What I meant was a single activation block the is linked into all the wifi blocks not one activation per wifi block. XD This helps get around the issue of sending out several signals at one time so one wifi block per ship is needed but you can tell them all to turn on with a single block.
The push effects on my drones are only to make them leave the dock. I am not leaving the effect in place after release. From what I have seen it moves them out of my docks fast enough and stably enough to reduce lag. My drones are almost at 80 mass. This includes the small amount of push moduals and a couple logic blocks. So in my case I don't think the flippers would help them. Though if I do make smaller drones that may well come in handy.
EDIT: OH I get it now StormWing ! "TO the lab !" *batman music plays.
Sgtwisky be sure to share some photos with your results(of your drones especially! :D), gifs if possible. I'm interested to know how well it works... although I have a sneaking suspicion it may not be as effective in the long haul money wise.
I'm just thinking it's an extra expensive computer, and extra effect modules that add to the total cost. Where as that space would be better served in combat replaced with shields, which are substantially cheaper to boot. hrmmm... whats the current shield capacity of your drones? if it's any less than 12k it should have more shielding to give it a longer lifetime. Otherwise though anything over 12k is gravy, but still the more the better =) it not only adds up to a bigger buffer but also more shots at the enemy.
they have almost 11k shields. about 1k dps using cannon + cannon. They are a very slightly larger version of a drone that I made based off the soul drone. (if thats the right name) that keptic first was using. As for taking up extra space, the push moduals are in somewhat of a "backpack" on the drone. so I didn't sacrifice anything, I just sorta strapped them on as an after thought. Though it does open the idea of drones with diffrent "packs" on them for effects on weapons. For that though I will need a diff launch method.
I am also developing a smaller drone which will not use the push moduals. they will be the super cheep drones. The kind that I can mass produce early on. The main drones will be a longer term goal along with the 550m carrier I am working on. So you can think of them as my "end game" drones.
Will post some pics soon. Likely on my next day off from work (Monday). Should be done with testing by then, and have something shiny to show.
Sgtwisky be sure to share some photos with your results(of your drones especially! :D), gifs if possible. I'm interested to know how well it works... although I have a sneaking suspicion it may not be as effective in the long haul money wise.
Another month, another new launch idea for drones. Seems they are endless as the sea...
This one rotates and then fires off a single drone one a time. Why one at a time? for lag purposes mostly. As launching 250 drones may not be quite so server friendly this particular magazine will release them over a slightly longer period of time. Meaning fewer collisions, hence more server friendly. Anywho this Magazine of drones can be extended infinitely. The logic is incredibly easy to grasp and expand apon so even new folks can stretch this out to as big as they want it to be.
Now we can finally make drone miniguns.
Gif of it in action will come later, currently trolling for decent recording software to start drone tutorials. Which will hopefully start up in september.
you need to actavate the bobby AI by using "R" on its computer and setting it to active. You should also make sure you have a faction block on them, which is set to your faction.
Did anyone consider using shipyards to replenish drones? I'm pretty sure that using the repair function would "repair" missing drones :D
If so then there isn't much of a need for fancy loading mechanisms, lol. Of course it's still useful for using different drones based on the situation.
Did anyone consider using shipyards to replenish drones? I'm pretty sure that using the repair function would "repair" missing drones :D
If so then there isn't much of a need for fancy loading mechanisms, lol. Of course it's still useful for using different drones based on the situation.
Right now the repair feature is a bit funky, sometimes it doesn't actually replace lost drones. Instead it places the blocks but permanently locks them into the ship. =/ Dunno whats goin on but it sort of breaks any and all attempts to replace lost drones right now.
Then again these attempts were using racks so I'm going to run some more tests with drones directly attached to a ship. Cause honestly, yeah it'd be awesome to just immediately replace any lost drones without docking racks and all. xP Just hope it works out someday...
I did a bit more testing myself, it seems like it's just really nasty lag caused by completely removing every block on the ship and then replacing them all. It fuggles with the logic circuits and rail docks when it does that, after a while though it smooths out.. a little.
Presumably a better repair method, such as search and replace as opposed to demolish and replace, would fix this. But that'll probably come in the future, as I'm 120% certain this was the easiest method to implement for the devs.
On another note, it turns out super cheap launch tubes could be placed across a station to continuously (re)produce drones to surround your stations. It would only take some sort of logic control to "repair" the tubes once empty. A simple clock could conceivably launch every drone as it's made. Which @2500 blocks per second placed, could be very quick.
Assuming minimal lag, each tube could build 1 drone per 2 seconds with infinite resources. Enough resource on your side and any invaders would find themselves hard pressed to fight such a beastly output. 8 tubes would make 4 drones per second, average engagement lasts about 1 minute. 240 drones per minute <(o_o<)
I did a bit more testing myself, it seems like it's just really nasty lag caused by completely removing every block on the ship and then replacing them all. It fuggles with the logic circuits and rail docks when it does that, after a while though it smooths out.. a little.
Presumably a better repair method, such as search and replace as opposed to demolish and replace, would fix this. But that'll probably come in the future, as I'm 120% certain this was the easiest method to implement for the devs.
On another note, it turns out super cheap launch tubes could be placed across a station to continuously (re)produce drones to surround your stations. It would only take some sort of logic control to "repair" the tubes once empty. A simple clock could conceivably launch every drone as it's made. Which @2500 blocks per second placed, could be very quick.
Assuming minimal lag, each tube could build 1 drone per 2 seconds with infinite resources. Enough resource on your side and any invaders would find themselves hard pressed to fight such a beastly output. 8 tubes would make 4 drones per second, average engagement lasts about 1 minute. 240 drones per minute <(o_o<)
I don't see why they didn't just use the existing BPs for the designs and solve part of their problem. Since BPs work already all they'd have to do is save the design to a BP instead of what it is right now.
I don't see why they didn't just use the existing BPs for the designs and solve part of their problem. Since BPs work already all they'd have to do is save the design to a BP instead of what it is right now.
I imagine it had something to do with the way blueprints are saved. Converting them over to a new filetype would probably have been disastrous for many users. By making an entirely new filetype they basically allowed people to build ships in both ways without screwing up nearly as much... like how rails get docked =P imagine if everyone's rails spawned in as broken as they do when built initially at a ship yard.
There would be a riot.
keptick we can already rail drop a huge number of drones through gates. I doubt we'd ever be able to rapidly drop that many though. There seems to be a cooldown attached to gates that prevents spam jumps. @ best we could mass produce large racks and then drop them though. It'd still be a crap ton of drones but it'd just waste alot of racks to get them out there. =/
hrmm... you'd need a cloaked recovery ship on the other end but you could probably scrap the racks and jump back home in short order with such a ship to save resources.
Sigh, yet another ship to add to my already massive list of things to build. Good thing work gives me at least 2 days a week off or I'd be at this forever... oh wait... I already will be.. :p
Ive had a few ideas for drone launches through gates myself. Haven't tested them. I am excited about the idea of "repairing" your drones onto your carrier though ! It sounds so amazing!
With the inherent bugginess of shipyards in this patch, I would say this is impossible. The repairing docked entities back on. However, you should test for yourself, either you will see what I mean, or you will find a glorious workaround.
With the inherent bugginess of shipyards in this patch, I would say this is impossible. The repairing docked entities back on. However, you should test for yourself, either you will see what I mean, or you will find a glorious workaround.
We could at least have secondary drone rack shipyards that are positioned in a way that you barely need to move it in order to dock to the main ship. I know that's entirely feasible.
We could at least have secondary drone rack shipyards that are positioned in a way that you barely need to move it in order to dock to the main ship. I know that's entirely feasible.
Before I even began reading this glorious thread, I'd been thinking about making a carrier that used extending arms that moved into a shipyard block (be gentle, I've only put about a hundred hours into StarMade so far) so that any replacement fighters could be built and docked without having to actually -fly- them anywhere. After some experimentation I decided to start my own drone R&D (you guys are seriously ingenious, but I don't like outright stealingbeing inspired by other shipwright designs in games) and finally dropped into the forums to make a post about your efforts.
My current rack is really, really simple and poorly done, at the moment it carries six of my prototype combat drones and requires a series of delay blocks to actually disgorge all of them properly (if I don't use the delay, my wireless blocks get wonky and 2-4 of them will randomly not take off).
It's intended to be attached to the aforementioned extension arm on my upcoming light assault carrier, which will normally keep them inside the hull behind two layers of blast door (not to mention the shields) until it's time to launch them, when docking the carrier to its berth on the shipyard station, the station's berth will end up with small shipyards that basically just fab it and put it right in line to hop into the core and dock without having to move at all. At least, that's the plan. So far my experiments have resulted in more explosions than working product lines, but that's half the fun.
I'll edit this post with some images of what I'm taking about when I've got the time to finally move to a new image sharing host, I haven't needed to link a picture to a forum in about a decade so I'm a bit behind the times.
Edit: Of note, my docking racks are hideously clumsy, ugly, and simple mostly on purpose, using the cheapest scaffolding because the empty rack is intended to be undocked and recycled at a stationary recovery station (read:salvage array) after any battle, and until the carrier pops in at the edge of the system and deploys, the drone racks are inside the hull on an arm to keep them from getting hit by near misses; the drones are also likewise intended to be salvaged by a salvage shuttle stuffed away in one of the bays not being used for fighters, bombers, or drones. Or in its own bay. I haven't quite decided yet. The whole design is coming together more as an aesthetic cool factor rather than the "brick of doom" I started out building when I bought StarMade, since now that I've started figuring out the mechanics I can stuff systems behind false walls and give some life to my ships instead of my varying length rectangles studded with smaller rectangles shooting at--the analogy kinda falls apart at that point.
Edit 2: Uploaded some images of my prototypes.
This is the part of the project I had the most fun (and least trouble) with, discounting the fact that I just cannot get the area detector groups to work properly and am required to manually toggle the door (which switches the white lighting to the softer yellow of General Quarters. It's not visible in this picture as I didn't upload the image of it mounting my interceptor, but I added a line of mass enhancers in the empty zone between the white and yellow lightbars that keeps the extending arm moving at maximum (still sadly slow) speed. I'll be using this system in my carrier, since I plan on keeping my spinal tram design from the Resolute Battlebrick for some aesthetic effect in the carrier.
As for the issues I have with the area detector/area detector controller not functioning at all for me issues, I'm just operating under the PEBCAK assumption until I know more.
This one is actually misleading, as I had to rebuild the logic system there because docking activated the wireless receiver and button due to proximity... or something. Anyway, first design actually caused it to undock the drones while docking the rack. At the moment, the timing present here lets me do away with the push-pulse method, as there's about a second delay between each launch if everything goes right.
This is the final result before I shut down StarMade for the night last night (after binge reading the first 30 pages of this thread doing my due diligence and researching drone tech). I refit my Eagle missile frigate (more in the weight class of a pocket battleship really) with a number of rack mounts on the bottom and a logic system that works with the timing on the drone rack itself to space out the launches. This frigate comes from my "Still building blocks with no aesthetics" period of design.
Edit 3 (to avoid a double post):
This hideous box is the survivor of my evening drone combat binge, I came back to see if I could get some suggestions on building it into something a little less... hideously boxy. The guts aren't bad, but could use improvement, but it's about as visually appealing as a cinderblock.
It's got a quad rapid-dumbfire array (I tend to value throw weight vs. worrying about pinpoint accuracy, my Battlebrick has huge dumbfire and unslaved missile array turrets that do a pretty good job against slow targets) that deals a range of 500-2000 damage per impact (each missile), 2k shields (regen of about 310), the armor isn't set in stone, I just default to grey advanced in creative mode when I'm tinkering--12 of these little guys tanked enemy waves without losses, and manage to throw out an initial volley that will nuke an Isanth outright. 20 of them and about 90 assorted other models were, sadly, unable to take down a station--they stripped it bare but refused to fire when it lost its turrets, no matter which AI settings I manually reset them to almost making me think they were refusing to fire on their brethren after humiliating them..
After my first bit of... frustration with the rack-mounted models and having to manually rebuild them, I've taken to making a blast door access block up top large enough for me to get into, with the relevant computers and logic stuff accessible--waste of about 4 blocks worth of space but the missing topside armor isn't worth worrying about IMO. It's 7x7x12, quite a bit larger than I intended, but it's the first drone I've completed that actually does its job properly.
But the wall of text in the spoiler blob is beside the point... the question I pose is how one might go about making a drone look more visually appealing? I've got less space to play with (I'm trying to avoid breaking 9x9x15, and would prefer 5x5x9 (to pack more drones into my carrier), so the few aesthetic tricks I would use on a capital ship I can't... really get away with here. And until I have a final drone size and rack built, I don't want to start making the carrier since I'd rather have one universal bay size for combat parasites (bombers, fighters, and drone racks), even if I do intend to have several arms per bay to handle docking differently sized parasites (a wing of drones on a rack will take up a different amount of space compared to one of my gunships, and I have a weird thing about trying to use hangar space at least -somewhat- efficiently, plus it fits back into the RP-side concept of a "truly universal" hangar bay).
I'll stop editing this post. I mean it this time. I'm pretty sure. Unless I hit another snag. :p
Gif of it in action will come later, currently trolling for decent recording software to start drone tutorials. Which will hopefully start up in september.
I use OBS. Decent recording software and free. It's not professional grade but it does the job. This would have been in the body of my first post but I completely missed your comment there until I checked the boards this evening.
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