The ultimate drone R&D thread

[Thalanor]

If you use heavy drones relative to the ship and only 3-4 of them, indeed don't use a rack at all. That is a manageable amount of entities and you have the advantage of activating all AI via mothership structure tab etc.

Racks make sense from 6-8+ drones IMO, but to properly balance their notable disadvantages they should be even larger.

 

[Loadout]

The Kabuto is the design I'm working with atm. It's L x W x H is 17 x 11 x 7 which makes it substantially larger than my Flea drones. It packs considerably more firepower and armor into it's frame than the flea chassis ever could, having said that I may optimize it later on down the road for additional firepower.

I was thinking as an escort only 4 would be fine, considering it's a carrier escort. The carrier would possess the numbers while this ship follows it around protecting it and engaging where needed. The drones won't actually launch until it takes damage either so at that point a good chunk of the battle has already taken place and these are for the most part supporting DPS to quickly finish the fight or turn the tide.

*scratches chin* considering numbers, my flea racks are very small. Should probably double them up one of these days...

 

[Gerion]

hmm, 3 turret extenders give you a nice little turret with 9k shields. You can squeeze a bit more capacity out of it if you use a shield beam pointed at the turret. saves shield chargers and gives the turret a bit more survivability against dps-heavy weapons. Doesnt help against a big missile hitting the side of the ship though, that will take out the whole turret battery.

Damage on turrets really isnt a problem, drones dont have the shields/armour to withstand more than one or two glancing hits. At the same time, the turret has to survive being swarmed.... Tricky engineering work, but 1 on 1, turret beats drone (same size) straight up. Its just that you normally have more drones than turrets, and the targeting/turnrate remains a problem.

 

[Loadout]

hmm, 3 turret extenders give you a nice little turret with 9k shields. You can squeeze a bit more capacity out of it if you use a shield beam pointed at the turret. saves shield chargers and gives the turret a bit more survivability against dps-heavy weapons. Doesnt help against a big missile hitting the side of the ship though, that will take out the whole turret battery.

Damage on turrets really isnt a problem, drones dont have the shields/armour to withstand more than one or two glancing hits. At the same time, the turret has to survive being swarmed.... Tricky engineering work, but 1 on 1, turret beats drone (same size) straight up. Its just that you normally have more drones than turrets, and the targeting/turnrate remains a problem.

Agreed, turrets must turn faster in order to counteract drones more effectively.

However on a 1:1 ratio of size turrets i'm not sure are more effective than drones. Both need roughly the same systems to operate, unless the turret is specifically drawing power from the ship it has no real advantages other than lack of thrusters and a slow drone is still (generally) a very effective drone. I think the issue is more that we use larger turrets than drones on a regular basis so 1:1 the turret wins because it's bigger and therefore, has more dakka. I'd love to see some numbers resulting from equally sized turrets and drones. Perhaps even using turrets as drones, dronetts? or maybe Turrones?

 

[Gerion]

Agreed, turrets must turn faster in order to counteract drones more effectively.

However on a 1:1 ratio of size turrets i'm not sure are more effective than drones. Both need roughly the same systems to operate, unless the turret is specifically drawing power from the ship it has no real advantages other than lack of thrusters and a slow drone is still (generally) a very effective drone. I think the issue is more that we use larger turrets than drones on a regular basis so 1:1 the turret wins because it's bigger and therefore, has more dakka. I'd love to see some numbers resulting from equally sized turrets and drones. Perhaps even using turrets as drones, dronetts? or maybe Turrones?

They are necessarily more effective, since no matter what weapon the turret or the drone use, the turret will have more blocks available to defense (shield) or offense (weapon blocks). Namely all the energy and thruster blocks. So one turret will withstand and deal more damage than a drone of its size.

 

[Loadout]

@Gerion That depends on the size though, small drones only need one or two thrusters, hardly much of a difference in shields(~100 points or so?) or damage(some exceptions of course). Granted with something super massive like 12000 blocks that's a lot of thrust and power difference.

However having numerous turrets relying solely on the mothership for their power can be draining and have adverse effects on the ship itself. It's a dangerous trade-off to have mega turrets or mega numbers of turrets all draining your power while you fight.

Now lets say you add ~some power to the turret, you're still not packing much of a difference until the larger scale at which point the difference is your drone is no longer a drone but a fully blown AI Destroyer probably with turrets of it's own to boot. Also a cruiser sized turret would probably look epic but function terribly, especially with 0 power generation.

@_@ 1:1 only works on a relatively smaller scale at which point all things are pretty darn even, and that's considering the differences of shields and power blocks too.

 

[Loadout]

It has been quite a while since anyone has posted here so let me be the first to break some ice.

I have done it.

The it to which I refer is the problem of how to launch drones automatically with no input from the player what so ever. Yes, now AI only ships can launch drones! The solution to this problem has baffled me for some time now but after perusing youtube, watching some random starmade videos, doing extensive testing, designing, redesigning, and more... well, you get the drift.

Presenting the answer to our AI buddy drone launch issues.

As you can see while the core is docked, the signal is turned OFF. Should the core be destroyed, say by, overzealous core targeting AI protocols (currently AIs shoot for the cores). Then the signal will become inverted and turned ON. This means any number of things can happen, including a drone launch sequence. The only issues are as follows...

1. A core must be lost for this sequence to even start
2. There is a waiting time before the core will overload and be destroyed.

The second one is particularly annoying as the wait time can be several minutes or only a few seconds depending on how much overkill was apparently done to the core. There appears to be a ton of factors involved with it, suffice it to say this will be a one minute doom timer at best.

In spite of those facts however, this will finally allow us to launch drones automatically without having to push any buttons, go into build mode, or even leave the core of our ship. My drone-sense is tingling, I sense a disturbance coming in the near future of drone tech.

 

[Keptick]

Excellent work, I thought that overheating turrets undocked. Hmmm, I rely on this for my titan's 3D damage display. I'll have to hook them up to the launch system too :D. Some guy trying to destroy my titan while I'm AFK or not on (which would never happen btw, since I hide my ships before getting off)? Takes a drone swarm to the face :D

You could also activate a swarm missile launch with that, the possibilities are endless!

 

[Thalanor]

@Loadout ; excellent. I will use this for yellow and red alert on my upcoming battleship/dreadnought. Take all my liketies.
Yellow alert is triggered when a turret overheats; red alert is for mothership hull breaches. Both alert types are localized and will show on a holographic image of the ship. That way, a quick glance tells you where turrets are missing (yellow glow) and where the hull was also breached (additional red glow). If a turret overheats, that is relatively likely to mean a missile has hit you, so yellow alert is when drones should be launched.

So far I am really hoping for a quick fix to missile hull penetration. My project will use docked power generators and drones (as well as standard hangars), and will be below it's intended performance until that bug is still there (but I am still early into the build anyways).


@keptick: Isn't part of building a titan being able to AFK in space with no worries? :D At least for a short timespan, you should be rather untouchable if you don't spare on shield regen. Go for a few docked aux power generators supplying the power for a supermassive shield regenerator.

 

[Loadout]

@Thalanor I'm not sure it would work on a hull breach unless you have a spare core lining the underside of your armor. However you could use it to slow down hull breach by activating either a shield booster (which is 60% damage reduction to shields) or an armor booster (additional 50% damage reduction to armor) on your yellow alert.

@Thalanor, @keptick

The possibilities for this really are limited only to what can be activated by logic circuits. Generally that is just about everything too.:p I hadn't thought of swarm missiles, mainly cause I refuse to use them until they're fixed (no friendly targeting pleeeeaaase). However it could be used to send a signal to a shield re-charger beam or repair array to help fix up the outer hull.

 

[Thalanor]

The red alert system (hull breach) I already got to work on an abandoned older project - it uses activation blocks connected to a small circuit including a clock (so the entire thing updates constantly) to detect hull breaches. But that never worked for turrets So this is going to be very useful.

Oh god docked power regenerators really make you overflow with regen goodness. Probably means good shield regen + permanent ion defensive... so a hull breach detector would rarely launch the drones, but a turret damage detector does it sooner.

 

[AtraUnam]

A little late to this topic and pretty much the R&D building janitor in terms of design experience but I have 2 suggestions:

1. Build a support cloak ship with the sole purpose of delivering a single skoome drone/bomb directly to the enemy ship.
2. If your drones keep crashing into your drone racks why not just make the damn racks out of plex doors?

 

[Keptick]

A little late to this topic and pretty much the R&D building janitor in terms of design experience but I have 2 suggestions:

1. Build a support cloak ship with the sole purpose of delivering a single skoome drone/bomb directly to the enemy ship.
2. If your drones keep crashing into your drone racks why not just make the damn racks out of plex doors?

They don't actually crash into the racks, the only time they do is when the stupid logic glitches and the push beams don't activate...

 

[Loadout]

The red alert system (hull breach) I already got to work on an abandoned older project - it uses activation blocks connected to a small circuit including a clock (so the entire thing updates constantly) to detect hull breaches. But that never worked for turrets So this is going to be very useful.

Oh god docked power regenerators really make you overflow with regen goodness. Probably means good shield regen + permanent ion defensive... so a hull breach detector would rarely launch the drones, but a turret damage detector does it sooner.

They don't actually crash into the racks, the only time they do is when the stupid logic glitches and the push beams don't activate...

Also AI can't use Jammers so the support ship would have to be Player operated. Not that it's a bad idea, a skoom-deployer would be kinda fun. It's just you can't command it to go off on it's own and then deploy stuff. Currently we still only have limited deployment methods.

 

[Gerion]

That automatic drone launching system looks a bit... clumsy? It will most likely eat a missile and be destroyed in most cases.

What is with dockable armour plates? Basically rather thick plates of armoured hull with minimal shields and power docked to a turret port. It then has area triggers behind it. If it gets hit by something big (say, a missile), the area trigger turns on (or off?) and starts the swarm. Added bonus of having bonus defenses that you can even put turrets on if you like. Will hurt mobility though and takes a lot of turret enhancers.

 

[AtraUnam]

That automatic drone launching system looks a bit... clumsy? It will most likely eat a missile and be destroyed in most cases.

What is with dockable armour plates? Basically rather thick plates of armoured hull with minimal shields and power docked to a turret port. It then has area triggers behind it. If it gets hit by something big (say, a missile), the area trigger turns on (or off?) and starts the swarm. Added bonus of having bonus defenses that you can even put turrets on if you like. Will hurt mobility though and takes a lot of turret enhancers.

I'm toying with the idea of fairly large dock able armor plates with built in shield drain beams.

 

[Thalanor]

I tested dockable armor plating once. It makes missile defense worse actually as long as the missile hull penetration bug w/ docked entities exists :D

That single bug also makes any sort of structural protection for the drones relatively redundant as of now. There is no real working protection; when the battle begins, all drones should be released. As such, current drone systems should focus on quick and undisturbed ejection as well as easy replacing (as you will do alot of premature drone releases) over defenses.

 

[Keptick]

For those wondering this is what the insides of a skoomdrone look like (minus the normal systems):

 

[Gerion]

I tested dockable armor plating once. It makes missile defense worse actually as long as the missile hull penetration bug w/ docked entities exists :D

That single bug also makes any sort of structural protection for the drones relatively redundant as of now. There is no real working protection; when the battle begins, all drones should be released. As such, current drone systems should focus on quick and undisturbed ejection as well as easy replacing (as you will do alot of premature drone releases) over defenses.

True, but once that bug is fixed, those should work great. Especially against people using 100% ion weaponry to destroy shields (which then fail to destroy the plating), then nuke the core. With these, you will need 2 nukes to destroy a ship, more if the ship actively moves around and presents a fresh plate.

 

[Keptick]

True, but once that bug is fixed, those should work great. Especially against people using 100% ion weaponry to destroy shields (which then fail to destroy the plating), then nuke the core. With these, you will need 2 nukes to destroy a ship, more if the ship actively moves around and presents a fresh plate.

The blast of the nuke will keep on going through the plate and hurt the ship too, assuming that it has enough damage.