Remote Control for Ships & Turrets

[Ruethus]

Many times in singleplayer combat, I have the desire to set my capital ship to AI and then control a turret so that I can get in on the thrilling action. However, my turrets are often difficult to reach, and traveling to them while the ship is being AI-guided leads to lag, and "Spawn Stuck Protection" often "accidentally" warps me out of my ship and into the middle of the battle with my ship flying away, leading to SLIGHT frustration. I feel like a remote control block, paired with a receiver block on the target ship/turret, would be useful in both solo and server games. Specifically, there could be two variations: one which links to the Ship Core, and one that does not. The latter would allow players to remotely control turrets on stations, or let AI fly their fighter while manning a turret, and the former would allow the pilot to actively target that pesky fighter shooting at the engines, then switch back to flight mode. This goes above and beyond the capabilities of the SD Cockpit, and should likely be high in price, with the receivers sold separately and at lesser cost.

In fact, making it so that one transmitter can link to multiple receives could make it even better, but of course with grouping required to increase max count of controlled entities.

Other important features:

> Limited range; increased by grouping of enhancer blocks

> Transmitter draws power from host entity, be it a ship, station, or planet. Something like 25/s to balance it out.

> Hotbar GUI shows stats of controlled entity, not host entity.

 

[Wallespider56]

This is an amazing idea to have plus it would do really well for machinima because AI are kinda dumb so being able to control them and get where you want would be fantastic.

Good idea,

Walle

 

[ALPHAshadowfox]

This would be great! being able to set the controls in your hotbar then switching to the turret and your ship still flying at its current speed :D

PREPARE TO BE TORN IN HALF FROM MY RAPID-FIRE ANTI-MATTER CANNON PIRATES!!!

 

[Ruethus]

Some other ideas:

@ALPHAshadowfox: Maintaining speed and orientation when switching within the core-linked ship makes sense, and should definitely be included if feasible.

Or, perhaps a configurable AI takes over when you switch to turret mode. This would make it so that the player can join the action without the hassle of constantly updating the heading. Of course, this would be best if the AI was optional, and perhaps should be its own block.

 

[Winterhome]

Elevator rails that move in any direction necessary. Bam. Fast travel in your big ships, and your smaller ships can just use hallways :P

 

[Mauler]

yes yes

 

[Ruethus]

Some additional ideas...

> Make it so that BOBBY AI Modules take over when a ship is not the actively controlled ship, making turrets and ships automatic until the player switches to controlling them.

> Make a special \"Fleet Command Module\" block, paired with a \"Fleet Command Receiver\", that lets you lead all linked ships into combat, mining, etc. and lets you assign a command to the entire fleet, i.e. \"Attack Enemies\", \"Salvage Minerals\", \"Guerilla Warfare\" (Actively dodge enemy attacks, followed by returning fire!), and even \"Return to Dock\", which could send them back to the entity from which the Fleet Commands are being broadcast and have them seek out docks to secure themselves on.

 

[Hanspeter Schnitzel]

Controlling my turrets or activating their AI from the inside owuld be AWESOME.

 

[Nootau]

After this all we need is a docking \'coordinator\' block so Bobby AI, when not enganged, will return to, given it has signal range, and dock at the first avaliable docking unit.

 

[HDaeder]

might I add my ideas? Well I\'ll do it anyways: Drones/ AI Ships: I would love to have the Bobby AI on the main ship- you can connect it with the ship core of the drone docked to the main ship. You could also allow the option to assign a specific docking station to every drone, as well as an option in the Bobby AI to make the drone connected to it return to its specific docking station. You could ofcourse implement a limited range to the return command of let\'s say 2 sectors or so.

 

[Ruethus]

This is in similar spirit to my ideas, and I think it should definitely be included. An \"Admiral\" AI block would make a cool addition, allowing any player to manage a small fleet within one or two sectors.

I think the \"Admiral\" block should be station-exclusive, though, but let me explain why. This block lets you control a fleet. If the signal can travel one sector away, even diagonally, then somebody can control ships within a 27-sector cube, which is 3x3x3. This is slightly unbalanced, unless it is limited to stations.

However, I have a separate idea that statjon-exclusive blocks can be placed on ships that meet certain size, mass, and power requirements, such as 10k blocks minimum, mass of 5k, and minimum power regeneration of 20k/s. This allows the use of PlexLifts, Factory blocks, and Undeathinators on the ship, as well as designation as a Home Base, although that should have separate requirements.

 

[Hanspeter Schnitzel]

I find it a bit odd that one person can guide a whole fleet alone, I mean, you could be a crazy scientist then and make yourself a drone army, haha. I find that actual fleets should be something for factions, not individual players. Defence-drones are alright, but not whole attack-fleets.

 

[Ruethus]

Then perhaps a tiered system would be best.

Tier I: \"Captain\" Fleet AI Module (Controls one other ship within 1500 meters; ship-placeable) 100k credits

Tier II: \"Sergeant\" Fleet AI Module (Controls up to 4 ships or turrets within 1750 meters; station exclusive) 1mil credits

Tier III: \"Commander\" Fleet AI Module (Controls up to 8 ships or turrets within 2000 meters; station exclusive) 10mil credits

Tier IV: \"Admiral\" Fleet AI Module (Controls up to 16 ships or turrets within 2500 meters; faction home base exclusive) 1bil credits

Of course, with the new Adam Smith-style pricing system (a.k.a. capitalistic), these prices will vary based on stock at shops.

Also: what is wrong with being a crazy scientist? Pathological (a.k.a. mad) science advances technology in great bounds!

 

[Ruethus]

So, the latest update allows players to switch between the mother ship and the docked ships without moving, which extends to turrets. But, the AI fails to reactivate! Perhaps if Schema could make it so that temporarily controlling a turret merely puts Bobby on \"Stand-By\" until you switch to a different Ship Core, as opposed to disabling it completely. Heck, it would also be great to make any changes made to the host ship\'s AI while in Flight or Build Mode from that Core would automatically apply to the turrets.

This would mean on big ships, AI enabling and disabling is easy, and switching to your heavy turret to snipe the pesky bomber doesn\'t leave that turret inactive when you switch back to the main ship.

Any thoughts?

 

[planeofsuck]

what about being able to point and shoot your turrets from any cockpit on your ship?

 

[Ruethus]

That would be amazing! Add in the feature where cockpits change the FOV, and you can make highly versatile weaponry!

There could be a \"Turret Controller Block\" that connects to all of the Turret Docking Modules in a set, and is treated as a weapon system in Flight Mode, letting you make a \"Heat-Seeking Hailfire\" turret array, a \"Capital Killer\" laser turret array, etc. If Bobby AI blocks are made so that they are linked to what they control, then this could be much more interesting, especially if a Thruster computer was added, allowing Bobby to fly the ship for lazy pilots like me who simply want to man the guns and blow stuff up, or because Bobby controls the \"Forget those Fighters\" AMC turret array and obliterates fighters.

Of course, this may be WAY too much programming, and schema may ignore it. Oh well! Might as well vocalize my thoughts.

 

[UpperFlagAstro]

This is a great idea but I think that you should be able to track where the signal is being broadcasted from so that you can\'t destroy a ship from the safety of your space station and then go salvage the remains with almost no risk factor at all.

Also you shouldn\'t be able to use this from your invulnerable home base, that would allow you to be immune while killing others.

 

[Ruethus]

So, the \"Fleet\" command blocks could be non-faction-home-only, since it is rather OP to control your fleet of \"Overcompensation Omega\" dreadnoughts from an invincible home base. Heck, this would even allow resourceful solo players to defend themselves against faction raids, but not without a risk factor, of course, since their faction home cannot hold any of the \"Fleet\" blocks.

 

[h0yer]

My addition:

What about making remote control blocks for turrets, that:

Are actually SD-Cockpits, linked to a turret docking unit and switch view to the turret-mounted SD-cockpit (if present), when entering the remote-control-SD-cockpit-block. Leaving this remote-controler then should reactivate the AI. This would even emulate some sort of manual override and could be extended to linking cockpits to weapon computers and non-linking them making them just observation stations or simply seats for passengers, and if not connected to the core, won\'t be accessible by the player in the ships core

Background:

The same like Ruethus\' one, with my opinion:

Its totaly OK, to have giant turrets with access-ports below them, so you can enter them from your ships corridors. But this gets very difficult, if using really small turrets, that have no real space or are placed on the hull, where it\'s not really applicable to build a corridor beneath.

I know, that you can already switch to different docked vehicles and turrets with up/down arrow keys, but this only applies to the one player, that entered the ship core, or already is sitting in a docked vehicle. (I\'m a really dedicated multi-player-ship-builder)

Cockpits should be linkable to any type of enterable controler, sou you would be able to decide, if you want the standard view of this controler or a specific pov. Could make weapon battery control rooms. Whoa, got OOT again :D

+1

 

[firestar3637]

+1. Great idea.