The ultimate drone R&D thread

[Loadout]

I put the drones in my faction, and verified the push beam was set to 100% effect strength before firing. Not moving, no turrets involved, and no collision damage. I honestly think they hate being pushed. I'll have another chance to test tomorrow, though.

The only other things I can think of are either...

• the drones are pointing towards your ship so they ram you by default as their speed boost kicks in.
• The boost computer is ending up facing your ship, funny how they work but I have noticed they add velocity in whatever direction the computer block faces. Could be an issue.
• The skooms are disabling each other and thus end up ramming you before they get a chance to reorient.

Try to check those when you get a chance, if none of those are the culprit share a link to your ship with loaded skooms and I'll see if I can get it working.

 

[EricBlank]

I got a chance to update my game to v0.1867 and test the drone deployment again (i am ashamed to admit I was testing with the previous version.) No longer having issues with drones I launch attacking me.

But no, I made sure the computers and drones were facing the correct direction. The drones were actively turning around and attacking me when tested with AI turned on, even non-skoomdrones, but only skoomdrones whose logic clock activated would ram me (because of the push effect), I've been testing drones individually so they aren't disabling one-another. I am clearly doing something wrong with the logic activation on the skoomdrones, but I can handle that more safely now that they'll just float away into the distance if the clock does activate.

 

[AAlexandrosTGreat]

One problem i see with the entire idea of using drones on ships in whatever form is missiles:
The problem would not be swarms nukes or anything else really, it would be that after you launch your drones you will have some difficulty locking onto the enemy ship with your missiles due to all the entities in the air. following is a breakdown of the difficulties.
CONS
1: locking onto the enemy's main ship will be problematic, any drones flying in front of your POV will disrupt lock on.
2: if the battle is at long range any well armed swarm using ship will be able to annihilate the drones before they reach the main ship.
3: The use of drones in capital fights may prove pointless as any good capital has an abundance of lock-on turrets that can take down 10 ships of varying sizes a minute.
4: (Yet to be tested) The same area used for drone docks could be taken up by weapons that do equal, if not more DPS
PROS
(None of my testing so far has shown any huge advantage to using drones)

Overall: AI in the game needs to be improved before i consider drones valid for use in PVP.

-Alex

 

[Keptick]

One problem i see with the entire idea of using drones on ships in whatever form is missiles:
The problem would not be swarms nukes or anything else really, it would be that after you launch your drones you will have some difficulty locking onto the enemy ship with your missiles due to all the entities in the air. following is a breakdown of the difficulties.
CONS
1: locking onto the enemy's main ship will be problematic, any drones flying in front of your POV will disrupt lock on.
2: if the battle is at long range any well armed swarm using ship will be able to annihilate the drones before they reach the main ship.
3: The use of drones in capital fights may prove pointless as any good capital has an abundance of lock-on turrets that can take down 10 ships of varying sizes a minute.
4: (Yet to be tested) The same area used for drone docks could be taken up by weapons that do equal, if not more DPS
PROS
(None of my testing so far has shown any huge advantage to using drones)

Overall: AI in the game needs to be improved before i consider drones valid for use in PVP.

-Alex

I'm too tired to obliterate your points right now, so I'll do that tomorrow. But basically:

You're wrong.

 

[Loadout]

I'm too tired to obliterate your points right now, so I'll do that tomorrow. But basically:

You're wrong.

I'll take a crack at it then.

One problem i see with the entire idea of using drones on ships in whatever form is missiles:
The problem would not be swarms nukes or anything else really, it would be that after you launch your drones you will have some difficulty locking onto the enemy ship with your missiles due to all the entities in the air. following is a breakdown of the difficulties.
CONS
1: locking onto the enemy's main ship will be problematic, any drones flying in front of your POV will disrupt lock on.
2: if the battle is at long range any well armed swarm using ship will be able to annihilate the drones before they reach the main ship.
3: The use of drones in capital fights may prove pointless as any good capital has an abundance of lock-on turrets that can take down 10 ships of varying sizes a minute.
4: (Yet to be tested) The same area used for drone docks could be taken up by weapons that do equal, if not more DPS
PROS
(None of my testing so far has shown any huge advantage to using drones)

Overall: AI in the game needs to be improved before i consider drones valid for use in PVP.

-Alex

1. Not such a problem for a dedicated carrier vessel. Most of which simply hit and run or in this case deploy and run. Actually staying around for a fight with anything ~equal in size is a bad move. You're not a direct combat vessel, lay down some covering fire, deploy your drones and get the hell outta dodge. If you like your carrier that is...
2. Rarely does this happen, you have to take into account that drones will move erratically, as in non-formation and definitely non-linearly. Once you take that into account you begin to see that regardless of turrets even at range the drones will spread out and envelop much larger ships while firing sizable payloads from numerous angles. It's simply not possible to take them all out at once unless you can nuke the entire carrier's bays pre-launch. Which virtually never happens, as we drop-and-go.
3. Actually quite useful, each turret will only target 1 of many drones at a time. Unless they all happen to be packing 10k+ damage nukes they simply will never be able to target a massive swarm of 200 some odd drones. Which if we're talking capitals you'd best be packing at least 100+ drones. The whole point of drones is to swarm, as in literally overwhelm the enemy zerg rush style with pure numbers of cheap and utterly loaded weapons platforms. As that's all drones really are, mobile turrets.
4. You could potentially depending on the style of launcher and the space required, actually eek out more dps with a turret. However you would miss out on the side effect and really the important effect of the swarm itself.

Also, you clearly haven't been testing enough drones to be able to see the pros yet. Which means you're probably not using a properly sized swarm of drones. If you don't mind me asking what particular drones are you using? How big is your test ship? Are the quantity of drones you're using comparable in mass to that ship?? If the answer to the last question is yes, then the drones you're using aren't built for that task. Otherwise you've yet to hit the swarm level. You're probably just in the lightly poofy cloud level. Remember, drones are the zerglings of starmade, if you're not packin enough to clog your computer screen, you simply haven't got enough.

 

[Thalanor]

Happy new year fellow dronicians, mad scientists and labcoat warriors! :D

My first project this year shall be an "anti-point-defense-drone". The basic concept is to shoot (using a rapidfire tube launcher) a massive amount of small AI-less drones (technically they aren't even drones) that just have trigger logic (activated on launch) and will then proceed to spew out 1-module rapid dumbfire missiles in all 6 directions. These missiles won't really do any damage to anything at all, but the spinning drone firing these into truly random directions in great numbers would heavily confuse all hostile point defense, and thus make your own assault drones more effective.

 

[Keptick]

lmao that's brilliant!!! And it wouldn't even be targeted by turrets due to the lack of AI.

 

[Gerion]

Your own point defenses would be confused, too, though, so not really great for fleet action. I actually think having a support swarm with long range weaponry far away from the main action is more benefical. They provide you with constant covering fire, the enemy has to actively clear them after the battle is done and they dont get in the way of me firing all ze mizzilez.

Alternatively, load up on point defenses, point defense drones, assault drones and ion/punch-through gatlings (both of them). Tear enemy to shreds while his nukes get downed and his turrets dont get their shots off. It is brilliant.

 

[Keptick]

So, ASM (an NFD player) figured out a very simple and elegant solution to external drone rack deployment. I really, really like it for it's simplicity.

Spoiler: Demo

So, shit happens in the following order:

1. The trigger is pressed, undocking the rack and activating the beams located on the side
2. this induces a torque on the rack, which tips to one side. On that underside that tips towards the ship is located an area trigger.
3. Area trigger is activated, undocking the drones. A plus side of the contraption is that it kinda catapults the drones located on it XD

Pretty cool, isn't it? I'm totally integrating the technique into the silmaril (one of my numerous work in progress ships).

 

[ASM]

LOL! I didnt think the GIF was going to be so... fast!

 

[Keptick]

Yea XD. I forgot to mention that the actual thing is about 6 times slower.
[DOUBLEPOST=1420941002,1420939177][/DOUBLEPOST]Oh yea, it works pretty damn well

The gif is really really accelerated btw

PS: that's ASM 's ship

 

[ASM]

I decided to test the Release while going at 150, and it released just fine. Perfectly i would say. Also acted kind of like a slingshot, flinging the drones forward :p

*Edit* That new GIF really highlight the force when release, that was unnoticeable when they were in-game.

 

[Keptick]

Upgrade is well under way, hue hue hue hue hue

Payload: 220 drones >: D

 

[Plazmatic]

The tube mechanism does not work with rack detaching, it is specifically made to profit from timed single drone releases using relatively spherical/cuboid drones. The smaller the drones, the better for the tube technique - which is why it is so viable for skoomdrones.
I plan to have around 8 skoomdrones per tube with two tubes on the ship (most likely). If you detach whole racks, it is better to keep them in manageable size classes indeed, although you always must keep in mind a rack of only 3 is usually not worth the effort.

Currently the time it takes to empty a tube with the rapidfire technology is one second per two drones, so 8 drones make a nice 4-second burst. The largest advantage of the rapidfire technology is that you only need one beam system group for multiple drones; when detaching whole racks this is irrelevant, as you do not technically need beams at all.


+42

refirendum you can find my rapidfire concept here http://www.file-upload.net/download-10001722/test_skoomgun.sment.html , and a (slightly outdated because the push system is mounted on the rack for showcase purposes) rack of 22 soul drones in keptick 's community content. Drone tech always evolves, so be sure to leave some space around drone bays when working on a ship - it could pay back

I know this is an old post I'm responding to, but I feel this could still be useful.

Is it taking four seconds because of delay blocks? You can make two sets of pulsars and then link them up to an XOR gate to make a pulsar that pulses every 1/4th second (as long as you alternate the starts of the delay activation loop). If you can properly time it you can make it every 1/8th second by adding a another set of two alternating pulsars and an XOR gate that is alternated to the first you made. If you some how are a god at timing you can make this go even further to every 1/16th second, but that is really hard.

activation connects to delay connects to not connects to delay connects to the first activation. You now have a 1/2 second activation, make another, but activate the activation block in the middle of the activation timing of the other one. Connect an output (as long as it is the same out put across each) of each signal to an XOR gate. Congratulations, the output of your XOR gate is 1/4 activation.

Alternatively you could double (or multiply by another power) the signal depending on what you are doing, though it sounds like with what you are doing that won't be useful.

 

[Thalanor]

Plazmatic That is a good idea; however I actually had to increase the delay as successor drones would hit the ones in front of them. Sometimes the timing doesn't allow a very efficient approach

keptick is this madness, and/or a 5-deep rack of 22? 220 drones jesus christ. Please do post a gif of the ejection when it works :D
44 assault drones were a threat to destroyers, but 220? would be safe to say that if there is any sort of capital ion weaponry available for supporting them against the buttload of shields, they can crush any titan.


Drone ejection has come a long way I feel... both the drone bay and drone slingshot techniques are ripe for implementation on warships.

 

[Snk]

I still don't understand why you can't just connect an activation module to a several docking modules and undock the drones that way.

 

[ASM]

Snk You can... no one is stopping you to do so. The purpose of a drone rack is for easy replacement of the drones, so you don't have to sit through and dock all "220" of them that keptick has. I would rather quit the game than dock 220 drones one by one
[DOUBLEPOST=1420993529,1420993284][/DOUBLEPOST]So, I've updated the "Catapult" so that it has a "Pull" beam on the other end, for a guarantee detachment.
I am also thinking about giving it a 1.5 second delay for lag reduction purposes. And wouldn't that look cool? Having the rack fling, and a second later all the drones detach and go for their targets?

 

[Keptick]

Plazmatic That is a good idea; however I actually had to increase the delay as successor drones would hit the ones in front of them. Sometimes the timing doesn't allow a very efficient approach

keptick is this madness, and/or a 5-deep rack of 22? 220 drones jesus christ. Please do post a gif of the ejection when it works :D
44 assault drones were a threat to destroyers, but 220? would be safe to say that if there is any sort of capital ion weaponry available for supporting them against the buttload of shields, they can crush any titan.


Drone ejection has come a long way I feel... both the drone bay and drone slingshot techniques are ripe for implementation on warships.

That's 5 seperate racks. There's unfortunately no way for me to fit a single large rack in to dock it... On the bright side I can customize the payload with different racks :P.

 

[ASM]

This is an Update for my Exterior Drone Catapult System that was posted.

So, adding a 5 Seconds delay after initial release of the Rack is better for Collision prevention.

After some testing i found that having a 2 stage release really help out with lag and collision control.

I added a 5s fuse to the Rack's drone release (You can always shorten or make it longer)
Also push beams on the rack it self to push the drones away on release.

The 2 stage launch of exterior mounted drone racks.

Stage #1
Launch the Rack from the ship by using Push and Pull beams activated by Logic (Imagine a door Opening).
On the rack, the side that it is being pulled towards the ship. Have a Area trigger in a line there. It will get activated and start the Delay sequence (How many seconds you desire is up to you)

Stage #2
When delay end, it will Undock all drones while firing the Push Beams underneath them and push the Drones away.

 

[Keptick]

Aaaaaaand shit.... The reason that beams will pass through docked entities is because they are perfectly level to the separation between blocks, meaning that they don't hit anything until it undocks, at which point it's not perfectly centered anymore and the entity can be pushed. The problem with that is that since my drones are on a rack they aren't at that perfect height anymore... I didn't expect that

One thing I could do is to dock the racks to an other docked entity so that the beams are once again aligned with the splits, but that would mean that the drones won't match the exit port anymore. An other thing I could do is the mount the beams themselves on a dock so that they become level with the drones, but that also causes complications and problems....

No worries though, I have some ideas in case simply shoving 5 drones out at the same time doesn't work due to sticky collisions :p