The ultimate drone R&D thread

[Thalanor]

ltmauve In the above case, it works flawlessly with two beam outputs - since the docked drones hover 0.5m above the ground, I have one beam hit 0.5m below the core and one 0.5m above. The drones have exactly the same mass distribution on any side.
Note that a moving ship will have the skoomdrones spinning a little on launch. Although this means they do not launch in a straight line as cleanly as in above gif in that case, this is no problem because:

- The push beam is only there to prevent the tube getting clogged, and since the drones are roughly spherical they will not get stuck. They may spin as wildly as they can and will still leave the tube.
- Once they are out of the tube, the initial firing direction does not matter. The defensive push hooked to a clock will cause them to fly at maximum speed in the direction of whatever their target is. In the gif, they had no target and as such flew in a straight line. In a combat scenario, they will immediately face a hostile on exit and thus quickly change their path. Note that the skoomdrones have barely any trust - all their propulsion comes from the defensive push.

Of course, if one were to launch the skoomdrones while moving and without a hostile near, they will fly off into very random directions. Skoomdrones, despite their small size, are extremely valuable though, because of the LARGE amount of computers contained in a mere 12 mass drone (there is a faction module, a bobby AI, 3 cannon computers, 2 push pulse computers and 2 defensive push effect computers. That is 7 computers and faction module + AI... per drone). Because of this, it is not advisable to launch skoomdrones without any hostiles near anyways (if you do not move at all, you can fire them in a straight line ahead though as shown in the gif, and they will infinitely continue to fly - so you can start a long range assault with good aim and some luck.

If you just have one torpedo per launch tube, you do not need push beams at all, a defensive push system is sufficient (just have it activate immediately on undock with the "half buried trigger block" technique). The only reason I use them is because there are multiple entities in one tube, and I can avoid collisions or stuff clogging up that way.


Skoom drone launch tubes - finally a reason for a Big Red Button!

 

[ltmauve]

Thanks. I need to redisgn the torps anyway, I'll bear that in mind.

 

[Keptick]

It's a WMD! (weapon of mass disruption)

 

[Thalanor]

Indeed it is :D deployed in masses, an entire fleet can be cursed with the spell of systems failure.
That also solves the main weakness of skoomdrones: dying before they can be effective. If there is just enough of them, and since turrets will all fire at the first two or three drones launching from the front of the tube.. there is no countermeasure.

 

[Keptick]

Indeed it is :D deployed in masses, an entire fleet can be cursed with the spell of systems failure.
That also solves the main weakness of skoomdrones: dying before they can be effective. If there is just enough of them, and since turrets will all fire at the first two or three drones launching from the front of the tube.. there is no countermeasure.

You could try firing chaff mixed with skoomdrones to mess up enemy turrets.

 

[EricBlank]

Do normal drones function well with a push effect installed? Or will they just slam into a target and get stuck?

My current plan in "drone" tech is a frigate-size craft (~1800 mass, 49m longest axis) that deploys a wing of fighters. Its a manned ship for rapid response to infiltration. It can effectively warp in, scan down the target, follow the target until it can no longer jump away (multiple jump drives), and deploy fighters to deal with the target. Or immediately warp away if the odds don't look good. Skoomdrones will make an excellent payload for it.

 

[Keptick]

Do normal drones function well with a push effect installed? Or will they just slam into a target and get stuck?

My current plan in "drone" tech is a frigate-size craft (~1800 mass, 49m longest axis) that deploys a wing of fighters. Its a manned ship for rapid response to infiltration. It can effectively warp in, scan down the target, follow the target until it can no longer jump away (multiple jump drives), and deploy fighters to deal with the target. Or immediately warp away if the odds don't look good. Skoomdrones will make an excellent payload for it.

You want something that deals damage too, like soul drones. The skoomdrones only disable the enemy, they don't destroy it.

Make sure to post your ship here when it's done :D

 

[Thalanor]

Do normal drones function well with a push effect installed? Or will they just slam into a target and get stuck?

My current plan in "drone" tech is a frigate-size craft (~1800 mass, 49m longest axis) that deploys a wing of fighters. Its a manned ship for rapid response to infiltration. It can effectively warp in, scan down the target, follow the target until it can no longer jump away (multiple jump drives), and deploy fighters to deal with the target. Or immediately warp away if the odds don't look good. Skoomdrones will make an excellent payload for it.

Welcome to the drone club!
As keptick said, skoomdrone mass launches are more of a cruiser/battleship thing, but what will work excellently for you is to have a small amount of skoomdrones combined with a large amount of damage drones. You might even consider adding a little more length to the ship, because drones really start to get effective when you can field double-digit numbers of them. And you will find that your ship just wrecks havoc :D

Also to answer your question: defensive push effect is more of a thing for speciality drones (such as skoomdrones). Effective combat drones need every block of space they can have, so you will want to use them with ordinary thrust (since that one is more effective) most likely.

 

[jzimmerman4]

Has anyone tried creating a kamikaze drone that has explosives on the front and then a pull beam? That would be epic if it worked.

 

[Thalanor]

Did disintegrators receive an update sometime? Last time I checked (few months back), they were unusable for any purpose, with no scaling for group size and immense lag on impact
Any missile drone will easily do more damage cheaper and multiple times.

 

[jzimmerman4]

Thats a bummer if it's true, they really should get a grouping bonus and ignore shields.

 

[Keptick]

Try with a damage pulse, lol.

Thalanor, I realized that I could add depth to the racks on the charon with your technique... With the "no collisions after undock until clear" fix it should work.... My god... I realized that swarm power is exponential with numbers, since time required to kill them also increases. I still need to test that more, as it depends on the ship they are against.

200 soul drones to the face anyone? no? At such a high number they can cause some SERIOUS pain, like killing 60k mass ships. Combine that with skoomdrones:

~mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

 

[Thalanor]

Yes you can in fact add depth - WITHOUT adding more push beams :D
It does get slightly messy if you turn fast, but the charon is not going to turn much anyways, so you can just as well use 88-racks or something crazy like that.
Oh, if only my cruiser could have more space for drones. Well I'll be using this on a pure drone carrier in the future too

Also on the swarm power... :O holy crap, you are right. Even double the amount of drones already is a significant thing. And the new depth rack technique makes it possible to increase drone amounts with sub-linear effort (no need for more push beams is extremely helpful IMO). As a matter of fact, once you are able to set up one layer, all you need is space to set up X layers. Holy shit.

Dedicated drone carrier, you have been added to my future project list.

 

[Loadout]

No matter how I slice it my racks always muck up when launching from a tube. =/ The problem I have is that when the rack itself detaches as is needed for most if not all of my launch mechanisms, then the entire rack gets pushed instead of just one drone. That generally throws everything out of whack and causes quite a bit of chaos in the launch tube.

Also it's very slow to launch a large mass of drones this way, It would take ages to clear the tube for any sizable number <_< unless using multiple tubes along the length of the ship. Which should be done anyways but it takes a lot of space in the process, space which could be housing more drones at lesser cost. Hmm... I'd say the effective limit here would be 3 drones unless they can be instantly jettisoned, that kind of power alone would be excessive for a single launch tube though honestly....

Curse you loss of BWC~~~~~ aggh... creative design is such a pain now =(


On another note I have been making some progress on hardpoints for launch mechanisms. My schematics are a bit plain and not really pretty but after some more trials I should be able to make it look spiffy while being totally interchangeable. =)

 

[EricBlank]

Spoiler: response to responses:

You want something that deals damage too, like soul drones. The skoomdrones only disable the enemy, they don't destroy it.

Make sure to post your ship here when it's done :D

Welcome to the drone club!
As keptick said, skoomdrone mass launches are more of a cruiser/battleship thing, but what will work excellently for you is to have a small amount of skoomdrones combined with a large amount of damage drones. You might even consider adding a little more length to the ship, because drones really start to get effective when you can field double-digit numbers of them. And you will find that your ship just wrecks havoc :D

Also to answer your question: defensive push effect is more of a thing for speciality drones (such as skoomdrones). Effective combat drones need every block of space they can have, so you will want to use them with ordinary thrust (since that one is more effective) most likely.

Thanks!
My intention with this frigate was to keep it as light as possible, so it can at least outmanoeuvre other frigates, use it only to quickly locate and assess threats, So I can quickly get an eye on the intruder, pin them down if possible, and determine how to proceed from there. The skoomdrones and unmanned fighters I intend to use to pin down the target and distract it while I return with a more combat-capable ship, if necessary. The idea isn't to pit a frigate against a battleship (if the intruder is using anything resembling a serious threat), its to halt the battleship's progress while my own fleet can be deployed. Not that the fighters and frigate can't deal with the occasional light cruiser: it is armed.

Basically I needed an effective e-war system to make enemies' lives difficult. Skoomdrones seem to provide that, if everything you guys have said is accurate.

A couple bits of information I still need are: do the skoomdrones affect turrets, and can the affected ship still jump away? Is the disabling effect all-encompassing, or which systems can it affect?

 

[refirendum]

can someone produce a downloadeable example piece so i can work on my skoom/soul racks?

 

[Thalanor]

No matter how I slice it my racks always muck up when launching from a tube. =/ The problem I have is that when the rack itself detaches as is needed for most if not all of my launch mechanisms, then the entire rack gets pushed instead of just one drone. That generally throws everything out of whack and causes quite a bit of chaos in the launch tube.

Also it's very slow to launch a large mass of drones this way, It would take ages to clear the tube for any sizable number <_< unless using multiple tubes along the length of the ship. Which should be done anyways but it takes a lot of space in the process, space which could be housing more drones at lesser cost. Hmm... I'd say the effective limit here would be 3 drones unless they can be instantly jettisoned, that kind of power alone would be excessive for a single launch tube though honestly....

The tube mechanism does not work with rack detaching, it is specifically made to profit from timed single drone releases using relatively spherical/cuboid drones. The smaller the drones, the better for the tube technique - which is why it is so viable for skoomdrones.
I plan to have around 8 skoomdrones per tube with two tubes on the ship (most likely). If you detach whole racks, it is better to keep them in manageable size classes indeed, although you always must keep in mind a rack of only 3 is usually not worth the effort.

Currently the time it takes to empty a tube with the rapidfire technology is one second per two drones, so 8 drones make a nice 4-second burst. The largest advantage of the rapidfire technology is that you only need one beam system group for multiple drones; when detaching whole racks this is irrelevant, as you do not technically need beams at all.

Curse you loss of BWC~~~~~ aggh... creative design is such a pain now =(

+42

refirendum you can find my rapidfire concept here http://www.file-upload.net/download-10001722/test_skoomgun.sment.html , and a (slightly outdated because the push system is mounted on the rack for showcase purposes) rack of 22 soul drones in keptick 's community content. Drone tech always evolves, so be sure to leave some space around drone bays when working on a ship - it could pay back

 

[Loadout]

The tube mechanism does not work with rack detaching, it is specifically made to profit from timed single drone releases using relatively spherical/cuboid drones. The smaller the drones, the better for the tube technique - which is why it is so viable for skoomdrones.
I plan to have around 8 skoomdrones per tube with two tubes on the ship (most likely). If you detach whole racks, it is better to keep them in manageable size classes indeed, although you always must keep in mind a rack of only 3 is usually not worth the effort.

Currently the time it takes to empty a tube with the rapidfire technology is one second per two drones, so 8 drones make a nice 4-second burst. The largest advantage of the rapidfire technology is that you only need one beam system group for multiple drones; when detaching whole racks this is irrelevant, as you do not technically need beams at all.

...

After some mucking about I have gotten a tube launcher witih rack inside to work. Albeit not with skoom drones as I don't have any currently. It does however work with my Kabuto heavy drones. Seeing as how the rack is both protected and never really lost to the depths of space, it can actually be recycled once spent. I only have 2 drones on it atm as it's a test rack but I may work on expanding it once I have completed some modular launcher / shield designs I've got lying about.

I'll post pics when I get the chance hopefully later today.

 

[Ciggofwar]

The drones that cause spinning are working off a bug glitch in game, what happens to all that time to perfect a system that get a patch and renders them useless? An Ai will fire nuke faster than any drone system release hit the side of your vessel with a 72m damage and KO all the drones past the shields which is another "bug" "glich", heat seekers will KO a patch of drones. If my titan turret hits your ship first and you don't have well over 35 million shields kiss your ship goodbye, that just "one" Titan turret. Nobody says you can't imagine a battle I could also launch cruiser size vessels as my drones for your drone distraction? Counter -counter -counter warfare We all have our "toys" to play with,

My pack of Heavy Naval B-Wings will decimate your drones, shred them into cores in mere seconds, drones for drones.

 

[Thalanor]

Nukes? Nukes travel at half the speed of ships. With a decent amount of point defense and a half awake pilot these stand no chance hitting anything that hasn't been shot core-ready already. All other missiles have a radius of 22 maximum - easy enough to completely shield the drones from them on any larger ship, even with missiles not being fully fixed yet.

Drone technology being a 100% "you have to eject them immediately or all is lost" was fixed when missile radius was both lowered and the erroneous radius propagation along the docking chain was fixed. It is still advisable to eject drones once the battle has started, in order to profit from them more.

The upcoming changes will make drone tech even more viable than it is now, with fleet control giving us rudimentary command power over our drones Drones do not require the use or exploit of any bug right now - if anything, their current state still suffers from a basic AI (which will be improved).

Cruiser sized drones are not a very good idea though - its rather hard to have 20+ of them, and drones are powerful only due to their swarming behavior In fact, an AI driven cruiser gets shredded by a drone squad of half their mass. Swarm missiles against already launched drones are as of now the most applicable way (and the only one) of combating drones.