Drones: Magic Cheat?

[dmm]

Geoshmo and others point out that a mine field will wipe out your drones. Anyone considered using (cheapest possible) drones purposefully as "minesweepers?" Probably not cost-effective but, since colonies can build them without shipyards, you may be able to field lots of them quickly enough to overwhelm even a maxed-out minefield.

[PvK]

Drones will be a lot more expensive than the mines they would detonate - the engines are one of the most expensive parts. It might be a little more effective if you piled armor on the drones, but still it'd be pretty wasteful. I tend to think minesweeping components should be allowed on drones, but that would require programming work that might better be directed elsewhere.

PvK

[adder_inf]

Just add solar panels to turn them into sats.

[Fyron]

That doesn't do what I was suggesting. You'd still have to use a ship to move them to different planets or to warp points.

[Phoenix-D]

Not if they still have an engine. Stick one engine and enough solar panels to overcome their natural supply usage.

Problem is, unless you're in a binary or trinary system, it's not viable.

"I tend to think minesweeping components should be allowed on drones, but that would require programming work that might better be directed elsewhere."

Why code work?

"Vehicle Type := Ship\Base"

That's from the minesweeper entry in components.txt. Change it to allow drones, and it might work. Don't have time to test it right now myself.

Phoenix-D

[PvK]

The satellite suggestion was that they should be able to deploy themselves - i.e., it needs move-to.

The minesweeper thing I assumed would need programming to make the sweeper components actually do anything, but I haven't tested it either.

PvK

quote:

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Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
Not if they still have an engine. Stick one engine and enough solar panels to overcome their natural supply usage.

Problem is, unless you're in a binary or trinary system, it's not viable.

"I tend to think minesweeping components should be allowed on drones, but that would require programming work that might better be directed elsewhere."

Why code work?

"Vehicle Type := Ship\Base"

That's from the minesweeper entry in components.txt. Change it to allow drones, and it might work. Don't have time to test it right now myself.

Phoenix-D

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[adder_inf]

I have launched them directly from planets.

Now you do need a target to get them to where ever you want.

The ships will attack nothing(I think) but a drone will not.

The fix would be to allow them to attack nothing.

adding a thought

This is also needed to allow attacks from out of system otherwise a drone is just a fancy fighter. The drone needs to be able to hit things that the empire "knows is there" aka has seen before, but is not currently visible.

[ 01 April 2002: Message edited by: adder_inf ]