Linked suggestion around a drone concept

[Yleia]

First, I would like to apologize for the obvious grammar and spelling mistakes I will do here, english isn't my first langage, please don't hold this against me

My suggestion :

1) a "launcher" block : this one stays connected to the ship, and can be hotkeyed. Obviously, it allows to launch the drone.

2) an "antenna" block that will allow the control of the drone from the ship (with a limited range). Instructions like "go to sector x,y,z" or "come back to ship" can be sent.

3) a "radar" block that will use the antenna to send data (what ship are in the radar range)

So the idea is to be able to launch a drone to search an area without risking your ship first. Drones can do scouting missions (using the radar to send limited data like "I'm in the sector x,y,z, I see this_ship and this_ship2 and this_station from here) or suicide mission if equiped with Dis-Integrator Explosives.

In that case the drone is obviously destroyed and need to be rebuilt.

This lead to my last suggestion : a block connected to a factory (or a plex-storage) who is able to place block + a "place block master" hotkeyable who is able to control a line of "block placers". (this could lead to very interesting non-drone set up)

The drone should be visible in Navigation, so the ship you are looking for has a chance to see you are looking for him and vice versa :p

Yl.

 

[Visitor]

I don\'t think we really need those things. Why do you need launcher block if you have already docking blocks you can undock stuff from through ship\'s controls? I am also not sure about antenna and generally - drones being player controlled. I\'d rather stick AI into those, set a guideline for how it is to behave and make AI do the job. The only thing drones right now would be used for, would be fighting anyway. It\'s easy to safely scout location without getting too much attention.

I\'d assume drones would be visible in navigation since they\'d still be ships so no need to add anything here.

 

[Yleia]

It\'s easy to safely scout location without getting too much attention.


I obviously disagree with that, I don\'t know on what server you\'re playing, and what kind of players are there. As easy as it seems to scout, unless you play with people that don\'t watch their Navigation often (!), you will be noticed very fast, especially from faction you are at war with.

A second point is you can\'t actually scout several sector at once.

A third point is you will see wars on large scale, scouting with drone add some level of complexity in the possibles scenarios. You probably didn\'t play Eve Online, or you would then remember how scouting is an important aspect of the game, well it was at least when I played it a few years ago. Wars on large scale also means we need to see specialised ships (like healers, debuffers, in this case scouts etc), or the game will always go in the \"lets build a bigger ship\" direction.

And finally, I think what makes a game interesting is the variety of tools you can use and, in minecraft-like games, the variety of blocks available. And the need to use different blocks to achieve a single task raises the number of scenarios / viables set-up as well.

(I agree the launcher block isn\'t a very bright idea, it\'s just a fast solution so you have something to put in the hotbar, different than the docking module.)