The ultimate drone R&D thread

[Gerion]

Microturrets.... Dammit @Thalanor, those swarm missiles were kind of my last hope. Those damn things are also chaff, they take the attention from you real drones.
Gonna rework my corvette, I guess. Rapid fire 100% cannons with pierce and large turrets with the same weapon. Maybe also a rack with defensive..... Wait, better idea. I let you throw out your little turrets, then I move away, your drones follow me and i destroy them with my swarm missiles. Done.

 

[Thalanor]

Then I follow you when you move away, not letting my drones leave the protective turret coverage :D

Prepare your antidrone measures, I present the the current survivor of my personal Darwin Games :D
SCF "Sirius" drone (9x11x11, 91 mass, partially inspired by the Soul drone):

Spoiler: (EDIT: updated image)

It has 8500 shields, a 6.4k damage guided missile, slightly above 1:1 thrust and a total mass of 91 at a price of 250k.
I will make a dedicated drone carrier for it that will carry four racks to hold a total of 48 to 64 of these drones and a PD turret count of one PD turret per 2 drones.

 

[Keptick]

@Thalanor Those look familiar :p Dem stats doe :O

@Gerion Have you tried using logic activaged long range perma-push pulse arrays yet? Because with a 200m radius it's pretty potent and would effectively stop the drones in their tracks if they get too close (you can even charge into the cloud).

 

[Daffor]

@Thalanor And you managed to make it look awesome with those stats. Nice to see people setting the bar high :D

Can't wait to see what everyone manages to come up with as the R&D continues.

 

[Thalanor]

Well, credit @keptick for the awesome way of making very small 4x4 thruster/missile tubes look good from a distance :D My smaller non-cuboid drones all looked too much like black plates in space until now.

EDIT: This is now the rear and front view, except that shields show behind the rods now to give some animation (EDIT: now updated) and also bump the shield count to 8500.

 

[Loadout]

Well, credit @keptick for the awesome way of making very small 4x4 thruster/missile tubes look good from a distance :D My smaller non-cuboid drones all looked too much like black plates in space until now.

EDIT: This is now the rear and front view, except that shields show behind the rods now to give some animation (not included in that image yet) and also bump the shield count to 8500.

Is it possible to have a drone-gasm? cause those are just too sexy. 6k missile is niiiice, mine are using ~similar damage cannon - pulse combos but they are considerably longer... to be fair though I sort of cheated and purpose-retrofit one of my earliest ship designs into a drone. Still though you managed to make it look awesome, have awesome stats, and be under 300k per drone. That deserves a +1 if I ever saw one =)

 

[Thalanor]

@phallicabuse It is possible to have a drone-gasm, yes - unlike my "throw systems together and use first pass" previous drones, these really do wreck. I tested 10 spawned-in drones.

The 10 drones cost 2.5 million, and they killed an 48 million credits ship (a 5-star community content shipwith rapidfire and guided missile turrets and a rapidfire main cannon as well as guided missile torpedoes) and an /initiate_wave 1 1 (to add some targeting confusion to my drones' behavior for realism) simultaneously (not without notable losses but that is to be ignored for now) :D
During the first 20 seconds all turrets fell, afterwards the ship got a series of nasty drillholes, an overheated core, and to make things worse for the crew, isanth carcasses were floating around as a sign of impending doom.



That is an efficiency ratio of >>20:1. Holy actual frak. Now I know what @keptick was talking about with large ship wreckage, that is a league above the performance of my previous best drones.
Now to lay down the first stone for a carrier that has a beam+pulse shield drainer and a metric f*ckton of these suckers.

 

[Keptick]

@phallicabuse It is possible to have a drone-gasm, yes - unlike my "throw systems together and use first pass" previous drones, these really do wreck. I tested 10 spawned-in drones.

The 10 drones cost 2.5 million, and they killed an 48 million credits ship (a 5-star community content shipwith rapidfire and guided missile turrets and a rapidfire main cannon as well as guided missile torpedoes) and an /initiate_wave 1 1 (to add some targeting confusion to my drones' behavior for realism) simultaneously (not without notable losses but that is to be ignored for now) :D
During the first 20 seconds all turrets fell, afterwards the ship got a series of nasty drillholes, an overheated core, and to make things worse for the crew, isanth carcasses were floating around as a sign of impending doom.



That is an efficiency ratio of >>20:1. Holy actual frak. Now I know what @keptick was talking about with large ship wreckage, that is a league above the performance of my previous best drones.
Now to lay down the first stone for a carrier that has a beam+pulse shield drainer and a metric f*ckton of these suckers.

Hehehehe, I'm glad that my general design is so effective . I don't remember the stats on my soul drone but I'm pretty sure that yours are better, so props to you!

 

[Gerion]

No, @keptick , I havent used those... The corvette is currently equipped with:

Pulsecannon. Will get an ion effect for use against bigger ships. Not the corvettes focus, but still usefull (i think).

100% rapid fire cannon with punch-through. Being manually fired, this thing can lay waste to multiple ships at once, especially as its damage exceeds what normal drones have in terms of shields and armour.

4 swarm missile arrays. I noticed that, fired by just 1 computer, they only target between 4 and 6 ships. Fired in sucession with 4 computers, i was able to (best case scenario) quadruple the number of targets affected. Might build more into it, they are the most effective weapon i curretnly have against swarms.

Cost: 10 Million per ship. And thats without all of the systems and without ANY hull build on to it..... I think drones should be used in server warfare more often, because if I have to manually fly and gun a ship costing 10 million credits to counter them (somewhat), something is wrong.

/edit: @Thalanor, can i have the blueprint for your drone? Would like to test 10 of those against the corvette. It took down 30 Isanths without breaking a sweat, but they are junior league, really.

 

[Thalanor]

Your punch-through will strip my drones of their systems quite fast because the drones are quite large and cuboid in shape. A second of punch-through rapidfire cannon on their hull and they might be unable to fire due to power issues or have lost their weapon computer.

Your corvette better is fast-turning though. You do not have much more time than about 3-4 missile volleys from the drones (if you don't use excessive point defense). 48 drones will do 300k missile burst damage from varying locations every 15 seconds :D

 

[Gerion]

Your punch-through will strip my drones of their systems quite fast because the drones are quite large and cuboid in shape. A second of punch-through rapidfire cannon on their hull and they might be unable to fire due to power issues or have lost their weapon computer.

Your corvette better is fast-turning though. You do not have much more time than about 3-4 missile volleys from the drones (if you don't use excessive point defense). 48 drones will do 300k missile burst damage from varying locations every 15 seconds :D

After the first few seconds of the battle, your swarm should already be diminished, as the first thing that happens are my swarm missiles. I think the corvette can take one or two volleys, but thats it, so i dont have much time.... meh, hate drones....

 

[Keptick]

I never properly introduced my Soul drone, so here it is:

Stats:

• 11 x 9 x 15 dimensions.
• 190k power storage @10.4k e/sec
• Mass: 116, thrust: 177
• 2391 shields @115 shield/sec
• 10.5k damage per volley, split into 4 lock-on missiles.

The reason why the shields are so low is that the power storage required for the missiles takes up a crapton of space. It's not like it matters since getting hit by anything more than a stray shot will cause critical damage with or without high shields :p. I'll have to see if I can optimize the design, though, as this was made 1 or 2 months ago (maybe by cutting down thrust since the bobby AI seems to have an acceleration limiter). To be honest I built them more as damage dealers, 44 of them (the amount on my titan) have a combined first strike of 462k damage.

 

[Thalanor]

That is interesting - you have 1/3 the shields but twice the damage. Makes me PANIC when I think about the charon having 44 of them.
Apparently the four launch tubes on the soul drone aren't fake :D I use one single guided missile per drone, although that also means point defense turrets have it easier.

 

[Keptick]

That is interesting - you have 1/3 the shields but twice the damage. Makes me PANIC when I think about the charon having 44 of them.
Apparently the four launch tubes on the soul drone aren't fake :D I use one single guided missile per drone, although that also means point defense turrets have it easier.

Spoiler: >:D

And that's just half of them ^_^

 

[Thalanor]

A heartwarming sight for a droner - if the diamonds aren't red! Are you sure you even need weapons on your titan anymore? :p
More than 1:1 thrust/mass does not make sense with BOBBY (very rough testing). So they might just get even scarier now..

 

[Loadout]

A heartwarming sight for a droner - if the diamonds aren't red! Are you sure you even need weapons on your titan anymore? :p
More than 1:1 thrust/mass does not make sense with BOBBY (very rough testing). So they might just get even scarier now..

I concur! My statistical analysis indicates anymore than roughly 1:1 is a waste of effort, BobbyAI's movement is derpy anyway you slice it. Honestly speed is a null issue though, I add two thrusters per 35 blocks or so. Mainly because very little is needed, force from mass ejection is generally enough to get them in targeting range, really it's just for maneuvers. Also helps with less space so more room for Dakka!:D

Edit: My retrofit drone;

• 21x7x7
• Total blocks are slightly less than the 11x11x9
• ~2k shield poor recharge but who needs that?
• ~6k damage cannon - pulse - punch through, 6 second reload means 1k dps, with the added power to demolish just about everything.
• Cost in credits is 220k
• Only needs a few blocks in the length dimension to fit on the rack but otherwise fits easily.

Images of the carrier coming eventually. :p

 

[Argyle_Ninja]

Soooooo... upon further testing: Raiders are only allowed to have chaingun AMC's, or missiles. (They may possibly serve as their own point-defense system... for the other team) Anyways, I'll have to split some variants dedicated to one or the other, and I'm a bit optimistic on the bomber variant, seeing how much space that cannon/cannon/explosive rig was taking up. On that note, do you guys find that the punch-through effect is any better rounded than explosive, given that I'm opting for rapid fire chaingun over big honking single shot?

 

[Loadout]

Soooooo... upon further testing: Raiders are only allowed to have chaingun AMC's, or missiles. (They may possibly serve as their own point-defense system... for the other team) Anyways, I'll have to split some variants dedicated to one or the other, and I'm a bit optimistic on the bomber variant, seeing how much space that cannon/cannon/explosive rig was taking up. On that note, do you guys find that the punch-through effect is any better rounded than explosive, given that I'm opting for rapid fire chaingun over big honking single shot?

Given how punch through works I wouldn't bother with it if you're going chain-guns. Quite frankly I wouldn't bother with explosive either.

Reasoning as follows;

Punch through carries damage leftover from the first hit into the next block in the line. Unless your chain-gun hits for a substantial amount over the total block hp, say 5k like my punch gun does, most of the benefit is lost. Getting that kind of damage output on a small frame is nearly impossible, nearly.

Explosive only adds a one block radius to the weapon, even though it says 10, it'll only hit the adjacent blocks. Tested and proven on a large clear glass dummy structure with multiple facets (as in no two sides are really the same, hence a semi random shape).

If you want explosive -> go with beam - cannon. The damage output is MORE effective than punch through on beams, due to the way beams work. -> multiple weaker hits = multiple explosions.

If you want punch through -> any cannon combo except cannon - cannon. All of them except cannon - cannon have decent single hit damage. Cannon - pulse is best imo, as it has the most potential to cleave through targets.

My suggestion -> go with overdrive. I don't normally use it since there's a x6 power cost on top of the already higher cost. However this is the one rare exception where it performs excellently, adding double normal damage and a triple shield damage boost at a workable level.

 

[Argyle_Ninja]

I would imagine that I just need to further optimize my power generation to try and keep up with the overdrive.. The explosive for cannons is indeed, a sad bonus, though I was really adding the effect for the damage boost that comes with it, seemed to be the one with the fewest drawbacks. Along the similar lines of testing, I popped out the "Alpha" variant, AMC chaingun, reels out 1400 dmg/sec. No missiles. "Omega" variant, only missiles, and while trying to decide on a configuration, I got this:

Spoiler: Side by side

the crater on the left, cluster of 4 missile racks, dealing 14,400dmg. On the right, same number of missile tubes, all in one missile system. Identical damage, and I think only slightly less power consumption. Thought I'd pass it along

 

[Thalanor]

That is interesting. At first, I thought it had to do something with your target ship being hollow (from the looks of it). However, that does not seem to matter at all. I repeated your test against a solid target made of hardened hull... well, my drones are going to get the missile output split up now. If the power malus at 4 outputs isn't too much (have yet to test).

This may be a bug though. The one-system crater in fact does total an amount of effective hp (400 per advanced armor) removed that roughly corresponds to the total missile damage. The combined EHP of total blocks removed on the left crater far exceeds 12.3k (the damage in the very first layer of armor already is around 100 blocks x 400 EHP). This may be important in estimating future hull damage of drones if it really is a bug and thus fixed sometime ( @keptick , @Argyle_Ninja ). Still, with multi-missiles you are on the safe side: bug or not, fixed or not, you will never be at a disadvantage (except the power malus of multi output).


Could someone confirm the following power cost formula for a weapon computer?
effectiveTotalCost = baseCostIfOneGroupOnly * (1 + 0.1*(numberOfGroups - 1) )
With 4 instead of 1 missile for example, a drone would need 975 instead of 750 power per block, which is a 30% increase. But multiple missiles do indeed have advantages too:
1. If their damage is rather low: They "drill" instead of zeroing the hull details of the target ship.
2. If their damage is high (not drones): They don't waste all their explosion radii on the same 20 radius sphere.

Note that focus fired achieved a considerably better performance than right-clicked, which is another indicator of weird behavior in low-damage missiles, although the latter still beats one single missile system. Also note that with LARGE missile arrays (capship, not drones), that does not apply - rightclick-fire does far more hull damage as every missile would already clear it's 20 block explosion radius of blocks.