An approach to remote controlled drones and turrets

[Matt_Bradock]

Remote controlled AI ships pop up every now and then in discussions. They could serve as a realtively safe option for station and carrier crew to defend themselves manning fighters and turrets without risking death in those small and fragile things - to an extent. I've been giving the thing a thought myself, and noticed we already have some of the mechanics in game that could serve as a core for R/C drones.

My approach to this issue would only require one block added to the game: call it a Remote Control Terminal. Everything else is already in game. The Bobby AI module would serve as the receiver, with another "aim at" option added: "Sync with terminal". The Remote Control Terminal could be linked using the Marker Beam (as an already present tool to connect systems that are not on the same entity) to a drone's or turret's AI module (or core). Once the connection has been established, the Remote Control Terminal could be entered. This would cause the client to simultaneously take control of the entity linked to it (just like you can already control multiple entities in sync as an admin using tab+F8 as shown in this video) and practically place you in its core except your spawn coordinates would be still at the Terminal, so upon exiting the ship, your Astronaut would spawn at the terminal block instead of at the controlled entity's core.

Now, this would have to have its limits. Otherwise, people could cruise around with remote controlled capital ships while sitting perfectly safe in an invincible homebase, only risking losing the ship at worst case (no blocks and/or credits/FP)
So, the range of the remote control would be 2 sectors. If, for example, controller is at 2, 2, 2 and drone goes to 2, 2, 3, all fine. But if it flies from 2, 2, 3 to 2, 2, 4, the player is ejected from the terminal with a "Signal lost" message, and the controlled ship becomes inactive, drifting away. Same happens if the remote controlled ship loses its AI module, or its core overheats. During a fleet battle, this means the drone crew and the carrier pilot has to beware their distance from each other, if they do not want to lose a fighter or two not to enemy fire, but bad positioning. This obviously won't be much of a problem with a turret that's already strapped firmly to the controller ship.

This system could also allow the drone crew to quickly jump to another terminal (if they are placed close by) if the controlled ship or turret is destroyed, to use a second entity controlled by the second terminal.


ADDITIONAL OPTION: as most present day drones are capable of flying on their own if they don't get a command from the control terminal, the R/C mode may not be pre-selected. Instead, a drone/turret set to "any" would be in "remote control" mode when someone enters its Control Terminal, but reset to "any" as soon as the control is released (controller exits terminal)

 

[whooplaah]

I've read plenty of posts about expanding the A.I. - which I'm sure won't be implemented until after all the blocks for ships (such as rails) are added and balanced.

This is the first one I've read in a while that wasn't completely redundant.

Three thoughts:

(1) Range of control is linked to the size of the signal tower. Build a bigger tower, have a stronger signal and bigger range. A limit can be implemented by the power consumption. The trade off is that if the tower is damaged or power drained then control with the furthest ships would be lost.

(2) A warning while flying the R/C that tells you when you are nearing the limit of the signal strength

(3) A limit to the size of the R/C. No one needs an R/C capital ship, and this would really help with players using the feature to circumvent FP loss

 

[Matt_Bradock]

I've read plenty of posts about expanding the A.I. - which I'm sure won't be implemented until after all the blocks for ships (such as rails) are added and balanced.

This is the first one I've read in a while that wasn't completely redundant.

Three thoughts:

(1) Range of control is linked to the size of the signal tower. Build a bigger tower, have a stronger signal and bigger range. A limit can be implemented by the power consumption. The trade off is that if the tower is damaged or power drained then control with the furthest ships would be lost.

(2) A warning while flying the R/C that tells you when you are nearing the limit of the signal strength

(3) A limit to the size of the R/C. No one needs an R/C capital ship, and this would really help with players using the feature to circumvent FP loss

(1)No one would use an R/C capital anyway, because of 2 main reasons:
1. If you are on a station, you'd be only able to use that ship in your 2 sector radius.
2. If you're on another ship, you'll still need to be close to the remote controlled one or you'd risk losing it due to range - also, if the controller ship gets shot, you lose control of both and you both get killed, so anyone in their right mind rather pilot big ships personally.

To tie the range to a signal tower would need an entire new controller block system, and I wanted to keep it simple, so the dev's hands are a little less full.

(2)A low signal warning when nearing max range is a smart idea.

+1 On second thought, another limit to a remote controlled ship would be build mode being unavailable. Since you're not actually there, you'd be restricted to flight mode only, your view being limited to cockpits and without build mode, you can't use shipboard logic or cargo storages either.

 

[whooplaah]

I don't build capital ships, so I hadn't thought about that. It was just a fear of mine.

I don't know that the lack of build-mode will be a limitation for long. I understand that with shipyards coming down the road build-mode is going to be limited to a design terminal. But I may be wrong about that.

 

[aceface]

1+

 

[max stripe]

i will shoot our cat god if this doesnt get implemented..

 

[Groovrider]

I would suggest the requirement that the antenna must be exposed to open space in some fashion. I would not like to see long arrays hidden along the spine of large ships. If you want your big bad RC antenna than you better be ready to defend it as its now of massive strategic importance.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

I would suggest the requirement that the antenna must be exposed to open space in some fashion. I would not like to see long arrays hidden along the spine of large ships. If you want your big bad RC antenna than you better be ready to defend it as its now of massive strategic importance.

Antenna being exposed isn't a bad idea, especially that some ships are already aesthetically built with huge antenna arrays. Time to put those into use, I guess?

I was thinking, flying remote controlled ships could even server as a good training purpose (no one dies, no credits/blocks depending on server settings lost) for faction combat drills. I've been imagining outfitting ships with only 100% Ion weapons for training duty, and losing shields means you're "dead".