Building a jump interdiction drone

[Panpiper]

I have just wasted many hours working on what was intended to be a ship designed to put serious hurt onto jump drives, with a massive amount of jump interdictors. Sadly it did not occur to me until half way through to ask what the range was of jump interdictors. It turns out that you have to be in the same sector as the ship you are trying to interdict. Given that an AI ship will always try to stay at the maximum range of it's longest ranged weapon, and that such ranges are for the most part a sector or more, it would appear that any such ship is doomed to uselessness unless equipped with beam/cannon or pulse weapons exclusively.

I have a griefer on my server who regularly kills anything and anyone he can, newbies in their starter miners alike. And he is a foul mouthed bully to boot. He does this flying a million mass, newbie brick, doom cube that I would dearly love him to be rid of. I have a drone fleet that will make short work of him, but I fear the moment he sees his shields dropping fast, he'll hit the jump button. I need to make sure he can't run.

At this point I am thinking of just adding a dozen small, completely expendable drones with just enough interdiction to disable a chaindrive before they die. That and hope he doesn't have a bigger jump drive in reserve.

Does anyone have any better ideas? Does anyone have any thoughts as to how to build an effective jump interdiction ship that an AI could pilot?

 

[Xskyth]

first, can AI even use jump inhibitors?
if so, make 2 or 3 of your drones as small as possible, with only jump inhibitors, no weapons. they should just fly up to his ship and start bouncing against his hull. he probably will focus of on larger ships. and if he has turrets set to attack any, they will attack the largest target first.
and what server are you on?

 

[Nickizzy]

I have just wasted many hours working on what was intended to be a ship designed to put serious hurt onto jump drives, with a massive amount of jump interdictors. Sadly it did not occur to me until half way through to ask what the range was of jump interdictors. It turns out that you have to be in the same sector as the ship you are trying to interdict. Given that an AI ship will always try to stay at the maximum range of it's longest ranged weapon, and that such ranges are for the most part a sector or more, it would appear that any such ship is doomed to uselessness unless equipped with beam/cannon or pulse weapons exclusively.

I have a griefer on my server who regularly kills anything and anyone he can, newbies in their starter miners alike. And he is a foul mouthed bully to boot. He does this flying a million mass, newbie brick, doom cube that I would dearly love him to be rid of. I have a drone fleet that will make short work of him, but I fear the moment he sees his shields dropping fast, he'll hit the jump button. I need to make sure he can't run.

At this point I am thinking of just adding a dozen small, completely expendable drones with just enough interdiction to disable a chaindrive before they die. That and hope he doesn't have a bigger jump drive in reserve.

Does anyone have any better ideas? Does anyone have any thoughts as to how to build an effective jump interdiction ship that an AI could pilot?

Ask for balancing? It shouldn't be that hard to interdict someone.

For large scale interdection, try making small, black motherboarded ships, with lots of interdiction modules. Like 50% of the volume. Then have enough power to have jamming, and maybe cloaking even. Then whenever you send the fleet out at the guy, surround the sectors with them. Enter the ships and activate cloaking and jamming before you send them out(it stays, I've lost a ship that way).

 

[Scypio]

and if he has turrets set to attack any, they will attack the largest target first.

They'll focus the nearest things that they have in range and focus it until it's destroyed.

 

[Lonnehart]

Interdiction Torpedoes? Or maybe trap him by having a few newbies nearby to attract his attention. And perhaps some of their ships will have hidden interdiction modules on them. While he's busy with them, you can launch the drones at him.

 

[Panpiper]

I can't believe I've spent twelve hours dicking around with this and have now arrived at what is probably the simplest solution.

It turns out that a single jump inhibitor module will give about 10,000 points of jump drain effect (just how much that really is, I haven't a clue). To simply double that effect takes vastly more inhibitor modules and vastly more power. Clearly, many small effects each on a separate ship is the way to go. Well, it so happens that my drone fleet contains many small ships. So... Put a single module jump inhibitor system on each ship. Install a sensor with a two block clock that detects if the shields are at anything less than 100% and if so, activate the inhibitor. Thanks Malacodor. (I just hope this doesn't cause too much lag in so many drones.)

A mere handful of blocks, a small power cost of which my drones had sufficient to spare, and now I have a plethora of inhibitor fields potentially going, many of which will very likely at least occasionally be drifting within range. It would probably still be a good idea to have that dozen or so inhibitor 'torpedoes', just to be absolutely certain to quickly nail a chain drive.

 

[StarWars1981]

I can't believe I've spent twelve hours dicking around with this and have now arrived at what is probably the simplest solution.

It turns out that a single jump inhibitor module will give about 10,000 points of jump drain effect (just how much that really is, I haven't a clue). To simply double that effect takes vastly more inhibitor modules and vastly more power. Clearly, many small effects each on a separate ship is the way to go. Well, it so happens that my drone fleet contains many small ships. So... Put a single module jump inhibitor system on each ship. Install a sensor with a two block clock that detects if the shields are at anything less than 100% and if so, activate the inhibitor. Thanks Malacodor. (I just hope this doesn't cause too much lag in so many drones.)

A mere handful of blocks, a small power cost of which my drones had sufficient to spare, and now I have a plethora of inhibitor fields potentially going, many of which will very likely at least occasionally be drifting within range. It would probably still be a good idea to have that dozen or so inhibitor 'torpedoes', just to be absolutely certain to quickly nail a chain drive.

Roll the two functions into one. Logic-driven "smart" torpedoes, with bobby AI aboard (not fleeted, holy crap no) and a single pulse computer. No modules necessary. Add warhead line in front, large power supply plus armor, and a large push-pulse effect ... fire dozens and watch him cry cause he can't run and can't get'em all in his million-mass noobmachine.

 

[Jojomo]

Can you tell us how things go with the doomcube bully?

 

[Heillos]

This seems like a reasonable time to note the existence of devices such as this: Logic Jump Inhibitor. Self-powering, significant discharge, in a relatively small package (not drone-scale, but relatively easy to fit to a medium-large ship).

In terms of how effective 10,000 jump discharge/sec is, that's simply equivalent to the base charge rate of a jump drive computer. The systems are balanced 1:1 in block count, but inhibs take twice the power.

Assuming this "gentleman" is a proper noobcube user, He likely isn't great at scanning. A stealthy inhib ship should prove very helpful to keep him held down, if that's to your tastes.

 

[kingreol]

the small but many jump inhibitor ships sounds like a nice idea personally iv been using a very large homebase one with large turrets to keep people at bay.

 

[Malacodor]

I just read in the other thread that your ships use cannon/cannon. I suggest that you also use some high penetration weapons, such as cannon/pulse or at least unslaved cannon. Making very deep holes might be inefficient for block destruction, but it's very good for destroying aux reactors. Also, stop and EMP effects might be useful.

 

[Blodge]

I can't believe I've spent twelve hours dicking around with this and have now arrived at what is probably the simplest solution.

It turns out that a single jump inhibitor module will give about 10,000 points of jump drain effect (just how much that really is, I haven't a clue). To simply double that effect takes vastly more inhibitor modules and vastly more power. Clearly, many small effects each on a separate ship is the way to go. Well, it so happens that my drone fleet contains many small ships. So... Put a single module jump inhibitor system on each ship. Install a sensor with a two block clock that detects if the shields are at anything less than 100% and if so, activate the inhibitor. Thanks Malacodor. (I just hope this doesn't cause too much lag in so many drones.)

A mere handful of blocks, a small power cost of which my drones had sufficient to spare, and now I have a plethora of inhibitor fields potentially going, many of which will very likely at least occasionally be drifting within range. It would probably still be a good idea to have that dozen or so inhibitor 'torpedoes', just to be absolutely certain to quickly nail a chain drive.

Death by 1,000 Barnacles. I like it

 

[Panpiper]

I just read in the other thread that your ships use cannon/cannon. I suggest that you also use some high penetration weapons, such as cannon/pulse or at least unslaved cannon. Making very deep holes might be inefficient for block destruction, but it's very good for destroying aux reactors. Also, stop and EMP effects might be useful.

Heh.

 

[Joelbrisco]

You know, when it comes to beating a big poo-poo head generally it is a good idea if they DON'T see the thread about you talking about said plans to beat them. But hey, what do I know? Best of luck Panpiper, can't wait to see the results.

 

[Fellow Starmadian]

instead of using shield percent sensors, just have the drones detect if they are docked, it'll make it so all the inhibitors are on instead of whatever is being shot at. single activator block next to the docking block.

 

[Dire Venom]

I would personally just run with a decent sized ship with a large emp & stop turret imo.
Just bring along enough inhibators to damage his supply so he can't instatly jump, and if your emp weapons are big enough within 10 seconds he won't beable to move, charge his jumpdrive or shoot : )
Then you can have fun slowly salvaging his ship with him inside :D

Alternativly you can also invite all the new players to have a peice of him while he lies helpless :3

 

[Calhoun]

Depending on the size of your drones, when shields aren't at 100%, it's usually dead. Starmadian's solution seems like it would be a bit better.

 

[Heillos]

One relevant issue with drones that start their inhibitors only upon undock is that, if their sector is unloaded, they won't turn back on. For a loss in efficiency, putting the inhib on a 0.5sec clock and having that start upon undock will ensure the inhib is on 50% of the time it possibly could be, and that bugs or unloading can't turn it off.

 

[Fellow Starmadian]

I was unaware of the problem with unloading. granted that might be a good way to turn them off, considering how annoying it would be to have to sit around and wait for them all to re-dock if you need to run.

If you want them on for good, I suppose using a latch connected to the undock detection circuit would be more trustworthy? I honestly haven't taken the time to figure out all the good anti-unloading logic methods. It should also be possible to put some kind of error checking circuit in there, but again, Im not sure how well it works when the sector unloads / reloads. maybe put a rotator clock on it, so it rotates at least once when reloading the sector?
All I know is to never use anything from the button block group unless you like things staying on when they shouldn't, after the server saves. I made a very complex circuit that utilizes a metric fuck ton of activators and wireless blocks, and now I need to go back and install a reset circuit because of starmade's bugs.

 

[Edymnion]

Hmmm... doe jump inhibitors drain the drives of faction aligned ships, or only the other guy's?

Thinking about installing these in my fighters and drones as well...