The ultimate drone R&D thread

[nightrune]

so im currently planning a 20 drone carrier that will launch drones on flat racks like the Annoying Stick I made. basically i intend for this thing to capture a small bunker in a battle or deploy guard drones/mines, bring back ONLY the racks and reload them.

Careful, right now you can't recall ships to a docked entity. The carrier has to be the flagship, and the pick up modules need to be on that.

 

[solarapple]

well no. this carrier is gonna deploy drones for defense/capture a point, so I'm only calling back the racks for refilling manually. the drones stay behind to do whatever I told them to do

 

[StormWing0]

Well there is a way to use drone racks as fleet carriers. Make sure all the drones are docked to the given rack they need to be and than launch the rack when you get to where you want the fleet to be. Now you have many fleets of ships ready to deploy at your command.

 

[Adonis0]

Going to post my thoughts on drones and fleets since I won't be getting around to making it anytime soon

I saw earlier that it was raised that launching drones one at a time would be non-beneficial which I agree with, but I don't think you have to bypass the new system to achieve this end.

How I was thinking would be good to work is have a rail system that takes in drones from one (or more?) pick up rail, and using internal rails sorts the drones into a docked position which places them close to the surface of the carrier.

The idea for this is so that when you hit the doom button, the drones could move onto the launching rails immediately, so one set of rails per drone, so they can all be launched simultaneously, and with the added bonus of having zero collisions since you can space the launch rails appropriately. This is easily expandable, as I've seen many tutorials on using rails and logic to have ships come through one docking point, and then be sorted into empty bays as needed.

The only problem with a system like this that I can see is if you have 100 drones say, how does recalling them work, as they'll converge very quickly on the carriers pick-up rails, causing congestion at the pick-up rail (which is a bit better than at the carrier itself, but still potentially a lag death)

 

[Sgtwisky]

well adonis0, I've come up with my own possible solution. IF you have multiple docking points in somewhat of a line. You have the shootout rail run parallel to them. when you hit the button all drones in that line of docks, would then move onto the same shootout rail. SO imagine 20 drones or so all in line on the shootout rail. They should all accelerate at the same time, at the same approx speed. They will come out 1 by 1, but would do it very fast. Depending on the length of the rail. they could get to their max flight speed before un-docking into space.

Though this could pose an issue if they are not still protected by the motherships shields while on that shootout rail.

 

[Adonis0]

well adonis0, I've come up with my own possible solution. IF you have multiple docking points in somewhat of a line. You have the shootout rail run perpendicular to them. when you hit the button all drones in that line of docks, would then move onto the same shootout rail. SO imagine 20 drones or so all in line on the shootout rail. They should all accelerate at the same time, at the same approx speed. They will come out 1 by 1, but would do it very fast. Depending on the length of the rail. they could get to their max flight speed before un-docking into space.

Though this could pose an issue if they are not still protected by the motherships shields while on that shootout rail.

(How I understood your design is that it only works with perpendicular shootout rail, as parallel rails don't meet)

Unfortunately I've seen elsewhere in the forums they only reach a third of max speed while on the rail (using the rail speed enhancers linked to a shootout rail) but this would be a good idea to conquer the issues I could see with loading them up simultaneously.

Seems to be the way to handle drones and these rails though would be to have one or both of the ends of loading happening in parallel.

I don't think the way to go is single on either end, but perhaps don't need to have a pick-up or shootout rail per drone either, maybe two or three? (envisioning a multi-layer carrier, with a pick-up and shootout rail per level, with bank of drones within)

Pro's and Con's
Single loading point:
Pro: could use a rack to fill the carrier with drones (like a drone dispenser) for easy loading up
Con: Recalling drones from a fight could be glitchy

Multiple loading points:
Pro: Definitely no problem recalling drones
Con: would be a pain to reload drones

Single shootout rail:
Pro: easy to use without much logic hassle
Con: Potentially makes the drones vulnerable for a short period while they all unload

Multiple shootout rails:
Pro: Almighty drone release button
Con: harder to logic together, more resources

 

[Sgtwisky]

I have somewhat of a hybrid design in mind now that I think I will try and prototype soon. Uses 1 loading point, 1 shootout, and 1 "Eject" system for each group of drones. Each group of course could be as big as you wanted. I would likely use 20 because if I remember right, its how many fighters can fit lined up in the drone bay's of my current carrier build. I have areas for 12 bay's. Will do a mock up of the systems a single bay might use. Hoping to get this and some other projects done in a few days when I get some time off work.

 

[Keptick]

The only thing I fear with having multiple drones use the same pickup points is the AI's incredible stupidity. Basically: traffic jams...

 

[nightrune]

The only thing I fear with having multiple drones use the same pickup points is the AI's incredible stupidity. Basically: traffic jams...

schema said they should queue into the pickup point.

 

[Adonis0]

schema said they should queue into the pickup point.

If so, then there shouldn't be a major problem with a single loading point

Multiple loading points would be quicker I'd imagine still, but not essential if they are able to queue

 

[Keptick]

schema said they should queue into the pickup point.

Whaaaaaaaaat?! Is this planned or already implemented? I haven't had the occasion to test out the fleet system yet.

 

[nightrune]

Whaaaaaaaaat?! Is this planned or already implemented? I haven't had the occasion to test out the fleet system yet.

It should already be implemented. He seemed rather proud of it.

 

[Keptick]

It should already be implemented. He seemed rather proud of it.

That's excellent news then!!! It means that I'll be able to get my loading system working properly!

 

[Keptick]

Aaaaaaaand it's done! I'll upload the new Soul drone version to the community content tomorrow (or whenever I have time). Definitely my coolest looking drone so far :D

It's also tanky as f***, 12k shields and 56k armor (at 150 mass), lol.

 

[xira666]

Did some logik work to get a working drone input sorter and exit queue...It all works right, the problem is loading the drones to their respective pickup rail units (and the horrible, horrible pathfinding bug that has drones detect pickup rails as collision objects, making large drones impossible).

Wondering if a special huge drone rack could be built that would load the drones automatically onto their pickup rails? Dock it to the carrier, shoot them out of a skeletal docking system and onto the carrier's pickup rails?

Or would that defeat the purpose of picking your drones up in the first place? To just rebuild the entire rack so you can dock it's contents to the mothership to replace the drones that you didn't lose because you picked them up?

Or...could build a drone loading station with its own logic and multiple sets of drone racks...push a button and one drone goes into one of the docked carrier's input rails...Just don't push the wrong buttons:D

Or is that getting silly complicated to work around a badly designed system?:D

 

[Keptick]

Charon's new drone bays are fully working. The pickup, sorting and ejection mechanisms/logic are all set up and work very well. All that's left is took mame a trigger mechanism and hook up the launch/return logic to it, and make some rail doors for the entry point. I'm also gonna make a station based mechanism to automatically refill the drone bays in case some drones get destroyed.

Then I tried the recall order.

I hope this gets fixed soon -_-

 

[Crimson-Artist]

Charon's new drone bays are fully working. The pickup, sorting and ejection mechanisms/logic are all set up and work very well. All that's left is took mame a trigger mechanism and hook up the launch/return logic to it, and make some rail doors for the entry point. I'm also gonna make a station based mechanism to automatically refill the drone bays in case some drones get destroyed.

Then I tried the recall order.

I hope this gets fixed soon -_-

i noticed this on the dev build merely an hour before the official release. Whats weird is that in the last version i played (I believe that it was version 0.19580) which was one day before the release drones didnt have this bug. My test drones effortlessly went back to the pick up points, in fact i would dare say they were even more efficient at returning then what we have now.

 

[Zekester81]

I have a carrier with fighters docked. The fighters have wings that are forward swept and extend out in front of the docking point. No amount of maneuvering will let them load in properly. On the other hand, I have a drone carrier(with other problems) that loads them fine as long as I back away and am slightly below the drone's position. The docker is on the outside bottom edge of the drone, with no blocks extending beyond it. I'd say it's kind of hit and miss right now and that its like someone else said, the drones are seeing a non-collidable object as collidable. And that's on the release build of the new rails. I'm sure they will work it out, but it is frustrating.

 

[Keptick]

i noticed this on the dev build merely an hour before the official release. Whats weird is that in the last version i played (I believe that it was version 0.19580) which was one day before the release drones didnt have this bug. My test drones effortlessly went back to the pick up points, in fact i would dare say they were even more efficient at returning then what we have now.

I submitted a bug report, please contribute ^ and whatever else you know about to it :D

link: Bug T1123

 

[Inspired2150]

Has anyone found a working workaround for the docking bug until it gets fixed? My little drone has spent the last 40 minutes trying to dock with no success.