The ultimate drone R&D thread

[iceman6491]

iceman6491 sorry, but drones were developed to specifically counter large ships with turrets :p
There is no way except swarmers or a proper fleet made of multiple ships.

No It cant be true! ah well, you know what they say about fighting fire with fire....

 

[Loadout]

No It cant be true! ah well, you know what they say about fighting fire with fire....

Indeed, the only counter currently to drones is... moar drones! So if you haven't got any you may want to think about refitting a ship or two to start fielding them. Numbers are generally everything here, but anything below about 40 mass isn't going to pack much of a punch so shoot for 40-80 mass as a general goal for each drone.

On the swarm missile note, it seems to me to be a common misconception that they work well. Reason being you need a massive battery of missiles to be able to target all the drones as well as do enough damage to actually kill them(they seem limited to 3-4 targets currently). It would also appear, from my experiences so far, that multiple smaller turrets are more effective as they can target more total drones than swarmers. With optimal damage being something like 1/10th of the target drones total shield capacity per second. In my case, around 2k damage/sec.

 

[Keptick]

iceman6491 sorry, but drones were developed to specifically counter large ships with turrets :p
There is no way except swarmers or a proper fleet made of multiple ships.

Yea, that might change with the way shield sharing is going to work though. From what I've heard once the shielding of a turret's piece is depleted it'll check if the entity it's docked to (so either the base or the main ship) can take the hit (this chains, so if one can't it'll move on to the next docking level, if there is one). However, fear not, this only happens if the main ship or the lower docking level still has over 50% shields. So for example, let's say that you've got a ship with 100 shields total and that it hasn't taken any damage. An unshielded turret will be able to take 49 damage before taking block damage, as it will transfer that 49 damage to the main ship. However, if the damage exceeds that 49 point it'll cause the main ship to dip below 50% shields, which will cause the turret to take damage.

SO, what does this means for an optimal anti-drone escort ship? Well, it can't use swarm missiles, for obvious reasons, so the alternative is turrets. With the shield sharing mechanic that'll mean that the optimal anti-drone ship would have a lot of small powerful turrets, preferably cannon/cannon (with either explosive or punch-through effect) since that's the most effective against drones. The main ship would have NO on-board weapons, because trying to kill drones manually is a complete waste of time, and because you'll want to optimize the shielding on that ship so that the turrets can survive for the longest possible amount of time.

That's from what I've heard btw (from a trustworthy source), it might be a completely different shield sharing mechanic that makes it in-game.

 

[Fireshock]

I've got an idea with those rail rotors to make <50 block mining drone that can be deployed above a planet plate and left there. You come back couple hours later and it has mined the entire plate. It would use anti-gravity effect if needed. It would have not very large mining beam which would be rotated and angled using rails to cover whole cone in front of drone, in one of it's full movement cycles. Mining beam doesn't have to be too strong, main factor here is time it has been left mining there. You can put multiple of those on to your ship, literaly leave them as you pass by and pick up drones with resources on the way back while specificaly targeting plates with resources you need. Drones could send a signal to main ship when they stop hiting blocks with mining beam.

Once collision mechanics are implemented, it may be possible to drill a whole in middle of a plate using specificaly shaped mining beam and inject mining drone directly in to it, so it would eat the plate inside out. It's also possible now, but injection would have to be very precise. It also may be possible to jam those injected drones, combine that with small injection whole and mining sequence which doesn't scratch surface of planet and you got yourself stealth mining drones, provided you know where you left them. Those would be shaped like a stick, stick length would be of the plate depth and it would have a mining beam line alongside it which would rotate around stick axis. Stick would be injected like a needle in to the planet throw a straight whole made by mining laser specificaly made for that purpose. That mining laser could also be used to find plates with resources you need.

Ultra lazy mining

 

[EricBlank]

I like the basic idea, but you wouldn't be able to leave the area; the game doesn't simulate sectors that aren't loaded, so if you moved such that the planet was no longer loaded, the whole sector gets offloaded and nothing happens until a player returns. Still, you can set a drone in motion to mine while you do something else.

I'd love to see diagrams of how these drones are supposed to work, though, explaining the designs for the rotating head and how it would ensure the area gets covered efficiently. Right now my only automated miner is something akin to Thalanor's strip miner he posted in his fleet development thread. I didn't make it all that practical unfortunately.

 

[Fireshock]

Eh, I thought that mp servers stay loaded... here's the head design:

http://s15.postimg.org/inys1mxfv/miner_drone_concept.png
Green entity holds mining beams, f means frequency, w means angle, triangle means change of/difference and colors of f corespond to rotors on the left picture. Such described frequency is achieved by abusing rail rotor mass limit, green entity would be just below the limit, green entity+entity that it's on would be just above the limit(1 block above limit would be perfect).
Sory, but I'm not going to explain why/how this would realy cover every single block/3D angle in a cone.

 

[Loadout]

Eh, I thought that mp servers stay loaded... here's the head design:

http://s15.postimg.org/inys1mxfv/miner_drone_concept.png
Green entity holds mining beams, f means frequency, w means angle, triangle means change of/difference and colors of f corespond to rotors on the left picture. Such described frequency is achieved by abusing rail rotor mass limit, green entity would be just below the limit, green entity+entity that it's on would be just above the limit(1 block above limit would be perfect).
Sory, but I'm not going to explain why/how this would realy cover every single block/3D angle in a cone.

function sigma (sum) of frequency x .51 , and frequency. 99 gives a range of values where the current angle is between 0 and some number dictated by w. ... assuming I read that correctly.

short form is; two rotator blocks will rotate the cutting beam in a slow spiral shape eating through all the blocks on a side. its all fine and dandy in theory but I'm interested in your control mechanism, cause for this to finction properly it must complete a full rotation of one before performing a much smaller rotation of the second. in other words one has to be moving at break neck speeds while the other moves very slowly. not exactly an easy thing to do so far.

I think itd be much easier to place a small drill drone on the surface and have a track run along its edge to cut through the plate. assuming a thin layer for it to sit on is acceptable.

... now i got to design an asteroid version of that. sounds like a challenge.

 

[Fireshock]

I finished it 2 days ago. It works fine and dandy in practice too. :D
http://postimg.org/image/cbf9tuzqj/

It's also made in compact 3x3x23 dimensions, fully controlable from flight mode with functions automine, stop and mine by hand. All controls are button mash resistant(logic wont fuck up if you mash buttons). It automaticaly retracts at MAX rotation speed to it's first shape when turned off. Storage block is accessible from above, so it's very easy to put it on a ship as a hidden arm that comes out of bottom at our afk times. It seems much more practical now to install it as an extending arm than a drone because carrier with many of those would have unwieldy controls because of wireless block limitations. It's mining pattern is ugly because of beam-rails bug, already shoting beam keeps shoting at it's first target instead of trailing with rails, but that isn't a problem for functionality of this system. Only problem is that game loads it wrong(which I noticed now when taking that screenshot), so it doesn't function after being loaded, but I'm gona work on that.

So Loadout, in the final version I made red axis rotate at 50%(1/4) and blue one at 22%(1/9) speed. That does not draw a spiral. It draws a flower with 2 times more petals than one which I happened to draw for you on first picture(9 petals, picture has 4+/\W). Flower on picture has different number of petals cause I was experimenting with different speeds at that time.

I honestly think that logic part of this isn't a problem for you guys, just realize how it works and you got it.

 

[Loadout]

I finished it 2 days ago. It works fine and dandy in practice too. :D
http://postimg.org/image/cbf9tuzqj/

It's also made in compact 3x3x23 dimensions, fully controlable from flight mode with functions automine, stop and mine by hand. All controls are button mash resistant(logic wont fuck up if you mash buttons). It automaticaly retracts at MAX rotation speed to it's first shape when turned off. Storage block is accessible from above, so it's very easy to put it on a ship as a hidden arm that comes out of bottom at our afk times. It seems much more practical now to install it as an extending arm than a drone because carrier with many of those would have unwieldy controls because of wireless block limitations. It's mining pattern is ugly because of beam-rails bug, already shoting beam keeps shoting at it's first target instead of trailing with rails, but that isn't a problem for functionality of this system. Only problem is that game loads it wrong(which I noticed now when taking that screenshot), so it doesn't function after being loaded, but I'm gona work on that.

So Loadout, in the final version I made red axis rotate at 50%(1/4) and blue one at 22%(1/9) speed. That does not draw a spiral. It draws a flower with 2 times more petals than one which I happened to draw for you on first picture(9 petals, picture has 4+/\W). Flower on picture has different number of petals cause I was experimenting with different speeds at that time.

I honestly think that logic part of this isn't a problem for you guys, just realize how it works and you got it.

concentric circles, hmm that works. dunno why bht my phone doesn't load the bottom half or so of i mages so i guess i missed the original flower shape. x)

i so see that arm being quite useful though, do you have a prototype available for download? im sure keptick and Thalanor could figure it out but the rest of us could probably use a working demo to reference from. : )

 

[Thalanor]

Amazing theory to practice transition Fireshock !

 

[EricBlank]

Color me impressed that it works logically, but it doesn't look like an especially efficient mining method. Did it do that damage all in one rotation? Do subsequent rotations eat out different pattern, such that it will actually consume the entire plate?

 

[Fireshock]

I'l upload it when I make version which loads correctly and doesn't have any other fixable flaws.

Thanks Thalanor .

It did that damage in half an hour, it's point is to go afk and leave it running. That way it can be efficient time saver. When I'm satisfied with it's system I might make bigger/faster version of those and/or carrier with more of those specialized for afk mining whole planet at once.

In this version subsequent rotations eat out same pattern, beam-rail bug makes it hit only certain points on that pattern which are of the same distance from each other on the mining trail. Current minning pattern mines more the closer it is to the middle, that can be seen on screenshot. That seems very hard to fix, but I'l try.
My original idea was to abuse rail rotor mass limit to achieve IRRATIONAL rotational translation after each spin (/\w on first picture), which would add up to itself after each consecutive spin to mathematicaly make UNIQUE rotation of the same pattern in each spin FOR EVER. Idea worked, but I droped it because from that screenshot it obviously wasn't needed and it severely prolonged it's "turn off" time. That same idea has accidentaly been applied to hit unique points(cause by the beam-rail bug) on the mining pattern(in this example salvage beam clock time has been adding to itself).

 

[Malacodor]

I honestly think that logic part of this isn't a problem for you guys, just realize how it works and you got it.

Is there a way to fire a salvage-cannon combo permanently via logic?

 

[Mered4]

Is there a way to fire a salvage-cannon combo permanently via logic?

Yes.

Make a clock that loops infinitely, then attach it to the computer. Voila!

 

[Malacodor]

Yes.

Make a clock that loops infinitely, then attach it to the computer. Voila!

This only fires the salvage beam with interruptions, I want it to be on all the time.

 

[Fireshock]

Is there a way to fire a salvage-cannon combo permanently via logic?

My salvage drone uses 2 same salvage beam computers without any slave system. Clock is set to make 1 computer fire while the other is on cooldown. This gives you permanent salvage beam without having to pay for expensive secondary weapon system.

Time difference betwen each salvage cannon fireing is 5 DELAY blocks, 5 for each salvage computer, so whole clock has 10 DELAY blocks (linked in to circle). Then throw in somewhere betwen those delay blocks 1 AND block and for it's other input connect on/off signal which you will use to control the whole system. Then also throw in somewhere betwen 1 OR block. Then connect that on/off signal to BUTTON and connect that button to that OR block.

Not necesary, but to get more fancy, put 2 AND blocks each exactly in front of the salvage beam on the clock and make that OR be connected exactly in front of 1 of those cannons to achieve faster turn on and turn off time.

 

[Keptick]

I'll be revamping my rack loading system soon, should be a breeze with the new rail system :D. I'm leaving the push beams as they currently are, since I really like the effect. The core > area trigger mechanism is going, being replaced with wireless logic, naturally.

 

[Loadout]

I'll be revamping my rack loading system soon, should be a breeze with the new rail system :D. I'm leaving the push beams as they currently are, since I really like the effect. The core > area trigger mechanism is going, being replaced with wireless logic, naturally.

in doing so you'll probably notice you can fit your drones into a smaller space than usual. which is great for the numbers boost.

kinda almost regretting having to modify an entire fleet of drones, fleet of racks, and another fleet of ships but, ce la vie.

quick note though! puting more than one drone on a single rail will cause them to infinitely bump into each other if you dont separate them somehow.

have yet to link everything wirelessly but hopefully that will be done for at least my Marsh carrier tonight. Ill try to leave my impressions of how it works then.

 

[Keptick]

in doing so you'll probably notice you can fit your drones into a smaller space than usual. which is great for the numbers boost.

kinda almost regretting having to modify an entire fleet of drones, fleet of racks, and another fleet of ships but, ce la vie.

quick note though! puting more than one drone on a single rail will cause them to infinitely bump into each other if you dont separate them somehow.

have yet to link everything wirelessly but hopefully that will be done for at least my Marsh carrier tonight. Ill try to leave my impressions of how it works then.

lol, in my case there's barely any work involved. Just installing rails on the ship and a docker on the rack I'm currently using, along with some logic changes. Well.... that and redocking all the drones onto the rack -_-

 

[Malacodor]

quick note though! puting more than one drone on a single rail will cause them to infinitely bump into each other if you dont separate them somehow.

No need to seperate them, just use a rail speed controller set to 0.