Drone swarm cleanup.

[Nickizzy]

An idea to set a fleet comand option for ships to "self distruct" by overheating. The overheat time would be about twice as long, so boarders could cancel the overheat or you could go out and salvage all your drones to replace them. Works extremely well with Slavage beam vein mining..

 

[Benevolent27]

Nah, they need to fix the drone recall function so that it actually works right. I'd really rather the ships use a rail docker and shoot at a rail they are set to, rather than this whole pick-up point stuff.

 

[AtraUnam]

Nah, they need to fix the drone recall function so that it actually works right. I'd really rather the ships use a rail docker and shoot at a rail they are set to, rather than this whole pick-up point stuff.

The pickup point stuff is there because coding a path finding ai for drones to be able to redock to any ship configuration would be up there with the ai MIT uses for their bipedal robots. Its much easier just to let the player handle the path finding.

 

[Benevolent27]

The pickup point stuff is there because coding a path finding ai for drones to be able to redock to any ship configuration would be up there with the ai MIT uses for their bipedal robots. Its much easier just to let the player handle the path finding.

But the path finding would be a lot easier if the fleet ship didn't have move to such a precise spot.

 

[AtraUnam]

But the path finding would be a lot easier if the fleet ship didn't have move to such a precise spot.

Well theoretically the game will get more and more immersive and this being the case we don't want ships teleporting onto docks to ruin that. At some point even manual docking beams are intended to cause the ship to begin to automatically move onto the dock rather than just snapping straight on.

 

[DrTarDIS]

Well theoretically the game will get more and more immersive and this being the case we don't want ships teleporting onto docks to ruin that. At some point even manual docking beams are intended to cause the ship to begin to automatically move onto the dock rather than just snapping straight on.

500n is not a good shield though. Me, I'd rather "it works" immersion than "it would look cool IF it worked" frustration...

 

[Nickizzy]

"it works" immersion

AKA late stage beta? Alpha is adding new features. Beta is the bug scare. Starmade is doing a bit of both right now just to keep the game playable.

 

[Benevolent27]

Well theoretically the game will get more and more immersive and this being the case we don't want ships teleporting onto docks to ruin that. At some point even manual docking beams are intended to cause the ship to begin to automatically move onto the dock rather than just snapping straight on.

Ok, then when manual docking beams make ships automatically move onto the dock, rather than snapping on, then the same would hold true for the fleets. But even then, why wouldn't they use the rail dockers?

 

[AtraUnam]

Ok, then when manual docking beams make ships automatically move onto the dock, rather than snapping on, then the same would hold true for the fleets. But even then, why wouldn't they use the rail dockers?

The manual beam wouldn't path find around obstacles, if you used it for AI you would get shittiest non-functional fleet behaviour imaginable.

 

[Benevolent27]

The manual beam wouldn't path find around obstacles, if you used it for AI you would get shittiest non-functional fleet behaviour imaginable.

Why wouldn't the AI be able to make a larger circle than they do now when docking, to get within range of the pick-up rail, shoot the pick-up rail, and then dock? I'm not sure why giving them a wider range to dock would make them worse?

 

[AtraUnam]

Oh I thought from your last comment you meant do away with the pickup rails altogether and just have it dock the same way players eventualy would. Yeh that would work but in the meantime it would just be jarring because it would make the 'snap' more noticable when they dock,