The ultimate drone R&D thread

[Loadout]

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.

The problem with that(dockable plates) is that it doesn't work. I tried a hundred different ways to get something similar to work and it just doesn't count the turret as a separate entity. So no go on the motion detection. It could work if you destroy/undock the turret, but that's basically the same boat and has the added negative effect of possible misses.. ie. should go off, but doesn't cause it missed the right area. Not to mention it requires player interaction to undock otherwise now you've got even more logic to support logic that enables logic. Kinda pointless no?

Honestly if you nuke any logic system it will fail. All you can really do is add some redundancy further into the ship. Which is basically what i've been doing for the last few days or so. Getting it perfect won't happen, getting something elegant probably won't happen, but so far this is the only afk system I've seen that can actually work ~90% of the time. It's quite the challenge to get a non-human interacting system to work perfectly. But then, what if anything is ever perfect?

 

[Gerion]

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

Yes, but at that point the damage shouldnt be overly big anymore, right? Small enough to be tanked by the shields.

The problem with that(dockable plates) is that it doesn't work. I tried a hundred different ways to get something similar to work and it just doesn't count the turret as a separate entity. So no go on the motion detection. It could work if you destroy/undock the turret, but that's basically the same boat and has the added negative effect of possible misses.. ie. should go off, but doesn't cause it missed the right area. Not to mention it requires player interaction to undock otherwise now you've got even more logic to support logic that enables logic. Kinda pointless no?

Honestly if you nuke any logic system it will fail. All you can really do is add some redundancy further into the ship. Which is basically what i've been doing for the last few days or so. Getting it perfect won't happen, getting something elegant probably won't happen, but so far this is the only afk system I've seen that can actually work ~90% of the time. It's quite the challenge to get a non-human interacting system to work perfectly. But then, what if anything is ever perfect?

It is used with "(part of) the plate gets destroyed, logic activates in the main ship to eject drones". Its just for the event your ship gets attacked while you are not there. Not great at all, maybe a turret docker with a core + turret docker with a core docked to it? If you hit that with a missile, the second docker in line gets destroyed with its core still attached to the ship, but the third core losses its docking unit, which makes it decouple and activate the trigger. Again, wobbly as hell and only useful if a shot actually destroyes the second docker, but hey, RnD, right?

 

[Thalanor]

That seems to really be the thing about nukes: you are not supposed to get hit by them. I doubt that a pure drone carrier can in any way defend against a nuke that has come too close to shoot down with turrets; that is more like the realm of battleships, dreadnoughts and titans that also have drone support (as are dockable armor plates - the concept is pure awesome, current testing doesn't show viability yet).

 

[Loadout]

I can't help but feel like this whole thing has somehow been done before...

yeap... that is our R&D team (all of us), hard at work. :p

 

[Gerion]

That seems to really be the thing about nukes: you are not supposed to get hit by them. I doubt that a pure drone carrier can in any way defend against a nuke that has come too close to shoot down with turrets; that is more like the realm of battleships, dreadnoughts and titans that also have drone support (as are dockable armor plates - the concept is pure awesome, current testing doesn't show viability yet).

smaller point defense turrets then? You know, the kind you have to get rid off before nuking a ship. If you dont have a weapon that doesnt do area damage, you will trigger the defense mechanism and have drones swarming you. Of coarse, we are still talking about something that throws out your drones when the ship gets attacked, so it isnt really great in an actual fight where you might not deploy the drones.
All of that with the assumption that missiles will get fixed at some point in the future

 

[Thalanor]

Best way for detecting missile hits while your shields are still up would be docked cores (see post from @Loadout a few posts back) in strategic places that overheat and thus make their docks activate an activation button - but that requires you to wait the time it takes for one of these cores to overheat.

If that time interval is not a serious problem, then this method should work exceptionally well - a docked core is nearly defenceless, and while the missile bug is not fixed yet they will be hit even more often. In any case, enough docked cores will do - or just directly use the point defense turrets as damage indicators :D

 

[Gerion]

Best way for detecting missile hits while your shields are still up would be docked cores (see post from @Loadout a few posts back) in strategic places that overheat and thus make their docks activate an activation button - but that requires you to wait the time it takes for one of these cores to overheat.

If that time interval is not a serious problem, then this method should work exceptionally well - a docked core is nearly defenceless, and while the missile bug is not fixed yet they will be hit even more often. In any case, enough docked cores will do - or just directly use the point defense turrets as damage indicators :D

Just a core takes 30 seconds to be destroyed (i think). Plenty of time to blow up the rest of the ship. Iam still thinking another core on that core plus area trigger on the main ship would make for a faster response.

 

[Thalanor]

Ah, now my brain has catched up :D Yes if chain docking is what you mean, that is neat. Trigger blocks can be fitted so the undocking itself already triggers them (no need of motion in the main ship) - should be instant. A trigger block should be "touching" the core with no space inbetween, then it counts as collision already (quick test).

 

[Loadout]

I gave the chain docked method a whirl and it works a bit strangely. The first docked object will not trigger anything. However the second docked object will trigger. So the trigger will always be on while it's docked, or just in the general area. As a plus this means it'll start on and can then be turned off when destroyed instantly. As a drawback however it is quite bulky on smaller vessels.

On a large or very large ship this won't be much of an issue though. Below is the smallest setup I made that doesn't look awful. I included both designs that I and Gerion came up with, the end result of which is a 99.9% effective setup. A bit bulky, but again, not terribly so on larger vessels.

 

[Thalanor]

Great news everyone! The missile bug is fixed and drone ejection may just have become more smooth too :D

 

[Keptick]

Yep, no more "oh look the missile destroyed everything behind the door" moments!

 

[blurb357]

I have created an escape pod based off the skoomdrone technology from @Azurite 's video I have created this escape pod, self propelling, with normal push pulses, you can fit 6+ people in there, with one button you can undock, get pushed away from the ship and activate the self propulsion. http://starmadedock.net/content/self-propelling-escape-pod-skoomdrone-technology.1739/ I will be updating it soon, hit the like button and rate

 

[Gerion]

I gave the chain docked method a whirl and it works a bit strangely. The first docked object will not trigger anything. However the second docked object will trigger. So the trigger will always be on while it's docked, or just in the general area. As a plus this means it'll start on and can then be turned off when destroyed instantly. As a drawback however it is quite bulky on smaller vessels.

On a large or very large ship this won't be much of an issue though. Below is the smallest setup I made that doesn't look awful. I included both designs that I and Gerion came up with, the end result of which is a 99.9% effective setup. A bit bulky, but again, not terribly so on larger vessels.

As I suspected. Smaller vessels really dont need such a system, since when they come under fire, they will just die. And for the bigger ships it works, so all fine in droneland. Plus all the bug fixes, armour plates please

 

[Loadout]

As I suspected. Smaller vessels really dont need such a system, since when they come under fire, they will just die. And for the bigger ships it works, so all fine in droneland. Plus all the bug fixes, armour plates please

Did someone say dockable armor plates??

 

[Keptick]

I have created an escape pod based off the skoomdrone technology from @Azurite 's video I have created this escape pod, self propelling, with normal push pulses, you can fit 6+ people in there, with one button you can undock, get pushed away from the ship and activate the self propulsion. http://starmadedock.net/content/self-propelling-escape-pod-skoomdrone-technology.1739/ I will be updating it soon, hit the like button and rate

"AHEM"

*From KEPTICK'S technology shown in @Azurite's video

 

[blurb357]

how do I add a gif of my escape pod launching?

 

[Malacodor]

With the recent fixes for overpowered momentum effects and not working passive protection from them stun drones should be obsolete now.

 

[Keptick]

With the recent fixes for overpowered momentum effects and not working passive protection from them stun drones should be obsolete now.

Not really, I never really gave a blap for the push pulse's push effect :P . It's the stun effect that is useful.

 

[Malacodor]

Not really, I never really gave a blap for the push pulse's push effect :p . It's the stun effect that is useful.

You mean stun = stop effect?

 

[Keptick]

You mean stun = stop effect?

Try it out, you'll see :P

And no, it's a proper emp effect, completely disables steering. So it's much more potent than the stop effect in some cases. However, it won't stop the momentum of the target.