The ultimate drone R&D thread

[Mered4]

Hey guys?

If you add a pulse weapon system to a suicide drone, the drone will try to ram enemy ships. Pulse weapons have an engagement range of zero, or at least they used to.

Just a computer and an attached block should do - I dunno if just a computer would do the trick.
Also, the best use for Disintegrators or however you spell them is for killing shields. One block kills 20% of the enemy's shields upon detonation, so if you had five in a wide waffle pattern, you could theoretically kill someone's shields instantly, regardless of their actual value.

 

[Snk]

Hey guys?

If you add a pulse weapon system to a suicide drone, the drone will try to ram enemy ships. Pulse weapons have an engagement range of zero, or at least they used to.

Just a computer and an attached block should do - I dunno if just a computer would do the trick.
Also, the best use for Disintegrators or however you spell them is for killing shields. One block kills 20% of the enemy's shields upon detonation, so if you had five in a wide waffle pattern, you could theoretically kill someone's shields instantly, regardless of their actual value.

That's one bug that I can make use of.

 

[Mered4]

That's one bug that I can make use of.

Wait what? Those are all features of the current balance and ai

 

[Loadout]

Hey guys?

If you add a pulse weapon system to a suicide drone, the drone will try to ram enemy ships. Pulse weapons have an engagement range of zero, or at least they used to.

Just a computer and an attached block should do - I dunno if just a computer would do the trick.
Also, the best use for Disintegrators or however you spell them is for killing shields. One block kills 20% of the enemy's shields upon detonation, so if you had five in a wide waffle pattern, you could theoretically kill someone's shields instantly, regardless of their actual value.

I can confirm with the current version, this is not the case. A simple test with engine, thruster, damage pulse comp and one module, faction, and AI, indicates no such ramming behavior. In fact, the AI doesn't even register the damage pulse as a weapon, it just sits there.

As for disintegrators, they do a boat load of damage, period. They're just very fickle and it's very difficult to arrange them properly on contact. A quick test I just did against a shield block completely annihilated a 38k shield with a single disintegrator. That's a bit more than 20% when it both nukes the entire shield and also destroys half the vessel attached. :D

Now if only drones could properly use them...

 

[Thalanor]

Ok so we know disintegrators suck against blocks since they do not scale, but they do *that* much damage for just one block?

That means a dis-core-dis shrapnel shot deals 80k shield alpha damage.

That means, I need a gigantonormous capital shotgun now. With damage pulse supported by beam and push effect. And shrapnel racks.

 

[Keptick]

Wait... could disintegrators actually be useful???
[DOUBLEPOST=1421862505,1421862421][/DOUBLEPOST]gotta test that 20% shield thing against a 10 million shield target.

 

[Thalanor]

If yes, it would be a shocking revelation. Think of the shotgun fun!

I am envisioning circular shrapnel racks, and once we have rails, self-reloading semi-auto-shotguns with disintegrators.

 

[EricBlank]

If the damage potential is so extraordinary, they could be used simply for ai-guided torpedoes (core, ai, disintegrator, push effect and weapon comp+module.) Much higher alpha damage than bombers equipped with large missile arrays, do you think?

Of course dumbfire torpedoes wouldn't be targeted by turret ai, and will hit the target you were aiming for (if your aim is good/it isnt moving) rather than whatever the ai feels like :P

 

[Gerion]

The pain you could inflict on stations and planets.... so delicious.

 

[Thalanor]

I have recently played a little MP (for the first time, so I could pewpew around with my frigate and test my stealthjumper under live conditions). I am now in a stage where I expand to one more system for two in total in order to have more diverse mining opportunities. The problem I have faced however is that I do not have the resources to build multiple defensive stations with appropriate shields in that system.

I will now try economic defensive drones. The idea is to not use them on a ship, but instead dump them into space in masses next to important strategic objects like planets. A group of 200 drones watching a planet would very very likely scare away even the bigger ships, since they would most likely face losses to their turrets when taking the time to clear all drones.

Since I do not want to use effects on drones (its too expensive) I will try this kind of drone:

- Very small, either 9x9x9 or even 7x7x7 to require just one or zero enhancers.
- A cannon main weapon with no slave or effect linked that does exactly 400 damage (breaks any block except faction modules) every second.
- No shields, only basic hull. The only structural protection is the faction module in front of the core.
- Very large numbers of these, in the low to mid 3-digit range.

The idea is to achieve block damage by the way of many, many simple cannon shots fired from different vectors by a spread-out droneswarm instead of large assault drones with missiles and/or effects and slave systems. The nice side effect is that the drones will, when in large numbers, effectively protect themselves against swarm missiles. You also only need one computer instead of two plus an effect computer. I think that while slaving systems to missiles and beams is basically mandatory to make them useful, cannons on a small scale are not that bad when used on their own (preferably at exactly 400 damage per shot).

 

[Keptick]

125 downloads on my drone rack...

whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!!!! O_O

Didn't expect that XD

 

[Loadout]

I have recently played a little MP (for the first time, so I could pewpew around with my frigate and test my stealthjumper under live conditions). I am now in a stage where I expand to one more system for two in total in order to have more diverse mining opportunities. The problem I have faced however is that I do not have the resources to build multiple defensive stations with appropriate shields in that system.

I will now try economic defensive drones. The idea is to not use them on a ship, but instead dump them into space in masses next to important strategic objects like planets. A group of 200 drones watching a planet would very very likely scare away even the bigger ships, since they would most likely face losses to their turrets when taking the time to clear all drones.

Since I do not want to use effects on drones (its too expensive) I will try this kind of drone:

- Very small, either 9x9x9 or even 7x7x7 to require just one or zero enhancers.
- A cannon main weapon with no slave or effect linked that does exactly 400 damage (breaks any block except faction modules) every second.
- No shields, only basic hull. The only structural protection is the faction module in front of the core.
- Very large numbers of these, in the low to mid 3-digit range.

The idea is to achieve block damage by the way of many, many simple cannon shots fired from different vectors by a spread-out droneswarm instead of large assault drones with missiles and/or effects and slave systems. The nice side effect is that the drones will, when in large numbers, effectively protect themselves against swarm missiles. You also only need one computer instead of two plus an effect computer. I think that while slaving systems to missiles and beams is basically mandatory to make them useful, cannons on a small scale are not that bad when used on their own (preferably at exactly 400 damage per shot).

Ideally you could get away with less damage per shot, honestly advanced armor is a bit uncommon to come across with the way crafting is right now. That does depend on your server though, so if you see a lot of people using advanced by all means. I'd recommend you use rockets instead of cannons though and keep the drones very small. As an example take a peek at the nano drones I have on my skoom-pedos...

Each drone here is 3 wide, 3 tall, and 4 long. They also have stop effect but you can swap it out for more rockets and it'd work just as well. I can hold a grand total of 20 of them per skoom-pedo and those are only about 20 blocks long, 12-wide, and 12-high, which is a pretty compact canister to be honest.

All in all you could setup a simple deployment mechanism to launch a few hundred of these size drones with ease. May not be enough to stop an invading titan, but anything less than that would certainly take a hell of a beating.

 

[Thalanor]

Your nanodrones on the torpedo look amazing but aren't very economic - a computer costs as much as 10 modules, and as I see it you have both a slave and an effect system. Have you tried slave-only (for missile nanodrones) or blank cannons yet?


Here is my successful test result. The drone below has four cannon outputs at 100 damage each. When all four shots hit the same block (likely), even advanced armor crumbles in one hit, and in all other cases more than one block will be destroyed - up to four per second per drone! Now one can imagine a swarm of 300 of these removing 1200 blocks per second from the target ship.

7x7x7 standard docking box, the usual 1:1 thrust, and even 1k shields as small cheap bonus that can also be removed if necessary.

 

[Gerion]

Your nanodrones on the torpedo look amazing but aren't very economic - a computer costs as much as 10 modules, and as I see it you have both a slave and an effect system. Have you tried slave-only (for missile nanodrones) or blank cannons yet?


Here is my successful test result. The drone below has four cannon outputs at 100 damage each. When all four shots hit the same block (likely), even advanced armor crumbles in one hit, and in all other cases more than one block will be destroyed - up to four per second per drone! Now one can imagine a swarm of 300 of these removing 1200 blocks per second from the target ship.

7x7x7 standard docking box, the usual 1:1 thrust, and even 1k shields as small cheap bonus that can also be removed if necessary.

These things are why I have one of my Voidburn Corvettes lying around at all times. Swarm missiles, thick shields, no turrets. Makes minced meat out of drone swarms.... Maybe not a 300 drone swarm though, that might hit the little thing quite hard

 

[Thalanor]

256 damage cannon drones, 32 anti-missile-rapidfire drones. Where are your swarm missiles now? :p

 

[Gerion]

256 damage cannon drones, 32 anti-missile-rapidfire drones. Where are your swarm missiles now? :p

Chasing down an asteroid, why are you asking?

 

[JTJSniperBee]

Drone design i came to think: very small but cheapish, able to forget about floating around drones because they will engage any enemy that moves close, able to house and launch a lot at once. may by CPU intensive. but effective to help take down ships. recommend getting a ship that can have tons of docked stuff then modifying to house the drones, basicly making a hive ship. For instance, there is a big battle thats not going all that well, a couple of hive ships fly in. then they open all hangers then release the drones and the tide gets turned to your favour.

 

[Loadout]

Your nanodrones on the torpedo look amazing but aren't very economic - a computer costs as much as 10 modules, and as I see it you have both a slave and an effect system. Have you tried slave-only (for missile nanodrones) or blank cannons yet?


Here is my successful test result. The drone below has four cannon outputs at 100 damage each. When all four shots hit the same block (likely), even advanced armor crumbles in one hit, and in all other cases more than one block will be destroyed - up to four per second per drone! Now one can imagine a swarm of 300 of these removing 1200 blocks per second from the target ship.

7x7x7 standard docking box, the usual 1:1 thrust, and even 1k shields as small cheap bonus that can also be removed if necessary.

Stop effect was what I had lying around mostly, they've long since been replaced with missiles and single beam comp slave. Also the name apparently has to be changed as a mr. warsong decided to convo me and say that skoom-pedo is implying something naughty. So the name is up for grabs. Seriously though... *shakes head slowly*, P.C. will be the death of humanity.

Anywho, the missiles each do 225 damage, with 2 per nano-drone. I have other drones dedicated for block removal specifically, these guys are mostly chaff drones. Which given that I can stuff 80 of them on my new Taiga class drone carrier, and still have plenty of space leftover, they work quite well.

JTJSniperBee not quite sure what you're getting at here, but you've got the gist of it. Hive ships fly in, unleash drones, and then clean up the mess at a leisurely pace.

 

[JTJSniperBee]

Stop effect was what I had lying around mostly, they've long since been replaced with missiles and single beam comp slave. Also the name apparently has to be changed as a mr. warsong decided to convo me and say that skoom-pedo is implying something naughty. So the name is up for grabs. Seriously though... *shakes head slowly*, P.C. will be the death of humanity.

Anywho, the missiles each do 225 damage, with 2 per nano-drone. I have other drones dedicated for block removal specifically, these guys are mostly chaff drones. Which given that I can stuff 80 of them on my new Taiga class drone carrier, and still have plenty of space leftover, they work quite well.

JTJSniperBee not quite sure what you're getting at here, but you've got the gist of it. Hive ships fly in, unleash drones, and then clean up the mess at a leisurely pace.

The remaining swarm drones in the area would be left there. to kill any flying by hostiles
im going to look into creating suicide drones
to do better damage

 

[Keptick]

256 damage cannon drones, 32 anti-missile-rapidfire drones. Where are your swarm missiles now? :p

oh... my... god...