The ultimate drone R&D thread

[sagethe13th]

Awesome basestar @Argyle_Ninja :D
My take on nanodrones:

Caeli- class microdrone
9x5x11, 30 mass, 35 thrust, 95k credits
4200 power/s, default cap
1200 shields
guided missile at 4.6k damage (3% support, 100% explosive effect)


Because of the huge missile radius compared to the damage, no damage is wasted even when 20 drones all send their missiles after one core - even if the core has already overheated, the incoming missiles will still destroy more and more surrounding blocks (deny salvage).

It is excellent boom-for-money. The guided missile maxes out the utility of the default power cap (minus a tidbit of tolerance margin), and it only costs 95k. Larger drones do not exceed the missile power / cost ratio usually (actually they are worse as they require power capacity increases).

Also it looks more like a fighter than a crate, which makes room for developing fighter, heavy fighter and corvette versions of it.

Great job man! Thing looks killer!

 

[Mortiferum]

The thing is, swarm dps is usually burst dps. Shield regen will not help you at all, only shield capacity will. Turrets never have enough shields (if they still want some firepower at least) to withstand a cost-wise comparable amount of drones burst-firing (applies to missiles mostly).

To withstand a drone attack of 1M cost, you would have to roughly have 50k shields on your turret. Balanced firepower-heavy turrets with 50k shields usually cost far more, and since the turrets are mounted on a larger much slower entity, they cannot profit much from slow drone speed.

Aha.

So cost effectiveness still favour drones. :D

 

[Thalanor]

Nothing can handle the swarm! Mwahahar!
On another note, if we had the improved turrets suggestion implemented (the one with rotating turret base that provides shields and stuff), we could not only have far better looking turrets, but they would also be more viable vs drones - as you don't have to cram the turret shields into the gunhouse :D

Thanks @sagethe13th :D I also made a fighter version of the same thing (usable as drone, but unlike the micro variant, more appropriate for player usage too). In fact, I'll make a whole family (microdrone at 30 mass, fighter at ~120 mass, heavy fighter...). All of these are designed as bombers, but the larger variants can be refitted easily enough (the micro variant is pretty much set as guided missile though, as it is a rather intricate block-wise construct). Plus all of them pack a GOOD punch for their cost and size (the currently WIP 120 mass fighter version of it packs two 8100 damage missiles!) and look nice in hangars as well (not just drone racks).

 

[Loadout]

Awesome basestar @Argyle_Ninja :D
My take on nanodrones:

Caeli- class microdrone
9x5x11, 30 mass, 35 thrust, 95k credits
4200 power/s, default cap
1200 shields
guided missile at 4.6k damage (3% support, 100% explosive effect)


Because of the huge missile radius compared to the damage, no damage is wasted even when 20 drones all send their missiles after one core - even if the core has already overheated, the incoming missiles will still destroy more and more surrounding blocks (deny salvage).

It is excellent boom-for-money. The guided missile maxes out the utility of the default power cap (minus a tidbit of tolerance margin), and it only costs 95k. Larger drones do not exceed the missile power / cost ratio usually (actually they are worse as they require power capacity increases).

Also it looks more like a fighter than a crate, which makes room for developing fighter, heavy fighter and corvette versions of it.

Would it be possible to make it 9x5x9? you'd only need one extra block on your docking mechanism to fit it then. =) You and high damage though @Thalanor , makes everybody else's ships seem like they're made of paper :p

Here is my current best drone design. The Vuldian Death Lotus. In fiction these work like the funnels from the Gundam universe. Separate attack vehicles that add firepower to a primary ship and are linked to the pilot's will.

So here are the stats.

Mass: 26.8
Size: 7x7x7
Power: 50,000 (2957 regen)
Thrust: 26.9 (1:1)
Shields: 885 (11 regen)

It has four missile tubes that hit for 750 base damage a pop. So 3000 damage overall.



I'm noticing that the ineffective nature of point defense systems against these guys is due to the turrets slow turning speed. Once these things get close to a ship and spread out the point defenses become useless.



When I was taking pictures, I accidently spawned them to close to a pirate station and the drones went after it. It didn't end well for the pirates.

Nice to know a small swarm can nuke those pesky pirate bases. Been meaning to test that but I never seem to find a base... anywhere. My old drones all run off into the wild and destroy random things it seems. This certainly explains the lack of pirates in my galaxy.

+1 for gundam drone reference too, had forgotten all about those.

 

[Thalanor]

@Loadout yes in fact - the caeli can be cut to 9x5x9 by only removing a row of deco wedges on each side. This will show some power lines on both sides though, but if it is used on a rack instead of a hangar, that shouldn't matter much.
As for high damage: my build style with small entities is one half (upper in this case) of hull concept first (decoless), then build the most efficient boxdim-wise power generator the shell can fit (so that adding random lines or even more generators on the entity wouldn't cause a huge jump in regen), then add weapons until power regen fits (+ a margin). I like damage.

The bigger brother (shedir-class fighter) has 115 mass and 2x 8100 damage missiles now, and there is even some power regen reserve so I can easily adapt it for a player-usable stealth bomber. More on that later when I finish it

 

[Gerion]

Nothing can handle the swarm! Mwahahar!
On another note, if we had the improved turrets suggestion implemented (the one with rotating turret base that provides shields and stuff), we could not only have far better looking turrets, but they would also be more viable vs drones - as you don't have to cram the turret shields into the gunhouse :D

Thanks @sagethe13th :D I also made a fighter version of the same thing (usable as drone, but unlike the micro variant, more appropriate for player usage too). In fact, I'll make a whole family (microdrone at 30 mass, fighter at ~120 mass, heavy fighter...). All of these are designed as bombers, but the larger variants can be refitted easily enough (the micro variant is pretty much set as guided missile though, as it is a rather intricate block-wise construct). Plus all of them pack a GOOD punch for their cost and size (the currently WIP 120 mass fighter version of it packs two 8100 damage missiles!) and look nice in hangars as well (not just drone racks).

I beg to differ. The Voidburn just took down 70 of my own bombers. Those are equipped with dual pulsemissile and dual dumb fire rockets. Granted, it took lasting damage in the process, but after all, it works.

Its just not suitable for what it was actually intended to do: Escort anything.

/edit: Im gonna make some appearance changes on it, then I will try to upload it. It really only works on its own (because swarm missiles are derpy at best) and best if piloted by a player. Fire missiles, wait asecond, fire more missiles, wait a second, fire third batch of missiles.

//edit: Its up: http://starmadedock.net/content/voidburn-corvette.1588/

 

[Thalanor]

That is probably the downside of everything anti-drone: While drones have a mothership or carrier at least close by and work very well in faction scenarios, anti-drone swarmer ships need to operate on their own and perform less well in the same.

 

[Loadout]

@Loadout yes in fact - the caeli can be cut to 9x5x9 by only removing a row of deco wedges on each side. This will show some power lines on both sides though, but if it is used on a rack instead of a hangar, that shouldn't matter much.
As for high damage: my build style with small entities is one half (upper in this case) of hull concept first (decoless), then build the most efficient boxdim-wise power generator the shell can fit (so that adding random lines or even more generators on the entity wouldn't cause a huge jump in regen), then add weapons until power regen fits (+ a margin). I like damage.

The bigger brother (shedir-class fighter) has 115 mass and 2x 8100 damage missiles now, and there is even some power regen reserve so I can easily adapt it for a player-usable stealth bomber. More on that later when I finish it

Nice. Not having to equip additional costly expanders on large racks is what I was hoping for. They can really add up too, just found about 12 advanced armor blocks adding 17k to my racks cost. So every cheap-o means of cutting cost is nice. Dirt racks ftw! :p

...In fact, I'll make a whole family ...

Spoiler: Did someone say family?

So I was messing around with my Fleas, tweaking, experimenting, dissecting, maybe a little light torture pulling legs off... and I've developed two new Flea monstrosities in my evil lab!

The Phaser Flea
I have always loved lasers, who doesn't? So i've been experimenting with different combos of damage beam weaponry and come up with the Phaser Flea...

Spoiler

It packs into one small frame the following goodies...

• Two Overdrive equipped Long Range Beam weapons. I chose the extended range cause of AI not being able to keep a lock on targets for a long time, shorter time and double the range means it's very effective (bonus: uses less power too). The overdrives were leftover from the missiles so what the heck?! Lets add more! They are all 1:1:1.
• Two vertical launch ( lock-on included ) missiles with a 50% explosive bonus. I had tons of extra power leftover and a bit of space too so I packed these bad boys on hoping to get some more splash damage. Not to mention offer some offense against quick moving targets. They work wonders at nailing things from afar even with only 225 damage each. Considering changing explosive to OD or Ion but meh.
• Standard Flea shield and systems including bobby AI, default frame size, sparkly bits, and a low price tag of only 41k!

I imagine the Phaser Flea will be a lovely addition to any fleet as it's primary dps (the beams) cannot be shot down by AMS.

Specific Stats:

• 16.7 Mass
• Length/Width/Height : 7x5x7
• Power/Regen : 50k/3079.7
• Thrust: 14.7 : 16.7
• Shield/Regen : 681 / 5
• Total Alpha (Beams): 960 every ~5 seconds.
• Total Alpha (Missiles): 450 w/ 25 block Radius
• Price Tag: 41399 ea.

The Angry Flea
While messing around with missiles and trying to get more damage I found some interesting results with Rapid fire missiles. With a fairly low cost, fast cooldown, and some Overdrive on hand, the angry flea was born.

Spoiler

Essentially a bomber variant of the original Flea, the Angry Flea is meant to tackle large slow targets which can't evade it's rapid fire rockets. While weak to fast moving targets like other drones/fighters, the Angry Flea excels at completely demolishing enemy turrets and ship hulls with consistently high dps which prevents some nasty rapid regen builds I've been working on...

Specific Stats:

• 18.5 Mass
• Length/Width/Height : 7x5x7
• Power/Regen : 50k/6983.7
• Thrust: 14.7 : 18.5
• Shield/Regen : 630 / 5
• Total Dps (Missiles): 1080 / 3 second burst : 10 block radius (OD so triple to shields currently!)
• Price Tag: 40974 ea.

Edit: After some tweaking the third flea in the original photo is ready to be revealed. Introducing...

The Quad Flea

Spoiler

This is a larger version of the original with a Quad missile pack, 1:1 OverDrive and boat loads of damage. Most of the space is energy storage, but everything is divided evenly between sides, so it can take a hit and still come at you!

Specific Stats:

• 19.9 Mass
• Length/Width/Height : 7x5x7
• Power/Regen : 83k/5356.9
• Thrust: 14.7 : 19.9
• Shield/Regen : 476 / 5
• Total Alpha (Missiles): 3600
• Price Tag: 55899 ea.

 

[Thalanor]

I like how you can see the angry flea needs considerably more power :D They are probably optimal in their size class by now. I never managed to put a 20 mass drone together.

New member of the family:

Shedir- class light bomber
15x6x19, 115 mass, 155 thrust, cost :380k
Power: 206k @ 12.3k/s
Shields: 6k @ 125/s
2x missile/beam/explosive (3%/100%) @ 8.1k each (16.2k total)

 

[Argyle_Ninja]

I may as well put this thread as my homepage at this point, guys. Awesome work.

 

[Loadout]

I like how you can see the angry flea needs considerably more power :D They are probably optimal in their size class by now. I never managed to put a 20 mass drone together.

New member of the family:

Shedir- class light bomber
15x6x19, 115 mass, 155 thrust, cost :380k
Power: 206k @ 12.3k/s
Shields: 6k @ 125/s
2x missile/beam/explosive (3%/100%) @ 8.1k

At their size I can't imagine eeking out anymore firepower. I could armor the bejeesus out of them though, although it'd only stop maybe a stray shotgun bullet at most and the cost is definitely not worth it.... unless I used crystal armor... then cost for now would be identical. For some reason crystal armor has the same stats as advanced armor but the cost of basic hull. Actually, I think I'll go make a crystal flea now. :p

I may as well put this thread as my homepage at this point, guys. Awesome work.

It already is mine, makes my day when I see pics of the latest efforts of drone-gineering. :D

 

[Argyle_Ninja]

For those of you who have not already witnessed this.. http://starmadedock.net/content/spectrum-rainbow-defense-drone.1590/ :D

 

[Loadout]

For those of you who have not already witnessed this.. http://starmadedock.net/content/spectrum-rainbow-defense-drone.1590/ :D

I can't tell if that's a troll drone or if hes just made the flagship for the new rainbow country. @_@ So much rainbow, you can taste it.

In other news I have nearly completed my Light Drone Carrier. It holds a total of 8 fleas but there's room for slightly larger craft if you wanna carry less.

Pics!

Spoiler: Main Hall

Spoiler: Main Hall Floor-grates

Spoiler: Turret Corridor with open doors

Spoiler: Closed Double blast door airlock (Turret Corridor)

Spoiler: Hallway facing Core Room

Spoiler: Core Room Ceiling

Spoiler: Core Room facing Main Hall

Spoiler: Outside Access Doors

Spoiler: Outside

Note: The turrets are just placeholders till I get something nicer designed.

Spoiler: Side View

Spoiler: Drone Racks

I'll update hopefully with a gif/video showing the drone launch. Don't know if I should add more drones or just a better weapon... right now all it has is a cutting laser. 8 drones just feels too small though. Dunno, i might add another set of racks behind the first.

Edit: Crummy Gif, but shows the launch sequence and how the rack deploys based on the overhanging tongue coming off the ship xP

 

[Keptick]

That's pretty amazing :O . I am myself working on a ship that will weaponize the skoomdrone (I posted a very early progress image somewhere in the thread). There might be other drones too, depending if they visually fit well with the ship (and if I find an actual spot to put them). They might very well be docked to the exterior on an open rack.

 

[Thalanor]

@Loadout I like!
I believe 8 is not enough yet to cause appropriate swarm behavior insanity. Go for 16 or 32 or 4096 :D

In fact I very much like the external rack thing -- here's another reason for external drone racks: If you get hit by a missile (and don't field a super titan), that missile will most likely ruin your drone's day one way or the other. You can't put 20-30 hull and systems between drones and outer hull :D better have enough PD turrets on the carrier and leave the drones some space, very true.
This leaves more space for creative freedom. I plan on kicking off an escort carrier today that will most likely field shedir-class bombers, but make it look more like an actual carrier (rather than a hot pocket dispenser, which is how the drone rack on my destroyer currently looks like...).

The plan is to sorta cross the line between usable convenient drone carrier and RP-able actual ship carrier. E.g., it would be neat if you could manually undock a drone and fly away in it while feeling like on an ordinary carrier made for people pilots. That is also why the new drone generation looks more like fighters and less like robots.
If the concept works out then my titan will be a supercarrier one day :p

Bonus: If we got a way to redock entities, refitting to go from racks to normal docking ports again takes only minutes.

 

[Daffor]

You can't put 20-30 hull and systems between drones and outer hull :D

I so want to prove you wrong on this one :D

The vertical launch tubes I've got planned for my titan could propably be made like this. Think ICBM launch silo, but with a drone rack

The construction has been on hold since Beyond Earth came out as I've spent almost all of my free time on that game instead of building the ship. I'll propably get some work done during the weekend. At the very least start on the drone silos and the swimming pool.

Aaaand I also need to build and test the drone to go with the rack, but I think I might do that after building and testing the delivery system.

 

[Thalanor]

I so want to prove you wrong on this one :D
At the very least start on the drone silos and the swimming pool.

Good to know I am not the only one to set priorities in construction! :D
Testing drones is insanely fun. I am in the process of beefing up the caeli drone with an additional beam system, preserving size, visuals, existing weapons and as good as I can, cost too.

BTW build the drone first, then start with the rack or similar. You'll want the rack to be fit for optimal drones, not the drones to fit in an optimal rack. The exception is if you already have a clear size in mind and you know this size will be able to contain enough ooomph for your purpose.

 

[Gerion]

Giving the Voidburn a rapid cannon along with its swarm missiles might have been a bad idea.... If AI controlled, many missiles are lost due to friendly fire.
Gonna make a new attempt on that, lets see what i can make happen...

 

[Thalanor]

Beefed up the caeli class: 100 more shields, and an extra 20/10-block beam/cannon weapon added. Power regen adjusted just to the point. 4.6k missile remains untouched Total cost only 8k more than before. It does perform so well now though that I may or may rather not release it before the carrier is ready :p

Visual improvements in bow and stern. Now has cute tiny little teeth in the front. Does it not just look super cute now? And it smiles in your face while pestering you with fly-sized missiles. Oh, the fun.

This is quickly approaching a finished version so I can work on my escort carrier. The escort carrier will be designed to bring drone warfare to the entry level of ship things, being a ~150-200m rather dedicated droneship that can be aquired cheaper than a full-out destroyer and thus more early in the multiplayer side of things. With that escort carrier, one will be able to cheaply equip an existing fleet with alot of low-cost drone power :D

 

[Loadout]

@Loadout I like!
I believe 8 is not enough yet to cause appropriate swarm behavior insanity. Go for 16 or 32 or 4096 :D

In fact I very much like the external rack thing -- here's another reason for external drone racks: If you get hit by a missile (and don't field a super titan), that missile will most likely ruin your drone's day one way or the other. You can't put 20-30 hull and systems between drones and outer hull :D better have enough PD turrets on the carrier and leave the drones some space, very true.
This leaves more space for creative freedom. I plan on kicking off an escort carrier today that will most likely field shedir-class bombers, but make it look more like an actual carrier (rather than a hot pocket dispenser, which is how the drone rack on my destroyer currently looks like...).

The plan is to sorta cross the line between usable convenient drone carrier and RP-able actual ship carrier. E.g., it would be neat if you could manually undock a drone and fly away in it while feeling like on an ordinary carrier made for people pilots. That is also why the new drone generation looks more like fighters and less like robots.
If the concept works out then my titan will be a supercarrier one day :p

Bonus: If we got a way to redock entities, refitting to go from racks to normal docking ports again takes only minutes.

16 is fairly achievable. All I have to do is copy-pasta another group as is and make some minor changes to the tongue design. I only did 8 because I was testing whether or not that overhanging "tongue" could successfully launch the drones every time. After some changes to it's shape it works perfectly.:D Another row of racks it is then!

Oddly enough this has no point defense, never really entered my mind either. Probably should attempt to figure some way of adding a half dozen or so of those however. Missiles can be quite nasty especially with only 30k in shielding.

...
BTW build the drone first, then start with the rack or similar. You'll want the rack to be fit for optimal drones, not the drones to fit in an optimal rack. The exception is if you already have a clear size in mind and you know this size will be able to contain enough ooomph for your purpose.

Most definitely agree here, doing the rack first is like putting a turkey in the oven before it's been stuffed.

Giving the Voidburn a rapid cannon along with its swarm missiles might have been a bad idea.... If AI controlled, many missiles are lost due to friendly fire.
Gonna make a new attempt on that, lets see what i can make happen...

I had a chance to test out your voidburn design @Gerion. It eats through most of my mini testing fleet, then again I rarely build big things so yeah. DPS wise it'll be fine against most smaller swarms I think, light carriers wouldn't pose much threat only the larger standard size or titan class. It should easily deal with 30-40 small drones. I tested against 60 fleas (originals) they barely dented the thing, left a few holes but nothing spectacular. I'm sure had those been quad fleas with full carrier support instead of spawned pirates they'd probably have dealt significantly more damage.

I would suggest replacing all the missile batteries with lock-on missile turrets though. Cheap ones could be placed all over removing the friendly fire issues and allowing huge coverage. Say about 60 missile turrets doing maybe 4k total alpha each(not terribly hard to do), make sure those are cheap and easily replaced then try again.


I was also thinking of an exterior design for your ship, maybe i'll give it a whirl and see what I can do. :D