drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

I have a VERY tough time in AIC game (low AI bonus, no warp points) against Ukra-Tal. At turn ~150, My empire (two systems) can support no more than 20 destroyers. Ukra-Tal regulary sends fleet of 15-20 ships to my system. They have better tech, and with all hidden AI bonuses, I can barely fight back. Ukra-Tal builds a lot of ships with seeking parasites and use them en mass. Whatever I do, I lose ships in every battle and can not build them as fast as AI http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

I swithed to fighters (i use "tactical fighters only" option)- no goog, AI has to-hit bonuses and pulverize my fighters. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif True war of attrition http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif In desperation I decided to use drones. Normal drones with warheads proved to be a disaster - to kill 20 ships I need to use 30+ drones due to PDC fire.

And now I use old trick - instead of warheads, I put seeking parasites ot them ! The idea is that my drones will buzz around Ukra-Tall ships and overpower PD fire ! Since drones can not be targeted by missiles, the dreaded Ukra-Tall' SP will be useless http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

And yes, indeed !! Next battle and 3 small trasports with 5 drones each completely annihilated an enemy fleet with 18 ships http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif They even have enough fuel to attack second, smaller fleet before expire. It turned the war around - I can afford a lot non-maintatence drones ! Hurra ! But all was well till I was abushed by a fleet with Carriers. Those pesky fighters makes a short work of my drones http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif Still, they managed to cripple enemy. Now I researche medium drones and put point defence beams to shoot fightrs.
Drones practically saved my empire. I now love them !!

And now the bug : First I used "maximum weapons range" for drones with missiles. It works fine in simulator, but in the real battles, drones fire only ONCE and then run away ! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif I switched to "optimal firing range" and drones behaved nicely. Apparently, once drones get into "do not get hurt" movement - secondary movement in "max. range", they get stucked and do not go back despite having missiles recharged. Very odd.

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

That's a bad one. Send that to Malfador.

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

Isn't the entire goal of the Drone hull to fire its weapons once and then ram the target? It seems like a much bigger exploit to me to be able to use them in a non-ramming capacity.

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">if that were the case then other wepons would not be availible to put on drones.

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

Satellites mounted with seekers offer the same sort of 'advantage' as drones. They are absolutely devastating as warp point defenses against seeker using races like the default Jraenar or Toltayan.

I'd be interested to know how drones react to all the various strategies other than 'ram'. Has anyone experimented? I've never bothered to use any other strategies with them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif But mounting seekers is a clever way to give them some 'chaff' while they close in to ram. Too bad seekers are so large and drones are so small. It eats up a lot of precious space. Mounting them with PDC makes them much more resistant to fighters, btw.

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">if that were the case then other wepons would not be availible to put on drones. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Umm... if that were the case, they would be allowed, as they would get to shoot once before the ramming... which is exactly what I said. Warheads can not shoot at all.

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oooh... once a nice Missle Mod comes out you could use this to create self-chaffing missles, or MIRV.

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

Well, yeah, come to think of it, you could mod a special 'chaff' type seeker just for drones. Make it 20-30 kt and fires every other or every round, but does very little damage. Maybe 10 points or so. Just lots of little seekers to over-load PDC.

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Light missile system in Proportions is close to it except for the larger size (60kt). I am currently experimenting with sprint missiles (speed=12) on drones. looks promising http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

But drones still have an achiles heel - drones can easily be provoked buy a small sized atack with a sole purpose to trigger the loads of drones for self-destruction http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

[ December 15, 2003, 22:08: Message edited by: oleg ]

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

Well, yes, AI targetting is stupid and will launch all available drones at the smallest attack. This is quite a problem for the viability of the AI since drones cannot be recovered. Some sort of targetting routine needs to be tweaked to tell the AI not to treat drones like fighters.

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

I remember coming across something like "number of drones launched per ship". Maybe that would help?

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">if that were the case then other wepons would not be availible to put on drones. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Umm... if that were the case, they would be allowed, as they would get to shoot once before the ramming... which is exactly what I said. Warheads can not shoot at all. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">oooohhhh! I see what your saying now!

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Nope. The bug is that that is ignored, and all drones get launched. The default setting is not 1000 or something.

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

I recently started using drones seriously and have had nothing but good results. Will have to try some of the configurations and see how much more effective these weapons become.

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

Drones are good against AI because the AI is stupid and can be defeated by nearly anything, used properly. But against other humans in a pitched war, drones are only useful (as a primary tactic) if you had a long period of peace in which to build up large stockpiles. Otherwise, it is too costly to amass the number of drones quickly that you need to be able to take out a good sized fleet. And even if you manage it, the drones are all used up, leaving you open to the next big fleet, which with most players is not going to be far behind.

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

Well, certainly drones are expensive to use as a primary weapon system. I don't know of anyone who recommends them as a primary method of attack/defense for your empire. They are disposable, after all. They are just one more option in your toolkit.

What do you do if you spot an unauthorized colonizer sneaking into your claimed territory but all available ships are currently busy standing off some other enemy fleet? Sending some ship off to chase it down could be time consuming if it has a head start. A drone is very fast so it will catch up sooner and it doesn't cost any maintenance to have a few lying around for 'emergencies' like that, while keeping extra ships in every single system to catch stragglers or 'accidental' invaders (from 'anomaly' events or whatnot) does cost a lot of extra maintenance.

A few anti-planet drones will also let you mop-up new 'unauthorized' colonies that you run across without risking a ship on the possibility of early weapon platforms or mines.

They are also very useful as part of a 'combined arms' combat strategy. Fighters tend to get ripped up by PDC if you send them in alone against a human opponent's ships. As do missiles. Obviously PDC will be more effective if the enemy can tune his designs and strategies to deal with either in particular. The whole suite of fighters, seekers, and drones is quite a handful and makes it much more difficult to design ships and strategies to wipe them all out.

A little modding of the game provides drones with all sorts of special uses (like the 'plague drones' I've wanted to be able to use for so long) that make them even more flexible.

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

Drones can also be helpful for when an emeny deploys his fleet to meet yours you can launch fast moving drones to take out whatever is now left vulnerable in the system, so that even if you lose you took out something. I use them alot against the AI to take out singe ships trying to join a massed enemy fleet. Humans don't normally do this though.

-Pat

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

I've used missile-launching drones before with good success, using a Max Range strategy, which didn't run away - I wonder what the difference was between my strategy settings and yours, Oleg.

Drones with direct-fire weapons and other movement strategies can also work - just make sure they don't accidentally have the Ram movement strategies.

As for Fryon's idea that all drones should have to use a kamikaze strategy, I completely disagree. Drones have many limitations already and certainly don't need to be toned down or made less interesting or flexible in that way.

PvK

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

Don't know http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif It was a simultaneous movement and max.range strategy had max.range as a primary movement and don't get hurt as a secondary. May be you use max.range movement as a secondary mavement ?

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That was not "my idea of what drones should be," it was my understanding of what the entire purpose of the drone hull in SE4 was supposed to be...

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

Where did you get that idea, though, Fryon? Seems to me that by allowing all strategies and weapon components on drones, the intention is pretty clearly to allow them to be designed to do other things besides crash (or shoot just before crashing).

Oleg, I don't really remember the details of my drone strategy settings, though I have some old turn files somewhere and if I remember and have time when I'm near that computer, I'll try to look it up.

PvK

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

The game manual? Seems like a pretty authoritative source to me.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

Laugh!

Still, I tend to think that was the manual-writer's understanding, rather than the design. Moreover, I still think removing the ability to set their strategies would be less interesting and a blow to a system that doesn't need to be any harder to use effectively!

PvK

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

That was from the in-game manual, not the hard copy. Wasn't that written by Aaron? If not, he at least had to have read through it before saying it was ready to go.

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

Oh ok. I suppose the doc files were most likely written by Aaron, but so were the data files. I guess my concept of what drones are supposed to do comes mainly from the beta forum discussions, and from having used them with the ability to do things besides ram. Drones with weapons are generally inefficient to the point of silliness if they have kamikaze programming.

PvK

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

The manual is not clear. It does allow for differing interpretations.

If you read only this sentance, "Once the drone encounters the target, it will ram the target and do as much damage as possible." then it does indeed seem to support the idea of drones as kamikazee only weapons.

If however you read the sentance in context of the rest of the sentances before it and after it, it becomes apparent that the manual is discussing only possible uses for drones, not a firm set of rules for their use.

The key is the phrase "are usually equipped" in the first sentance. The second and third sentances are merely describing the operation of a drone equipped in the manner described by the first sentance.

If the intention of the programmer was to restrict drones to such operation then he would have probably not allowed them to have non-warhead weapons, which he did not do. At the very least he would have required that all drones have at least a warhead in addition to whatever other weapons the player wished to add, but he didn't do that either.

[ December 22, 2003, 17:15: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

I hardly read only one sentence Geo, and did not take anything out of context. I simply bold faced the sentences that explicitly define what a drone does mechanically. If you want to take the rest of the section on drones into account, you get even more supporting the ICBM aspect:

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The other sentences do not discuss weaponry or combat use at all, just launching and targetting, and supply issues (plus other random stuff).

Your interpretation is not really supported by the in-game manual, especially since it directly states that drones are large, computer controlled missiles. I have never heard of a missile that doesn't "ram" into its target, or at the very least detonate near/above it and hit it with the shockwave/explosion. Now, how drones apparently actually work is quite different than what the in-game manual says (in the regard that they can be used other than as a "missile"). The in-game manual appears to be lacking here, and should be clarified. Sending email to Aaron.

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

Ok. I thought I was agreeing with you that the manual lacked clarity. Apparently I was mistaken?

Uh... nevermind.

Re: drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.
 

Umm... well... it isn't too clear, but it does stress the "missile" aspect greatly, while failing to mention that you can use them as "mini-ships" or "big fighters." Email sent to make it clear. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ December 22, 2003, 17:47: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]