The ultimate drone R&D thread

[StormWing0]

Oh heck lets get this thread back up and running and see what's new. :P

 

[Keptick]

I actually wanted to do that too hahaha

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Keptick ,

You started this thread with that rather brilliant drone rack design. Since I have an almost irresistible urge to cram fighters into my ships, I too would like to see this thread continue since there have been a few changes over the past 2 years.

Do you feel that under the current build of the game, small drones can still be effective? Personally, I'm finding them a bit underwhelming in terms of fire power. I suppose I can cut my drones' reactor stability to 25-50% like the hardcore META players do, but I'm told that quickfire is going to do away with being able to do that without losing overall power output.

 

[nulitor]

Keptick ,

You started this thread with that rather brilliant drone rack design. Since I have an almost irresistible urge to cram fighters into my ships, I too would like to see this thread continue since there have been a few changes over the past 2 years.

Do you feel that under the current build of the game, small drones can still be effective? Personally, I'm finding them a bit underwhelming in terms of fire power. I suppose I can cut my drones' reactor stability to 25-50% like the hardcore META players do, but I'm told that quickfire is going to do away with being able to do that without losing overall power output.

Is it possible for you to do bigger docks for your drones without messing up majorly your ships?
If you make small fighters they are going to attract turret fire as efficiently as before so for that purpose you do not lose efficiency.
Personally I do not like carrier designs in starmade due to fear of collision physics killing everything I care about in starmade(fps, my saves and the fact my computer have not turned into molten plastic)
There is probably a proper way to do a carrier that does not results in such problem but I do not know that way.
If making a carrier that does not destroys the universe involves making smaller drones then I guess that efficient drones are carrierless.

 

[Keptick]

Keptick ,

You started this thread with that rather brilliant drone rack design. Since I have an almost irresistible urge to cram fighters into my ships, I too would like to see this thread continue since there have been a few changes over the past 2 years.

Do you feel that under the current build of the game, small drones can still be effective? Personally, I'm finding them a bit underwhelming in terms of fire power. I suppose I can cut my drones' reactor stability to 25-50% like the hardcore META players do, but I'm told that quickfire is going to do away with being able to do that without losing overall power output.

I really haven't played enough with the current systems to judge accurately, so don't quote me on this, but afaik small ships are broken under the quick-fire config. Something about their damage being nullified to zero by armor, not sure. Idk about the balance in vanilla, but if I were you I'd swap to QF config when trying to balance ships, since that will most likely become default. The peeps behind QF hope to fix small ships eventually though (by small ships I mean under 1k mass, so smack in drone territory).

 

[Dr. Whammy]

In my specific case making space isn't a problem., for uniformity, I've chosen a drone/fighter size that approximates modern day fighter aircraft like F-15s or Migs. The dimensions are 15m L, 15m W, and 9m H. I leave 1m of extra space on all sides of the bay for manual docking or emergencies; for an overall bay interior size of about 17 L x 17 W x 11;.

My last sub-capital carried 9 fighters for immediate launch with a secondary launch of 3 more small craft (usually dropships) and one "black ops" stealth dropship that share bay doors with fighters from the primary launch group.

With regard to fire power, I find that they have storm trooper accuracy (even against near-stationary targets) and do not deal enough damage to hurt anything besides other fighters. It may be their small size or I simply haven't deployed enough of them but as it stands now, they feel more like a cute nuisance with a technicolor light show than an actual attack force.

 

[Keptick]

So I spoke with SchnellBier and the problem with small ships is that if the damage they deal is under a certain amount it will get completely absorbed by armor (depends on the armor thickness and weapon size). So just make sure to have weapons that deal sufficient damage per projectile/tick in the case of cannons/beams. Missiles ignore armor ratings so that's also a good weapon candidate.

Dr. Whammy Also, don't use the default AI accuracy, it's trash (might be your problem).

 

[Dr. Whammy]

I really haven't played enough with the current systems to judge accurately, so don't quote me on this, but afaik small ships are broken under the quick-fire config. Something about their damage being nullified to zero by armor, not sure. Idk about the balance in vanilla, but if I were you I'd swap to QF config when trying to balance ships, since that will most likely become default. The peeps behind QF hope to fix small ships eventually though (by small ships I mean under 1k mass, so smack in drone territory).

Do missiles ignore armor? If so it might be possible to use missiles on drones to bypass the issue. If not then nevermind.

So I spoke with SchnellBier and the problem with small ships is that if the damage they deal is under a certain amount it will get completely absorbed by armor (depends on the armor thickness and weapon size). So just make sure to have weapons that deal sufficient damage per projectile/tick in the case of cannons/beams. Missiles ignore armor ratings so that's also a good weapon candidate.

Dr. Whammy Also, don't use the default AI accuracy, it's trash (might be your problem).

I've been holding off on the QF dev builds since they haven't (last time I checked) made it official. Maybe it's time

With regard to missiles; in vanilla, I've seen no evidence of missiles ignoring armor, though I could just be seeing the effects of damage dissipating via the radial explosion mechanic. I can't speak for quickfire configs yet. I agree with everything else you've said though. ...especially AI accuracy.

With regard to accuracy, are Schine/QF working on fixing turrets? As of now, they are worse than trash; especially with heavy weapons.

 

[EricBlank]

Missiles vs armor must be a recent change? I specifically tested and made sure my armor was effective vs missiles in the QF configs a while back and it was.

I haven't heard anything about them working on turret or ship ai, only the improved missile target tracking settings. I would assume all other ai is unchanged, and is thus garbage still.

 

[Scypio]

All of that is supposedly on QF's configs. Vanilla still uses another formula specified in the configs. Which is far from being as sophisticated as the one we have on QF side. Sorry to brag a bit about that. :P

Missiles are good vs armor only because they ignore all of the armor formula shenanigan. If they hit they deal X damage to every blocks in Y radius. Which means that at small scale they are not what you might expect but the more you go up in size and mass the more you'll see the difference.
Said like that it might look op but it's also because you have a lot of different things to counter missiles so it's balanced as long as theses counter mechanics are balanced too.

To sum up what you want on drones as weapons :
- You want missiles that ignore all of the armor shenanigans. the problem is that you will not recharge before you empty all of your missiles as you would do in your piloted ship. At least that's what is supposed to happen. So picking up missiles means that you will have a time where your drones won't fire because it'll wait to be recharged.
- You want high damage outputs weapons. As such, everything that has a low rate of fire and as such high damage per hit is what you want. Because the armor formula works as a ratio of the armor versus the damage dealt. Which means, the less damage you are dealing the more it'll be reduced. (It's roughly summed up, it's more complicated than that and i suggest you look at the config files to understand the formula and how it works) So you want weapons that fires shots with a lot of damage each and not rapid fire rate weapons with low damage per shots.
[doublepost=1573180671,1573180248][/doublepost]

I really haven't played enough with the current systems to judge accurately, so don't quote me on this, but afaik small ships are broken under the quick-fire config. Something about their damage being nullified to zero by armor, not sure. Idk about the balance in vanilla, but if I were you I'd swap to QF config when trying to balance ships, since that will most likely become default. The peeps behind QF hope to fix small ships eventually though (by small ships I mean under 1k mass, so smack in drone territory).

We do not hope to fix fights below 1k mass. It's a problem we will always have with starmade as it is a voxel block based game. We try to make it so that combat between really small ships (below 1k for example) is balanced but there is a point where you run into the same issue again and again. And this problem is not fixable without breaking everything else. At the moment it should be somewhat balanced for combat between small ships.
However really small ships will always have the problem of the bigger armor reducing more their damage per shots than you want. "Fixing" this would mean that armor is no more useful in reducing incoming damage and spamming outputs is the way to deal the most amount of damage.
[doublepost=1573180955][/doublepost]

I've been holding off on the QF dev builds since they haven't (last time I checked) made it official. Maybe it's time

Qf's configs are somewhat official since it's on the dev builds. But if tomorrow someone comes with a set of configs that are far superior to ours and that all of the community agrees that it fixes the game and the devs as well, then it will be accepted.
Also, it's not like each servers can choose their own configs. Some servers already took the charge to go with QF's configs and it's up to server owners to choose their configs, not schine. Which is part of why we are only using configs to change the game and nothing else.

 

[Keptick]

Thanks for the explanation Scypio . So essentially ultra small ship combat is only "broken" in the sense that they can't damage overly thick armor with low per-hit damage weapons. Tbh it makes sense, I don't expect a tiny pew pew gun on a drone to scratch the armor on a 100k mass ship.

Like you said, there's still solutions such as missiles or high per shot damage weapons. And drones will still deal damage to shields no matter what, so that's worth keeping in mind.

 

[Keptick]

So yea, I realized that I could make a system to store drones in 3 dimensional docking space (so like 3x5x28 drones) on my titan. That would bring the total drone count to 700+.... Might be a tad overkill hahaha

It would sure be terrifying for the enemy though

 

[Dr. Whammy]

As it stands now, filling your fighter bays with more shields and weapons is far more effective than carrying fighters. That kinda takes away the incentive to have carriers/fighters in the first place.

I know they supposedly got rid of stabilizer placement distance but what do you guys think about changing the threshold in which ANY reactor stabilization is needed?

I get the need to stabilize a station or titan's reactor for balance purposes but needing to waste space placing stabilizers on a 100-300 mass fighter/drone seems to be the source of the handicap for small ships.

They lose the advantage of being compact since you have to sacrifice overall fire-power due to having to cram in a bunch of stabilizers to get full power out of your reactor. As a result, you end up with a carrier full of mobile decorations that can't generate the power needed to fire something that can put a dent in heavier armor.

My latest incarnation of this fighter is 15m x 15m x 9m and less than 100 mass, yet it requires more than 30 stabilizers for only 20 reactor blocks.

Those 30+ blocks could have been thrust, shields or weapons. Now I have a slow "fighter" with the durability of a paper air plane, armed with a squirt gun. I suppose I would get more power if I simply built a brick-shaped fighter, but I'd honestly rather not be forced into that again.

 

[Ckeeze]

They lose the advantage of being compact since you have to sacrifice overall fire-power due to having to cram in a bunch of stabilizers to get full power out of your reactor. As a result, you end up with a carrier full of mobile decorations that can't generate the power needed to fire something that can put a dent in heavier armor.

My latest incarnation of this fighter is 15m x 15m x 9m and less than 100 mass, yet it requires more than 30 stabilizers for only 20 reactor blocks.

I recommend outfitting drones with missiles instead, They go fairly close to the enemy so there is lesser chance of AMS to work, 1 or 2 drones can't fire too much missiles but imagine what 20 can do, Missiles also tend do a lot more damage to even heavy armor,

I also recommend Building your carrier as a "BattleCarrier",
The moment you let loose of all of your fighters is the moment your ship suddenly becomes much faster and more mass and power efficent, Plan the carrier to be somewhat combat effective without the fighters mass, (I recommend Long ranged weaponry) Once you dumped your fighters the only difference is volume wich might not even be a disadvantage as shots hitting the empty large hangars would be almost as insignificant as missing, sense there is no longer anything usefull there, Especially from a distance your hangar could absorb shots quite effectively.
The tought process shouldn't be: "20 300m bombers should be able to kill a 20k ship", but "20 300m bombers plus the carriers longe range fire should be able to fight a force of equal or slightly greater mass"

 

[Keptick]

The thought process shouldn't be: "20 300m bombers should be able to kill a 20k ship", but "20 300m bombers plus the carriers longe range fire should be able to fight a force of equal or slightly greater mass"

Exactly! I think it might be even more effective than that, since it really splits the enemy's attention between the drones and the main ship. It opens up the possibility to a bunch of strategies. For example, it makes the job of keeping your distance easier since the enemy will probably focus the drones (if they don't they'll die a death of 1000 cuts).

As soon as shields drop turrets also get absolutely minced by a drone swarm, leaving only the ship's main guns to counter the swarm (usually doesn't end well hahaha).

 

[Dr. Whammy]

I recommend outfitting drones with missiles instead, They go fairly close to the enemy so there is lesser chance of AMS to work, 1 or 2 drones can't fire too much missiles but imagine what 20 can do, Missiles also tend do a lot more damage to even heavy armor,

I do use fighters with missiles.

They tend to be some of the best anti-fighter units at that small a scale. However, they're only average against armor since they don't have enough reactor power to field missiles strong enough to damage armor. Also, their low fire rate and DPS means they don't do so well against heavy shield regen.

I also recommend Building your carrier as a "BattleCarrier",
The moment you let loose of all of your fighters is the moment your ship suddenly becomes much faster and more mass and power efficent, Plan the carrier to be somewhat combat effective without the fighters mass, (I recommend Long ranged weaponry) Once you dumped your fighters the only difference is volume wich might not even be a disadvantage as shots hitting the empty large hangars would be almost as insignificant as missing, sense there is no longer anything usefull there, Especially from a distance your hangar could absorb shots quite effectively.

The sub-capital I posted earlier has some nice fire power. However, it doesn't carry enough fighters for them to be of any real benefit to the larger craft. Also, they're not strong enough, they don't use their max speed, they have no concept of evasive manuevers and you can't coordinate their attacks to your advantage.

The tought process shouldn't be: "20 300m bombers should be able to kill a 20k ship", but "20 300m bombers plus the carriers longe range fire should be able to fight a force of equal or slightly greater mass"

I really like your idea as a concept. However, in practice it's not quite that simple.

Spoiler

The Ship in this GIF is 100m long, 5200 mass with some basic RP interior and has roughly a million shields with moderate (by my standards) regen.

I'm currently being attacked by about 40 fighters of different types including my SFB-39s armed with missiles. I'm sitting stationary. I'm tanking all of these guys right now as I type this and my shield has not dropped below 90%. See my point?

Any carrier big enough to hold this many fighters is already going to greatly outgun this light escort, using only a fraction of its fire power. It might even one-shot me. So I'm forced to ask; what's the point of any carrier in this game when the fighters you carry are too weak sauce to fight anything but other fighters? ...which you can shoot down one by one like I'm about to do now.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some "pest control" to attend to...


[doublepost=1573257417,1573256568][/doublepost]All gone! Average of 7 volleys to kill each one and I didn't use swarmers.

Seriously, these little guys need to lose that stabilization requirement. Even in groups, they don't stand a chance otherwise.

 

[Keptick]

Dr. Whammy what's the mass of your fighters? Was the total mass of the drones equal or above the mass of the ship? Because it might be the case that the combined mass was just way too inferior to the ship.
[doublepost=1573257635,1573257535][/doublepost]I'll refit my soul drones with quickfire configs, they're around 115 mass with QF. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[Scypio]

Ckeeze is right. You don't build carriers as you do in our real world. Because fighters don't need somewhere to refuel or get ammo and be protected (because shields).
A carrier in starmade should be a normal combat ship with drones/fighters/bombers/whatever else attached to it. Drop your load and then fight as a normal combat ship. I used to build some specifically docked racks to store drones and then just dump the racks and drones when fighting.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Dr. Whammy what's the mass of your fighters? Was the total mass of the drones equal or above the mass of the ship? Because it might be the case that the combined mass was just way too inferior to the ship.
[doublepost=1573257635,1573257535][/doublepost]I'll refit my soul drones with quickfire configs, they're around 115 mass with QF. I'll let you know how it goes.

The average mass of each of my fighters is about 100. With about 40 fighters that's about 4000 mass. My ship's base mass (without turrets) is 4451; which includes reactor chambers and a fair amount of RP gear (medical bays, stair cases, transporters, decorative elements, etc.)

This isn't about mass but rather, the combined reactor output of the fighters vs that of the escort.

The escort's reactor has a charge rate of about 140K e/sec with 100% stabilization. Due to their compact size, the fighters can only fit about 2K recharge rate before you fall below 100% stabilization (which I've read will be required for full recharge rate when QF goes live). Some quick math shows the escort having about 70 x the recharge rate of a single fighter. I had 40 of these little guys shooting at me so that's only 80K recharge vs 140K.

Currently, reactors under 10 blocks have no stabilization requirements. My fighters have 20 blocks and are still weak sauce vs an actual starship. If we change the stabilization requirement to only apply to reactors above (for example), 50 blocks rather than the default 10, you could create fighters with some actual bite to them without making anything game-breaking.

While this does offset the current balance somewhat, I think that it would be a fair adjustment, considering that I destroyed all 40 of the fighters from my above post; as if picking flowers; in less than 15 minutes with my escort's cannons (no missiles, no secondaries). Imagine if I used swarmers instead.

Ckeeze,
While I agree with you that the high damage per shot of missiles is a good choice for fighters vs armor, I wasn't so impressed with their performance vs high shield regen rates. As powerful as missiles are, you still lose half your explosion radius to open space; shields or no shields. This is why I often use fighters with cannons to support those with missiles.

 

[Tsnonak]

General AI / drone Info:

Back in the day, (2014-2015), I recall some servers with an AI accuracy of 2000.
The Official StarMade Server uses AI accuracy : 1000, (MOTD).

Default server.cfg: "10 = about 99% accuracy at 10m"...

{
20 = 99% accuracy @ 20meters
30 = 99% accuracy @ 30meters
40 = 99% accuracy @ 40meters
50 = 99% accuracy @ 50meters
60 = 99% accuracy @ 60meters
70 = 99% accuracy @ 70meters
80 = 99% accuracy @ 80meters
90 = 99% accuracy @ 90meters
100 = 99% accuracy @ 100meters
}

Vanilla = AI_WEAPON_AIMING_ACCURACY = 200 / = (99% accuracy @ 200 meters).

Combat with engagement distances of 1-2 kilometer should be using around 2000, (or whatever AI "optimal" you like).

Another option to enhance the singleplayer experience would be to reduce engagement distance, as chasing Isanths is quite tedious.

AI_ENGAGEMENT_RANGE_OF_MIN_WEAPON_RANGE = 0.75

also: "You don't build carriers as you do in our real world"...
sounds like a good enough reason to re-instate / raise "free stabilisation", it is only important for small ships.