Hey all, I'm pretty sure this does not go here, but [flak incoming!] i keep getting the intel card error, and I DON'T HAVE AN INTEL CARD! I have an NVIDIA geforce gt 650m. and i am sorely confused here. again, i know this is the wrong forum page, but i have no idea what to do here, nor could i find any section labeled 'Help'. thanks and sorry again for the intrusion.
The ultimate drone R&D thread
- Thread starter Keptick
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You could go make a thread about your problem in the SUPPORT SECTION of the forums?
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So I've finally gotten around to further drone development, and am currently working on the skoomdrones. The disable and push pulse part works largely flawlessly, but the area trigger activator is getting me in a knot. I made my first drone, and as I was literally about to catalog it I accidentally pressed 'r', exited in the area trigger, and the logic clock engaged and the drone flew off. Since I couldn't get the activator on the second prototype working (set up the clock and linked the area trigger controller in the same way; area trigger refused to activate the clock), so I had to chase the original down. It was a total of a 145km chase at 200-400kph in my stop-disable ship I threw together for the purpose. Drone kept disabling me if I goofed on the range, and it finally ended because I must have bumped the area trigger, causing it to shutdown.
Checking the clocks after bringing back the original prototype reveals no difference in my clocks; they're both linked up in the order [activator1] > [not gate] > [activator2] > [delay gate] > [activator1], with the area trigger linked to activator 2. I have no idea why one is working and the other isn't.
That area trigger is going to be an issue, though; I understand it's necessary to automatically start up the drone's logic clock, but I'd rather not have the drone auto-shutdown if it bumps the target at the wrong angle. Do you guys have a schematic for a trigger-activated clock that wont get shutdown if something passes through the trigger again?
Also prepared a couple light combat drones, need to test them.
Checking the clocks after bringing back the original prototype reveals no difference in my clocks; they're both linked up in the order [activator1] > [not gate] > [activator2] > [delay gate] > [activator1], with the area trigger linked to activator 2. I have no idea why one is working and the other isn't.
That area trigger is going to be an issue, though; I understand it's necessary to automatically start up the drone's logic clock, but I'd rather not have the drone auto-shutdown if it bumps the target at the wrong angle. Do you guys have a schematic for a trigger-activated clock that wont get shutdown if something passes through the trigger again?
Also prepared a couple light combat drones, need to test them.
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Hey guys. I just found out about this thread. Sence I am crazy weapons-logic starmade scientist myself, I couldnt help myself but to waste this whole night of sleep reading this whole thread.... and IT'S F****** AWESOME!!! :D
I would also like to share with you some of my starmade inventions. Some may have been tryed before, but some are deffinetly new and unique. You are free to expand and improve on them or try to fix unusable ones, but please credit me for original idea:
-system to transfer shield from main ship to turrets
- tested and NOT aplyable because main ship can't hit it's turrets
with it's own weapons and
turret draining shield itself from main ship is to weak to be worth it
-pulse emiter on automatic crane(pulse turret)
- tested and turret AI was too unreliable to be worth implementing on a ship
Basicaly turret has 1 AMC block and 50m long stick, on top of that stick is another turret with any very low range weapon.
Bigger turret AI is suposed to point the "crane" aka. bigger turret to the enemy, so smaller low range weapon turret is right up his face. It effectively increases pulse range by how much the crane is long, you can make it 200 blocks long if you want. You could also delete crane blocks after placing smaller turret, to get a ball of death which floats around your ship :D.
-in flight disable-able & protect-able turret(plex door hidden turret)
- tested, is fully working and aplyable, turret has to be placed first, then plex doors, it is advised to make turret 1 dimension smaller from each side than it's plex door box.
I use this on my WIP ship for disable-able Swarm missile turrets and for huge numbers of small dumb missille turrets which you dont always want to be eating all your main ship's power regen.
-automatic pulse emiter with target detection system(THIS IS SUPOSED TO BE ANTI-DRONE SYSTEM)
- tested, is fully working and aplyable, MAKE SURE to select trigger(area)controler before placing all of it's trigger(area),
it is advised to make this in flight disable-able system
You make maxed range, powerfull enough that it destroys all blocks pulse, have it's output block stick out of yur ship somewhere. Then you spherically place trigger areas around that output block. You only place every 3th or 4th block of the sphere in each direction in order to reduce mass of the system. Then you link those trigger areas to that pulse emiter. I made that system have 6 weapon blocks and 7 logic blocks, logic doesnt have to be near the output block.
Then you cover your WHOLE ship with such systems. I even made my ship have "arm-like" parts sticking out to put outputs on the ends of them to increase covered area of the system. Pulses can have very long cooldown because each one will only activate individualy when enemy is in IT's range. Ship can be made to be able to fly through drone swarms quickly. You would only turn this on when you are sure no allies would be hurt ofcourse. Only problem is who the f*** would place all those trigger areas correctly.
I would also like to share with you some of my starmade inventions. Some may have been tryed before, but some are deffinetly new and unique. You are free to expand and improve on them or try to fix unusable ones, but please credit me for original idea:
-system to transfer shield from main ship to turrets
- tested and NOT aplyable because main ship can't hit it's turrets
with it's own weapons and
turret draining shield itself from main ship is to weak to be worth it
-pulse emiter on automatic crane(pulse turret)
- tested and turret AI was too unreliable to be worth implementing on a ship
Basicaly turret has 1 AMC block and 50m long stick, on top of that stick is another turret with any very low range weapon.
Bigger turret AI is suposed to point the "crane" aka. bigger turret to the enemy, so smaller low range weapon turret is right up his face. It effectively increases pulse range by how much the crane is long, you can make it 200 blocks long if you want. You could also delete crane blocks after placing smaller turret, to get a ball of death which floats around your ship :D.
-in flight disable-able & protect-able turret(plex door hidden turret)
- tested, is fully working and aplyable, turret has to be placed first, then plex doors, it is advised to make turret 1 dimension smaller from each side than it's plex door box.
I use this on my WIP ship for disable-able Swarm missile turrets and for huge numbers of small dumb missille turrets which you dont always want to be eating all your main ship's power regen.
-automatic pulse emiter with target detection system(THIS IS SUPOSED TO BE ANTI-DRONE SYSTEM)
- tested, is fully working and aplyable, MAKE SURE to select trigger(area)controler before placing all of it's trigger(area),
it is advised to make this in flight disable-able system
You make maxed range, powerfull enough that it destroys all blocks pulse, have it's output block stick out of yur ship somewhere. Then you spherically place trigger areas around that output block. You only place every 3th or 4th block of the sphere in each direction in order to reduce mass of the system. Then you link those trigger areas to that pulse emiter. I made that system have 6 weapon blocks and 7 logic blocks, logic doesnt have to be near the output block.
Then you cover your WHOLE ship with such systems. I even made my ship have "arm-like" parts sticking out to put outputs on the ends of them to increase covered area of the system. Pulses can have very long cooldown because each one will only activate individualy when enemy is in IT's range. Ship can be made to be able to fly through drone swarms quickly. You would only turn this on when you are sure no allies would be hurt ofcourse. Only problem is who the f*** would place all those trigger areas correctly.
Thalanor
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Fireshock welcome aboard and thanks for your first contribution! Very interesting points here.
- I really like your plexdoor toggleable turrets. Will definitely put swarm missile turrets on my larger ships and have them hidden behind plexdoors. Use small cubic turrets for this; they don't need much space to be efficient. While this does not fix swarm missiles being unusable in fleet actions, it does make toggling autoswarm on and off both easy and good looking. Props to you!
Nice addition: link your drone launch to the plexdoor system, e.g. launching the drones will automatically force-disable the swarm turrets, independent of whether they were enabled or disabled before (use RS-latch).
- Interesting concept with the trigger areas. I imagine this will work well on large fast ships. Too large or too slow, and the drone's swarming/AI behavior will keep them between 500-1000m range (the AI preferred distance to target); actively pushing through a drone swarm with decent acceleration might bring these weapons to bear though. I personally don't touch pulses (except the push pulse, which works as a stun pulse as you may have read) though until they are beefed up somewhat; for any closer range than 500m, cannon supported beams on small turrets do surprisingly well against small entities like drones.
- I really like your plexdoor toggleable turrets. Will definitely put swarm missile turrets on my larger ships and have them hidden behind plexdoors. Use small cubic turrets for this; they don't need much space to be efficient. While this does not fix swarm missiles being unusable in fleet actions, it does make toggling autoswarm on and off both easy and good looking. Props to you!
Nice addition: link your drone launch to the plexdoor system, e.g. launching the drones will automatically force-disable the swarm turrets, independent of whether they were enabled or disabled before (use RS-latch).
- Interesting concept with the trigger areas. I imagine this will work well on large fast ships. Too large or too slow, and the drone's swarming/AI behavior will keep them between 500-1000m range (the AI preferred distance to target); actively pushing through a drone swarm with decent acceleration might bring these weapons to bear though. I personally don't touch pulses (except the push pulse, which works as a stun pulse as you may have read) though until they are beefed up somewhat; for any closer range than 500m, cannon supported beams on small turrets do surprisingly well against small entities like drones.
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Default range of beams has been increased to 1500m it seems. Are the turrets not using the correct max range or something?
I tried the skoomdrones again last night in a combat exercise. Spawned one small, weak pirate and deployed two skoomdrones from the Peregrine frigate. I ran into a problem, though; despite both drones activating their logic clocks successfully and deploying, with their AI active, one of them flew off into oblivion and the other did a 180 and rammed my frigate. Pirate drone killed me while I was repeatedly disabled.
Is this sort of behavior normal for skoomdrones as you guys have tested them?
I tried the skoomdrones again last night in a combat exercise. Spawned one small, weak pirate and deployed two skoomdrones from the Peregrine frigate. I ran into a problem, though; despite both drones activating their logic clocks successfully and deploying, with their AI active, one of them flew off into oblivion and the other did a 180 and rammed my frigate. Pirate drone killed me while I was repeatedly disabled.
Is this sort of behavior normal for skoomdrones as you guys have tested them?
Thalanor
CEO Snataris Colonial Fleetyards
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That is... sort of contraproductive skoomdrone behavior :D
I must say though that all my test have been pretty much "lab conditions", e.g. rather far away from any actual combat scenario vs pirates. Is it possible your two skoomdrones disabled each other? Otherwise there is no reason why one of them crashes back into you and the other flies off forever given that both drones let the bobby AI have control over some weapon system to trigger usual combat behavior.
Most likely they disabled each other for some time periods; my multifire skoomlauncher tube is now single-shot (each button press triggers the deployment of one drone until tube is empty) as there were indeed problems with rapidly fired close-by skoomdrones.
It seems that any skoomdrone fielding ship NEEDS at least a small heatseeker weapon in order to clear skoomdrones when an ... unfortunate situation arises (like your own skoomdrone having fun disabling it's mothership).
I must say though that all my test have been pretty much "lab conditions", e.g. rather far away from any actual combat scenario vs pirates. Is it possible your two skoomdrones disabled each other? Otherwise there is no reason why one of them crashes back into you and the other flies off forever given that both drones let the bobby AI have control over some weapon system to trigger usual combat behavior.
Most likely they disabled each other for some time periods; my multifire skoomlauncher tube is now single-shot (each button press triggers the deployment of one drone until tube is empty) as there were indeed problems with rapidly fired close-by skoomdrones.
It seems that any skoomdrone fielding ship NEEDS at least a small heatseeker weapon in order to clear skoomdrones when an ... unfortunate situation arises (like your own skoomdrone having fun disabling it's mothership).
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I can't say that I use skoomdrones much, rather I use Ion Skooms to weaken shields (woot for x20 shield damage). In virtually every case I have them ramming the enemy instead of me. Admittedly though I added an extra delay on the speed boost, too much zipping about made them fly off fairly erratically. That may just be the result of the speed boost effect kicking in.
Seeing as how I said a while back I'd share my latest drone designs, well, heres some pics!
Seeing as how I said a while back I'd share my latest drone designs, well, heres some pics!
The Gryllos is a Mole Cricket design. Based on the real life mole crickets here in florida this swampy burrowing critter will eat through both shields and systems with ease. It sports a pair of rapid fire Ion Gatling Cannons, as well as 8 Hercules missile launchers(66.7%). So far in testing it lives up to it's title very well being able to chew through most hulls in a single volley, assuming downed shields (hence the ion cannons).
The following is a lineup of all my latest heavy drones, these are the as yet to be released publicly mk4s and also the new Gryllos heavy drone.
Left: Kabuto mk4
Right: Kuwaga mk4 (note the beams...)
Left:Ju Ga mk4
Right:Gryllos
Left: Kabuto mk4
Right: Kuwaga mk4 (note the beams...)
Left:Ju Ga mk4
Right:Gryllos
Uhhh, rapid fire with missiles? That might not work overly well, at least for AI. The gatlings have a bad habit of destroying their ships missiles. Might want to go for two separate designs, one ion gatling, one missile.I can't say that I use skoomdrones much, rather I use Ion Skooms to weaken shields (woot for x20 shield damage). In virtually every case I have them ramming the enemy instead of me. Admittedly though I added an extra delay on the speed boost, too much zipping about made them fly off fairly erratically. That may just be the result of the speed boost effect kicking in.
Seeing as how I said a while back I'd share my latest drone designs, well, heres some pics!
The Gryllos is a Mole Cricket design. Based on the real life mole crickets here in florida this swampy burrowing critter will eat through both shields and systems with ease. It sports a pair of rapid fire Ion Gatling Cannons, as well as 8 Hercules missile launchers(66.7%). So far in testing it lives up to it's title very well being able to chew through most hulls in a single volley, assuming downed shields (hence the ion cannons).
The following is a lineup of all my latest heavy drones, these are the as yet to be released publicly mk4s and also the new Gryllos heavy drone.
Left: Kabuto mk4
Right: Kuwaga mk4 (note the beams...)
Left:Ju Ga mk4
Right:Gryllos
Otherwise, I like the design. Nice and flat without being overly boxy. 9/10, would deploy into the face of an enemy.
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The cannons were what I had on hand atm, the whole build took maybe 15 minutes. x) So after some experimenting I went with beams instead. Doesn't really seem that any angle particularly helps rid the whole self-destruction of the missiles. Just looks like it won't be possible to mix rapid fire and missiles on a drone, but that's alright.
In the end the desired effect is quite the same, power consumption isn't terribly higher either and I even squeezed in a few more shield caps to boost the total hp of the ship. Which is currently at 11447 shields, quite respectable for a heavy drone. All in all it fills a solid assault drone role, with it's ion effect as well high aoe damage.
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I am also thinking about making dedicated drone carrier. I want to wait for rail update, but im impatient. I will also try to make my carrier either instant/almost instant warp or permanent stealth ship . "Almost instant" being the length of drone ejection sequence.
But I have problem, I cant find "push beams" anywhere in game. I tryed using damage beams wih push effect, but they dont even push the lone core. Bug? I dont like using push pulse, tried it. How do you guys make those push beams??
But I have problem, I cant find "push beams" anywhere in game. I tryed using damage beams wih push effect, but they dont even push the lone core. Bug? I dont like using push pulse, tried it. How do you guys make those push beams??
Thalanor
CEO Snataris Colonial Fleetyards
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Yeah, rails were the reason why I postponed my dedicated drone carrier again - I imagine the fun with rails + docked entities to be TOO DAMN HIGH to not go for, and it is very hard to build for a future feature without knowing any space requirements or similar.
Fireshock damage beams with push effect are exactly the push beams we use - remember you need a fairly large amount of modules though to push even a drone. Even a tiny group should push a lone core though, are you sure it was undocked and the beam actually hit it? (lone cores are so small that due to the 0.5m docking hover space, beams aimed at them directly can miss) Push pulse on the other hand hardly pushes but *stuns* (the name is highly misleading).
Fireshock damage beams with push effect are exactly the push beams we use - remember you need a fairly large amount of modules though to push even a drone. Even a tiny group should push a lone core though, are you sure it was undocked and the beam actually hit it? (lone cores are so small that due to the 0.5m docking hover space, beams aimed at them directly can miss) Push pulse on the other hand hardly pushes but *stuns* (the name is highly misleading).
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Ahh, thanks Thalanor, it works now . It probably was missing it cause of that 0.5m space.
But push pulses worked fine to me, I made inconsistent disintegrator machine gun with them. Now im gona try to make it consistent with push beams, same principle as forward tube ejection of drones.
. It probably was missing it cause of that 0.5m space. But push pulses worked fine to me, I made inconsistent disintegrator machine gun with them. Now im gona try to make it consistent with push beams, same principle as forward tube ejection of drones.
Thalanor
CEO Snataris Colonial Fleetyards
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Use overlapping docking boxes to have one projectile (dis-core-dis) per 1m of tube for maximum carnage :D That is what I will try for chaff drones (core + faction module + active AI; the minimal setup for fleet-friendly chaff)
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10k is standard for my heavy drones. Not terribly hard to get either, it's actually very easy to find. Not to mention the survival rate improves dynamically, to the point where you can actually get more than 15 seconds out of them, I do have economic versions which use grey unpainted hull and drop all shields.
Fireshock the damage beam + push effect is great but you don't need super giant groups of them, instead use multiple small ones. You may find that to vastly better. I remember when I was just starting to use them it took a huge number to get any effect but after switching to multiple groups it got a lot easier to manipulate things. You may also want to try pull effects. Combined push and pull can be dramatically better with only a few blocks.
For the curious, don't bother with cannons, more hits is more effective than more power. Although missiles can be highly entertaining .
Thalanor
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You mean with the docking beam hitting the rack activation module? That is actually a neat idea if the beam does not just pass through (haven't tested). Even in that case though, you could have a ship-based activation block being hit by the beam, which then undocks a core to transfer the signal to the rack via the triggerblock-bell-method.
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I hadn't thought about using a core docking beam to activate drone logic via camera. I've done it by accident a couple times while trying to dock racks but I suppose on an individual basis it could work.... now how would one mass activate individual racks that way... I can see turning on an activator for your main ship but each rack would require additional logic . Straight up activation of each rack would be a fun design challenge.
On the rails note, I've decided to pass. Unless they're dirt cheap, literally, it's just more overly complicated stuff that has the same effect as current systems or totally random and different effects. Basically until we know exactly what and how rails work, I'll continue on under the assumption that we don't have them.
On the rails note, I've decided to pass. Unless they're dirt cheap, literally, it's just more overly complicated stuff that has the same effect as current systems or totally random and different effects. Basically until we know exactly what and how rails work, I'll continue on under the assumption that we don't have them.