The ultimate drone R&D thread

[PizzaPress]

If you dug your claws into an asteroid, and then hit it with a push beam....? Did you guys just invent a wacky new form of transportation?

Not once collision damage is implemented*, I'm afraid. Unless really small movements are ignored.
*Edit: It's probably got to be finished before it's set as default, or else it would be default already.

P.S. Do you have a plan to activate the plexdoors? Could use area triggers, I suppose. They feel kinda too simple and easy, sadly. You'll also have to get them to ram the enemy(who'll probably be moving around) face-first. AI ships, if I recall correctly, will move erratically when you ram them. Do weaponless AIs ram the enemy? That's what I remember hearing, who knows if it works reliably for something like this. Plus you have weird shapes to work with, and harder, non-Borg(no texturing like Borg ships)cubes.
Not meaning to rain on your parade, or make it seem impossible, of course. Those are just the problems I see having to overcome to make facehugger drones usable.

 

[Keptick]

I'm pretty sure that the claw thing won't work. Both ships will move and the collisions will eventually push the drone out. It will also cause massive fps lag btw.

 

[Thalanor]

Hmm good point on the way the game handles stuck collisions. This might be too much to want, and the drone would have to be docked in an exterior spacious port due to the plex hooks.
I hope it becomes possible one day - the evil is just sooo damn tasty!

"Stuck" collisions do afaik end in both entities regardless of size ratio spinning madly, though (when the game resolves the collision). Even though too laggy, that would make for an extra disorientating drone. Capship spin is hard to stop after all :D

All of this might be too far into the anti server measures department.

 

[Gerion]

Well, the plan in my mind was:

Area trigger linked to plex doors around the trigger (leaving some space so they dont activate it), to the weapon system (repeated by infinity clock), a 1/1/1 cannon/cannon/stop combo angled directly downwards (so the drone also is an annoyance) and (if possible) to its own undocking mechanism.
The whole thing would be brought in using either ramming AI drones or a small craft piloted by a player. The enemy ship enters the area trigger, the "parasite" undocks, closes the doors ("grappling" with the enemy) and starts stopping and shooting. All done without having an AI at all.

And yes, Anti-Server called. They say the latest projects interfere with their area of expertise, and that we should just (quote) "Fuck off". They are not friendly people.

 

[Keptick]

Want evil? How 'bout this: A skoomdrone with anti-missile turrets. Good luck stopping that tiny little ball of evil from zipping around you and freezing you in space :P

 

[Loadout]

So as I was reading the first few pages of this I came up with an idea for a canister style rack. As I continued reading I saw that I was not the only one and built a prototype right away!

The idea is simple, launch the rack, give it a push and then it grazes the edge of it's launch tube. At which point a delay is activated whereby the drones just undock. No messy launches on the rack itself and cheap as hell to boot. In practice it seems to work quite well, although my rack only holds 5 small 7x7x7 cubes.

Thinking further down the line got me to the point where now I question if Push is really the right effect to be using.... what about Pull? could a small arm outside the ship open a "drone drawer" which then launches? It would follow suit that this drawer is vastly easy to recover than a stray core floating about someplace in space. Although there is that issue of it being destroyed.... though one could simply integrated the whole structure into the ship itself for more protection....

 

[Keptick]

So as I was reading the first few pages of this I came up with an idea for a canister style rack. As I continued reading I saw that I was not the only one and built a prototype right away!

The idea is simple, launch the rack, give it a push and then it grazes the edge of it's launch tube. At which point a delay is activated whereby the drones just undock. No messy launches on the rack itself and cheap as hell to boot. In practice it seems to work quite well, although my rack only holds 5 small 7x7x7 cubes.

Thinking further down the line got me to the point where now I question if Push is really the right effect to be using.... what about Pull? could a small arm outside the ship open a "drone drawer" which then launches? It would follow suit that this drawer is vastly easy to recover than a stray core floating about someplace in space. Although there is that issue of it being destroyed.... though one could simply integrated the whole structure into the ship itself for more protection....

There's two reasons why I use push beams to push the drones out:

1. The AI is stupid and can't properly fly out of a rack, causing collisions and fps lag. A launch with your canister system would actually be a lot messier than what we currently have (not to mention that the rack would have the exact same price). It might also be hard to tell but the rack I use on my titan has no push beams on it. All the beams are mounted directly on the ship.
2. It looks cool.

The thing with your drawer system is that it completely defeats the purpose of having rack in the first place, which is us being too lazy to recuperate the drones manually.

Don't get me wrong, you have good ideas. It's just they would add more complexity for no better results.

 

[Loadout]

There's two reasons why I use push beams to push the drones out:

1. The AI is stupid and can't properly fly out of a rack, causing collisions and fps lag. A launch with your canister system would actually be a lot messier than what we currently have (not to mention that the rack would have the exact same price). It might also be hard to tell but the rack I use on my titan has no push beams on it. All the beams are mounted directly on the ship.
2. It looks cool.

The thing with your drawer system is that it completely defeats the purpose of having rack in the first place, which is us being too lazy to recuperate the drones manually.

Don't get me wrong, you have good ideas. It's just they would add more complexity for no better results.

On the push thing I can understand it does needlessly complicate stuff. Was trying it and yeah, epic fail, lagged my 16GB of spare ram server until it decided to shut down as a safety. Which, is fun... but yeah. Can't imagine that many collisions being great on an even bigger scale.

It was actually your idea keptick that I found later on something like page 12 or so, I had started off with the idea around page 2 x) hadn't read that far yet ahead, still catching up btw.

It's similar in effect but ejecting actually doesn't make it as messy as you might think. The drones just fly out of what is essentially an open frame as the rack is but needn't be pushed themselves at all. Only the rack gets pushed, once far enough away they just un-dock and flop out.

 

[Keptick]

On the push thing I can understand it does needlessly complicate stuff. Was trying it and yeah, epic fail, lagged my 16GB of spare ram server until it decided to shut down as a safety. Which, is fun... but yeah. Can't imagine that many collisions being great on an even bigger scale.

It was actually your idea keptick that I found later on something like page 12 or so, I had started off with the idea around page 2 x) hadn't read that far yet ahead, still catching up btw.

It's similar in effect but ejecting actually doesn't make it as messy as you might think. The drones just fly out of what is essentially an open frame as the rack is but needn't be pushed themselves at all. Only the rack gets pushed, once far enough away they just un-dock and flop out.

Oh, I get what you mean! You're right, it could potentially be more effective. But I like the "holy f*ck" effect my current system provokes :P (it also looks nicer with individual doors).

 

[Loadout]

Oh, I get what you mean! You're right, it could potentially be more effective. But I like the "holy f*ck" effect my current system provokes :p (it also looks nicer with individual doors).

+1 doors are awesome. Dunno though whenever I finish this prototype it should look pretty awesome in it's own right. =P

who knows with some testing maybe we'll have multiple options now for effective drone launching. woot!

 

[Thalanor]

I love how this started as a concept, first implementations were messy as heck, and now drone R&D has spawned implementations so cost effective, MP applicable and downright powerful that people are in serious need of working countermeasures (if they do not mass drone themselves). *raises a glass to all of you bunch of lab coat evil genius science companions, especially our senior guru @keptick

It is also future proof. If one day AI is less dumb and can redock itself, we can easily refit our ships for that, as the mechanisms don't even take much space now.

It is time to optimize the heck out of our respective drones darwin-style. I will make small adjustments to mine and let a rack fight an updated one until no visible improvement is notable. For most small drones, these points are of interest:

- best usage of default 50k power vs small portions of capacitors included
- shield regen vs capacity on drones in drone-vs-drone (does not matter in drone vs ship much)
- tertiary and/or defensive effects vs larger groups or multiple weapons (potentially partially logic triggered) or micro PD turrets on drones
- maximum thrust ratio the BOBBY AI can make notable use of (there must be a sweet spot!)

Please do add if there are more points to optimize

 

[Loadout]

...

It is time to optimize the heck out of our respective drones darwin-style. I will make small adjustments to mine and let a rack fight an updated one until no visible improvement is notable. For most small drones, these points are of interest:

- best usage of default 50k power vs small portions of capacitors included
- shield regen vs capacity on drones in drone-vs-drone (does not matter in drone vs ship much)
- tertiary and/or defensive effects vs larger groups or multiple weapons (potentially partially logic triggered) or micro PD turrets on drones
- maximum thrust ratio the BOBBY AI can make notable use of (there must be a sweet spot!)

Please do add if there are more points to optimize

I like the idea of testing but it seems like it would require a huge punnett square. Something like...

basic(no armor or shield) | basic w/ shield | light armor | light armor w/ shield | advanced armor | adv w/ shield

all of them additionally with and without ion defense effect and piercing defense effect.

That would give you a comparison defensively but at the same time you also have to consider weapon combos @_@~~

Suffice it to say you're in for one heck of a test =P

... I would probably just stick shields with ion on though, seriously what's not to love about a regenerating 60% reduced damage buff?

 

[Daffor]

Far as I know the AI is unable to use the defensive effects and another thing "not to love" about ion is the power drain.

Other than that, yeah it'll be a hell of a test. I expect having to do something similar once I start working on my drones :p

 

[Loadout]

Far as I know the AI is unable to use the defensive effects and another thing "not to love" about ion is the power drain.

Other than that, yeah it'll be a hell of a test. I expect having to do something similar once I start working on my drones :p

only 5% of your total blocks is needed for full effect if the drain is too much you're either using a realllllyyyyy big ship or too many ions. I can use an ion on my 7x7 drone without any effective drain at all. Mind you it's really just the one block for full effect =)

you'd have to add some way to activate the blocks either prior to the ai being activated via logic or manually. The logic would be tough on smaller drones but the larger ones probably not so much.

oh another thing is size, what catagories(7x7, 11x11) are more effective against say... a 10k mass ship or 20k, 30k, 40k. etc.

 

[Keptick]

only 5% of your total blocks is needed for full effect if the drain is too much you're either using a realllllyyyyy big ship or too many ions. I can use an ion on my 7x7 drone without any effective drain at all. Mind you it's really just the one block for full effect =)

you'd have to add some way to activate the blocks either prior to the ai being activated via logic or manually. The logic would be tough on smaller drones but the larger ones probably not so much.

oh another thing is size, what catagories(7x7, 11x11) are more effective against say... a 10k mass ship or 20k, 30k, 40k. etc.

It's not that bad, my skoomdrone's AI only does the steering, the rest is driven by logic.

 

[Daffor]

only 5% of your total blocks is needed for full effect if the drain is too much you're either using a realllllyyyyy big ship or too many ions. I can use an ion on my 7x7 drone without any effective drain at all. Mind you it's really just the one block for full effect =)

you'd have to add some way to activate the blocks either prior to the ai being activated via logic or manually. The logic would be tough on smaller drones but the larger ones probably not so much.

oh another thing is size, what catagories(7x7, 11x11) are more effective against say... a 10k mass ship or 20k, 30k, 40k. etc.

Good point about the shipsize; last I calculated ion power drain it was in the billions :D

You could propably use some simple area trigger setup to start the ion on the drone. Ofcourse in such a small entity you need to weigh the value of every block used for logic against maybe just pure shield capacitors or something else of direct benefit.

As far as size goes. I'll propably go with a single enhancer docking area, that would make it simple to build. Especially in the four sided rack I've been thinking of :D. And the added volume will increase the capability of the drone significantly.

 

[Loadout]

Good point about the shipsize; last I calculated ion power drain it was in the billions :D

You could propably use some simple area trigger setup to start the ion on the drone. Ofcourse in such a small entity you need to weigh the value of every block used for logic against maybe just pure shield capacitors or something else of direct benefit.

As far as size goes. I'll propably go with a single enhancer docking area, that would make it simple to build. Especially in the four sided rack I've been thinking of :D. And the added volume will increase the capability of the drone significantly.

Just tested it, single ion block setup on a 7x7x5 drone is only 243 e/sec and offers the full 60% damage reduction. I imagine making it taller by one docking enhancer's worth would at most require only 3 ion blocks. As for activating it I'll stick with manually for now. I don't honestly have alot of experience with the whole logic thing (yet) so the less i have to worry about it the better. x)

Also 3 capacitors is approximately ~160 shield energy vs ~16 recharge Modified by the total in the block group of course but the group is bound to be small anyways (small entities afterall) So I don't think the 3 blocks for logic(activator + area trigger+ area block) would generally be too much of a dent... I mean 60% damage reduction is massive...

 

[Daffor]

True, I'm just using you to run the numbers so I don't have to :D (Kidding, I'm just woefully out of touch with the nuts and bolts.)

Haven't gotten around to building the drone bays on my ship yet and I'm planning on doing my actual drone development at the same time to get the sizes right. Haven't gotten much building done in the past few days and in an hour I'll be way too busy with Beyond Earth to touch anything else for a while.

Regardless, you're giving valuable data to the rest of us.

 

[Thalanor]

Out of interest, what sizes are your drones?
7x11x13 here, debating to go 7x13x15 or similar.

A drone when attacked will not survive long anyways - fairly sure testing will show that an offensive focus is better on drones. If a drone of mine can oneshot another with it's guided missile (note that overheating is not necessary, any hull damage will cripple a drone) there is no point to having a large bunch of defensive systems.

As for armoring though, I think the optimum is all set: frontal advanced armor, rest standard armor. Cheap enough and makes a good difference against similar craft.

 

[Keptick]

Out of interest, what sizes are your drones?
7x11x13 here, debating to go 7x13x15 or similar.

A drone when attacked will not survive long anyways - fairly sure testing will show that an offensive focus is better on drones. If a drone of mine can oneshot another with it's guided missile (note that overheating is not necessary, any hull damage will cripple a drone) there is no point to having a large bunch of defensive systems.

As for armoring though, I think the optimum is all set: frontal advanced armor, rest standard armor. Cheap enough and makes a good difference against similar craft.

You're right on all those points. I find guided missiles to be optimal on drones. First of all, I have to point out that I only link a beam computer, as the extra range and missile speed isn't needed (not to mention that beam modules don't add damage).

In drones VS drone/fighters lock-ons excel since for starters: They just don't miss. And secondly: they'll wipe out the entire thing if the shields are cracked (which they usually are). Against turrets the same thing applies: Unless it's a capital turret the turrets will be instantly wiped out of existence if the missile hit (and they do).

I also find that they work well VS ships. Considering that the drones will orbit enemy ships, the chances of it dealing concentrated damage with cannons or beams are extremely low. However, lock ons deal all of their damage in the same spot, making the drilling process a lot faster!

My swarm of 44 drones, equipped with rather powerful missiles for their size, pretty much has the same block removal abilities as a missile gattling gun being fired from all sides at once. ^_^