely shieldless drones with very large weapons (but no tertiary effect). Both tertiaries and shields are no longer automatically justified for use on drones.

It is time then to come up with a new standard drone for my shipyard It will make use of either basic hull or standard armor (it can just be the latter considering how I actually use standard armor as "standard" now), weapon master/slave, 1:1 thrust (that one is still the most recent knowledge), and power. Nothing else. Should be easy to produce these drone(rack)s in ridiculous masses then. Looking back, my old drones all had far above 8k shields and overdrive effects. I guess that luxurious time is over now..

.. then again, drones do not need shields to survive some stray missiles anymore if they are stored halfway safely.

Soooo... back to nano drones then I take it?

I'll probably keep my heavy drones as is with shielding, they're all basically externally mounted anyways that extra protection really does help. On the other hand I can safely alter or create new nano-drones seeing as how they no longer need shields inside the mounted area

Single-rocket drones without shields maybe? That would cut down on cost quite dramatically, and drones really dont benefit from protection. The rockets are there to tear enemy ships apart when you killed its shields.

I think a little more than just a single rocket would probably be best, making cores may be easy but it's additionally time consuming to have to make 1000 of them in order to do any viable swarm damage. Perhaps single rocket with damage pulse slave? The AoE on those is monstrous and energy cost is quite reasonable to boot. Time for some new nano drones then! ^_^

 

[Thalanor]

Back to smaller drones it is, indeed (I think) - as you need even more swarm behavior (higher count) if you have no shields. As for weapons, missiles still are and probably remain to be the superior option for drones, as cannons need large systems and effects to do block damage.

To go with an earlier classification someone posted in this thread, I'll be focusing on assault drones (missile).
I will likely just do a refit of the caeli-class microdrone (30 mass), these little guys currently have 2k shields, alot of space that can be used for a stronger secondary weapon system (it uses a beam to have something to do while the guided missile cooldown is active).

Then again, I always wanted to try an intermediate 50 mass drone, now might be the time for it. That'd still be around half of the Soul drone reference class (my previous more expensive drones all had the soul drone as a mass guideline).

Also Loadout, I think you are right on shields on heavy drones. If you cross the 100 mass boundary by a fair margin, you basically have a full-out fighter, and a few shields can't hurt on these.

 

[Gerion]

The investment on shields is big enough that until the rest of the ship is somehow valuable, you shouldnt bother with them....

 

[Loadout]

The investment on shields is big enough that until the rest of the ship is somehow valuable, you shouldnt bother with them....

I have to disagree here, subjectively, mostly because sertise and rammet are not terribly uncommon materials from what I've seen so far and 50 of each capsule is ~equivalent to 2 weapons blocks. Certainly having more weapons would be useful but the shields are sort of a pre-requisite for externally operating drones, splash damage alone can and will kill them if they don't pack on some sort of protection.

Now admittedly with a tiny drone, such as my Flea chassis drones, the shields are pretty much superfluous, but on a larger chassis such as Soul Drones or Kabutos the shields are basically necessary. Its dependent on size more than value, considering that the materials are essentially cheap as dirt... literally. :P

Thalanor I think the real question now is how small can we go without creating tiny ugly death cubes.

 

[Thalanor]

Loadout yes... that is a problem I am currently facing. For shieldless swarm drones, you need to fit MANY on a rack (a ship should field at minimum 32++ of them to benefit from the swarming effect long enough), and luxury like protruding wings and stuff are not an option. Worse yet, encasing it all in hull blocks really becomes inefficient at these small sizes, but I personally really like to have barely any system blocks showing on my drones (except thrusters).

Maybe I will actually make nano deathcubes, and just hide their ugly boxy faces behind beacon shine.

The new update is just too.. crafting based to do much fancy diverse design on throwaway units. I still liked the larger role of creativity in the BWC era better. Now all I can think of when I place a block that is not completely necessary is "can this block not be omitted?"

 

[Keptick]

Ok, I'll do my best to make a sub-mini drone.

 

[PizzaPress]

LoadoutMaybe I will actually make nano deathcubes, and just hide their ugly boxy faces behind beacon shine.

...That's brilliant.



(I didn't realize the pun until I typed it out. But I'm keeping it, because I like puns. Does anyone know how to do spoilers?)

 

[refirendum]

So on the subject of status monitoring with logic, maybe a logic block attached to each array of turrets, and when you lose a turret from the array, it tells a yellow light to show up next to a display module (module will have the monitored section of your ship written on it) within immediate view of a camera, and turns on a red light when it's more than 50% of your turrets/ai destroyed (so you can pilot the ship with the camera and use the status monitor at the same time) that way you know the overall health/deployment status of you ship's docked turrets/drones/shield plates. you can have these systems for each array.

 

[Loadout]

Loadout yes... that is a problem I am currently facing. For shieldless swarm drones, you need to fit MANY on a rack (a ship should field at minimum 32++ of them to benefit from the swarming effect long enough), and luxury like protruding wings and stuff are not an option. Worse yet, encasing it all in hull blocks really becomes inefficient at these small sizes, but I personally really like to have barely any system blocks showing on my drones (except thrusters).

Maybe I will actually make nano deathcubes, and just hide their ugly boxy faces behind beacon shine.

The new update is just too.. crafting based to do much fancy diverse design on throwaway units. I still liked the larger role of creativity in the BWC era better. Now all I can think of when I place a block that is not completely necessary is "can this block not be omitted?"

I feel this way about standard armor but not basic hull, main reason is that basic hull can be made from virtually every block in the game. It only takes a few ridiculously easy parts to make and so it's extremely cheap. My main issue with crafting at the moment is order size, I can't tell a factory to make just the 8 penta blocks that I need and then move onto wedges or something else more useful. I have to physically sit there and wait for the X number of blocks to be done and then change it. Which is rather time consuming to be honest, and of course If I leave and go away I can be totally certain that I will return to find 30,000 penta blocks.

Personally I think we should have a specific type of factory or control block for factories that only creates what is needed for a specific filter or blueprint. That would work wonders for drone production, and just production of any blueprints in general.

So on the subject of status monitoring with logic, maybe a logic block attached to each array of turrets, and when you lose a turret from the array, it tells a yellow light to show up next to a display module (module will have the monitored section of your ship written on it) within immediate view of a camera, and turns on a red light when it's more than 50% of your turrets/ai destroyed (so you can pilot the ship with the camera and use the status monitor at the same time) that way you know the overall health/deployment status of you ship's docked turrets/drones/shield plates. you can have these systems for each array.

Already been done, just check out the logic tutorials section of the forum to see how. As for drone deployment to my knowledge it is a fairly unanimous decision to launch all at once as opposed to only a single group. So the actual status of deployment is generally a yes/no kind of thing, either yup we're launching or nope not yet.

 

[Thalanor]

I don't know if this is public knowledge yet. However, I found a way to have awesome rapidfire skoomdrone launch tubes :D

Beware the rapidfire skoomlauncher barrel concept prototype - fully automatized (skoomdrones will activate without failures on tube exit) (here shown with four, but can be extended to basically any length), possibly of interest to you keptick :

As long as an entitiy is docked, a push supported beam will just pass through it. It will pass through an infinite amount of docked entities. By activating a constant push beam and undocking the drones in a delay sequence (from the front to the back), you basically get a "drone cartridge" that ejects to the front instead of the side.


My skoomdrones are 5x5x5, with the shieldless core systems being shown below (the drone has 2k shields, a skoomdrone is worth shielding). It is fully functional (two pulses every second; two defensive pushes every second as propulsion) and activates itself immediately when it is launched from the specialized rapidfire skoom launcher. The latter is what I must now develop. The idea is to be able to swarm an entire fleet with skoomdrones rapidly. The extremely small size of the nano skoomdrones makes deployment of large amounts of these possible.

 

[Keptick]

I had no idea... This epic!

 

[Malacodor]

Spoiler

I don't know if this is public knowledge yet. However, I found a way to have awesome rapidfire skoomdrone launch tubes :D

Beware the rapidfire skoomlauncher barrel concept prototype - fully automatized (skoomdrones will activate without failures on tube exit) (here shown with four, but can be extended to basically any length), possibly of interest to you keptick :

As long as an entitiy is docked, a push supported beam will just pass through it. It will pass through an infinite amount of docked entities. By activating a constant push beam and undocking the drones in a delay sequence (from the front to the back), you basically get a "drone cartridge" that ejects to the front instead of the side.


My skoomdrones are 5x5x5, with the shieldless core systems being shown below (the drone has 2k shields, a skoomdrone is worth shielding). It is fully functional (two pulses every second; two defensive pushes every second as propulsion) and activates itself immediately when it is launched from the specialized rapidfire skoom launcher. The latter is what I must now develop. The idea is to be able to swarm an entire fleet with skoomdrones rapidly. The extremely small size of the nano skoomdrones makes deployment of large amounts of these possible.

How are pulse weapon and defensive push activated?

 

[Thalanor]

Malacodor The drones are inside a 7x7 wide tube. They are 5x7x5 in size with an area trigger block hovering 1 block above their 5x5x5 body and docked directly (no rack), which means they hover 0.5m above the ground. As soon as they are undocked, because the activation block is actually halfway buried in the wall, it immediately activates a clock, which drives both the dual propulsion as well as the dual push pulse. Because this will activate immediately, it additionally supports the push beam mounted on the tube in getting the drones out.

keptick : I think skoomdrones are market ready now :D After all no problems are left to tackle really - both the activation problem as well as the multifire problem are solved.

The defensive push propulsion on the drones combined with the bobby AI aiming makes them circle enemy ships at ridiculous speeds, very hard to hit and most of all, very fast in reaching their target (and thus starting the disable- loop). A rapidlauncher of sufficient length humiliates entire fleets.


PS: When will this thread finally get stickied? Either way, drone tech will survive.

 

[ltmauve]

How are you getting the skooms to launch without spinning out? I've tried to that (For larger torpedos) and they always wind up spinning.