The ultimate drone R&D thread

[Thalanor]

Good point on beams not adding dps. I should cut the remaining 5 or so ones during one of the (many) coming drone passes.

From the image, the soul drones look slightly larger than mine - sorta Xx9x15? I noticed I could do with a little more missile damage on mine (currently 5k) so I might slightly upscale them and the hangar as well.

To get back into building after a week of phone-only I will do my anti-antidronecorvette frigate project soon. It will be useful both piloted on it's own as well as AI flown - and I might just have two giant exterior docks on the main ship to carry two of these into battle (unprotected as they will be released immediately on hostile sight anyways). Doing the frigate will also help me solidify my design style Current plan: a mess of PD turrets on the frigate to hold back swarm missiles and missile turrets/alpha ion damage (like the main ship) to really hurt corvette sized craft that use alot of systems space for drone countermeasures.

Drone ship + anti-antidroneships = hopefully madness :D

 

[Loadout]

Out of interest, what sizes are your drones?
7x11x13 here, debating to go 7x13x15 or similar.

A drone when attacked will not survive long anyways - fairly sure testing will show that an offensive focus is better on drones. If a drone of mine can oneshot another with it's guided missile (note that overheating is not necessary, any hull damage will cripple a drone) there is no point to having a large bunch of defensive systems.

As for armoring though, I think the optimum is all set: frontal advanced armor, rest standard armor. Cheap enough and makes a good difference against similar craft.

Mine are quite small, I do plan on upping the size proportionally but right now they are 7x7x5. Despite that size they have an effective 1.1k shield and an anti-missile turret.

Strangely enough I saw/read rather that everyone was attempting missiles so I added AMS. It's extremely cheap and quite cost effective against the larger soul drones I'm testing with right now.

I do agree that beams add minimal benefit to missiles though, however beams themselves as a primary seem quite powerful in the hands of the AI.

 

[Argyle_Ninja]

I may at some point regret sharing the details, but- Both of the missile batteries on the raider are tight clusters of 4 on each wing, all single 1-1-1 missile/pulse/explosive. The shield damage isn't phenomenal or anything for bringing down capital ships, (it'd be 1800dmg x 4 per missile computer, so 7,200) Anyways- when they're focus fired, they really do deliver that 50m crater. Refire is slow as all hell, but twin missile computers, you can dig a 100m hole in pretty much anything real quick.
Very power-hungry, but I think you could squeeze a 2-pack missile array into a drone frame..

 

[Keptick]

I may at some point regret sharing the details, but- Both of the missile batteries on the raider are tight clusters of 4 on each wing, all single 1-1-1 missile/pulse/explosive. The shield damage isn't phenomenal or anything for bringing down capital ships, (it'd be 1800dmg x 4 per missile computer, so 7,200) Anyways- when they're focus fired, they really do deliver that 50m crater. Refire is slow as all hell, but twin missile computers, you can dig a 100m hole in pretty much anything real quick.
Very power-hungry, but I think you could squeeze a 2-pack missile array into a drone frame..

Interesting. However, you do realise that normal missiles will have done just as much damage as your pulse array by the time they recharge? AND they are useful against stuff that isn't an immobile capital.

 

[Argyle_Ninja]

My thought was mostly that the pulse sub also added a bonus to the radius, as well as making them lock on capable. The goal was to have a bigger bite, not as much as the long-term shield damage. Plus, if it can overcome around 5 or 6k worth of shields, it'll pretty much turn anything smaller than 50m into dust.

 

[Loadout]

Interesting. However, you do realise that normal missiles will have done just as much damage as your pulse array by the time they recharge? AND they are useful against stuff that isn't an immobile capital.

The real advantage of pulse missiles is the tighter turn radius, lower speed easier to turn. However dps wise it's only beneficial when you have somewhere around a 10:3 or so ratio. Damage rapidly scales but reload is much slower to scale. Interesting little tid bit i've found x)

 

[Keptick]

My thought was mostly that the pulse sub also added a bonus to the radius, as well as making them lock on capable. The goal was to have a bigger bite, not as much as the long-term shield damage. Plus, if it can overcome around 5 or 6k worth of shields, it'll pretty much turn anything smaller than 50m into dust.

I guess... I just use missiles with a beam computer slaved to them (without any beam modules). So it's basically normal missiles with lock-on capabilities

 

[Gerion]

missile/cannon/explosive? Sounds fun to me....

 

[Argyle_Ninja]

missile/cannon/explosive? Sounds fun to me....

I will definitely get back to you on that

Edit: Ok, well, with a larger missile battery, that's a maybe, but with the 1/1/1 array, the missile/cannon/explosive combo is slightly more powerful than a cap-gun. Whopping 60 damage and a laughable radius explosion.

 

[Loadout]

I will definitely get back to you on that

Edit: Ok, well, with a larger missile battery, that's a maybe, but with the 1/1/1 array, the missile/cannon/explosive combo is slightly more powerful than a cap-gun. Whopping 60 damage and a laughable radius explosion.

Off topic - try missile/cannon/explosion on an anti-missile turret. They miss about 90% of the time but the collateral damage is hilarious. Killed a planet fighting pirates with those. Good times :p

 

[Keptick]

Off topic - try missile/cannon/explosion on an anti-missile turret. They miss about 90% of the time but the collateral damage is hilarious. Killed a planet fighting pirates with those. Good times :p

My god, what kind of monstrous anti-missile turrets do you have that are powerful enough to kill a planed . Even the Missile point defence turrets designed for my titan don't come anywhere close to that kind of damage (the other turrets do, though)

 

[Loadout]

My god, what kind of monstrous anti-missile turrets do you have that are powerful enough to kill a planed . Even the Missile point defence turrets designed for my titan don't come anywhere close to that kind of damage (the other turrets do, though)

I've always been a fan of quantity over quality. So when my earlier experiments at anti missiles got boring (cannons and beams only do so well) I tried fighting missiles with well... moar missiles! Oh and there were ALOT of missiles... IIRC about 340 or so... nearly broke my poor laptop, had to swap over to my server to see it in action.

Honestly it was loads of fun and should I ever revive the monster carrying said missile turrets I'll probably add a few drone bays and upload it for giggles. Though I doubt many peeps would want to use it for anything but giggles it was horridly laggy and really not that effective... at combat, the giggles part was super effective!

 

[Keptick]

Make the turrets cannon-cannon and you'll have yourself an impenetrable missile barrier :D

 

[Loadout]

Make the turrets cannon-cannon and you'll have yourself an impenetrable missile barrier :D

Thanks, figured that one out ages ago though, however there is an issue with smaller cannon sizes. It seems any block count less than about 6 completely fails to destroy any missiles at all. Not generally an issue on a ship but with small drones it's a bit of an annoyance. Meh, I'll just drop the AMS on those and make em cheaper anyways. Really digging my upgraded drones now, went all dwarnian on them and had some interesting fights. Seems Cannon - pulse - punch is super effective against other drones.

 

[Gerion]

Thanks, figured that one out ages ago though, however there is an issue with smaller cannon sizes. It seems any block count less than about 6 completely fails to destroy any missiles at all. Not generally an issue on a ship but with small drones it's a bit of an annoyance. Meh, I'll just drop the AMS on those and make em cheaper anyways. Really digging my upgraded drones now, went all dwarnian on them and had some interesting fights. Seems Cannon - pulse - punch is super effective against other drones.

hmmm, thats interesting. I mean, with the equal number of combatants, of course pulsecannons are a good bet, and they have enough damage to destroy or cripple other drones with the punch. And it doesnt need as much space (power capacitors) as pulsemissiles to do it either.

I like and approve. Did you test it against bigger ships too? Especially when mixed with some ion drones, it might just be enough to hurt ships that have anti-drone weapons, as the damage is basically unavoidable and best delivered before the drones start getting destroyed.

 

[Loadout]

hmmm, thats interesting. I mean, with the equal number of combatants, of course pulsecannons are a good bet, and they have enough damage to destroy or cripple other drones with the punch. And it doesnt need as much space (power capacitors) as pulsemissiles to do it either.

I like and approve. Did you test it against bigger ships too? Especially when mixed with some ion drones, it might just be enough to hurt ships that have anti-drone weapons, as the damage is basically unavoidable and best delivered before the drones start getting destroyed.

In the midst of doing so right now actually, sadly I have yet to create an anti-drone ship though. However early bets are astonishingly good, large 10k mass turrets are being shredded without ion drones (Though I get the feeling those might make it go quicker). I can't honestly say how well they might fair against anti-drone ships in particular but with results as good as this I'm willing to wager the remarkably cheap cost of them would be quite effective.

Assuming a swarm of 20 loses to an Anti-Drone ship they should inflict major damage at least equal to their cost. Atm my small drones cost approximately 35,000 credits... swarm of 20 would be about 700k. Not prohibitively expensive I believe.:D

 

[Gerion]

In the midst of doing so right now actually, sadly I have yet to create an anti-drone ship though. However early bets are astonishingly good, large 10k mass turrets are being shredded without ion drones (Though I get the feeling those might make it go quicker). I can't honestly say how well they might fair against anti-drone ships in particular but with results as good as this I'm willing to wager the remarkably cheap cost of them would be quite effective.

Assuming a swarm of 20 loses to an Anti-Drone ship they should inflict major damage at least equal to their cost. Atm my small drones cost approximately 35,000 credits... swarm of 20 would be about 700k. Not prohibitively expensive I believe.:D

Considering that my (unfinished) corvette already clocks in at 6 million and doesnt even have its swarm missiles (just the pulsemissile for use against the mothership), that is... worrying. 20 Drones (plus x ion drones) might actually hurt it right now, and i dont know how much use the swarm missiles are gonna be against them.

 

[Loadout]

Considering that my (unfinished) corvette already clocks in at 6 million and doesnt even have its swarm missiles (just the pulsemissile for use against the mothership), that is... worrying. 20 Drones (plus x ion drones) might actually hurt it right now, and i dont know how much use the swarm missiles are gonna be against them.

Indeed, I'm having difficulty making swarm missiles actually work against... anything really. I can't imagine they'd do well, although to be fair these drones are TINY. 7x7x5 , barely big enough to pack in all the systems let alone engines and thrusters (just 2 and it's kinda zippy none the less). Your average turret could probably kill about 4-5 of them without much issue, no shields at all really.

To be fair though, they're just prototypes for a larger more armed and armored drone I'm building. For the moment though the concept appears to be very strong.

I'll be packing up the file and sharing my concepts here shortly, expect an edit within 15 minutes or so of this post... It'll also include the canister launcher I mentioned earlier.

 

[Keptick]

Your cannister concept would probably work better on smaller ships than my drone rack tbh, considering that it would need less space.

I'm starting to think about a magazine fed skoomdrone launcher type thing (only one barrel to shoot multiple drones separately). It's just a concept in my head but I think that it could work :D

 

[Thalanor]

Oh keptick oh keptick, you give me ideas.
Although these of mine are currently rather ret*rded and very early in R&D:

1. Actual magazine approach, with one main launch tube and a magazine that has a logic storage for the current position and will guide the skoomdrone at position i into the launch tube, then fire the main beam to push it and i++.

2. Am I right with push beams passing through entities docked to the same ship? If yes (I believe it was that way when I experimented with my drone launcher), just have the skoomdrones all in the launch tube in a row, use logic to undock skoomdrone at position i, fire main beam, i++. Red madness button of reddish criticality function: pew pew

The i variable could be implemented as a push register, just haven't done that in starmade yet (I admit minecraft 1.5+ repeaters were handy for this. I think in starmade one would have to manually build D flipflops for that cause, and quite alot of them (one per drone)).