Drones

[Atrocities]

Q, you can make those yourself. Just create a new ship class, and copy one of the fighter images and rename it as your new fighter. You will have to create one of these ships for each race file including neutrals. Its really easy to do. Good luck.

[Q]

Thank you for your suggestion Atrocities, but I'm afraid it will not be that easy. If I create a small ship, I have to use ship components and that makes it even in the most basic design much more expensive than a fighter. And there is no way to create the selfdestruction after a fixed time.

[Barnacle Bill]

MM may be intending to copy Starfire. In the latest Version of Starfire, they have added something called "drones" which are a special case of what they call "Automated Platforms" (AP). AP divide into "Buoy" and "Drones". Buoys work pretty much like Satellites in SE4, but because of the communication rules in Starfire there are a lot of reasons to build them other than as a non-mobile defense. "Drones" absorb the functions of several other things that were in early editions of Starfire, including "Courier Drones" and a type of missile pod used for warp point assaults. All AP are designed under the same set of rules, though.

The basic Starfire drone has an endurance of 20 tactical turns and is not reusable. There is an enhanced endurance module that lets it move on the strategic scale, but takes up 1/2 the space in the drone hull (still can't rufuel/reuse them). There are three levels of drone tech, each adding a bigger/better hull.

The bottom level can't carry weapons and is really for courier drones. The memory module takes the other half of the hull space left over after the endurance pack is installed. What courier drones are for does not translate very well into SE4. In Starfire, you have to write orders in advance for all your fleets, and they can't do anything different unless they get new orders or encounter unexpected enemy forces themselves. Orders come from a type of headquarters (called a CC, which stands for "Command Complex", as I recall) that is pretty expensive to build, and I think can only be on a planet. So, any time something happens you have to transmit the info to one of those CC's, wait for a certain delay while the staff there drafts new orders, then transmit the new orders to the units affected. "Radio" (or whatever) transmitters have a limited range, and the signal won't go through warp points, so you have to build this network of buoys & bases through your space to relay orders. Courier drones are used to get Messages between ships/fleets operating outside your comm network and the network.

The second level can carry weapons but take severe power (range & damage) and rate of fire hits compared to ship systems. The third level removes some but not all of those disadvantages.

All AP have to operate according to very specific "programs" the player has to designate, and which can only be changed via that order transmission system (ships in combat can do whatever you want, because unlike AP, Captains have brains).

A primary use for drones (aside from courier drones) is to pack them with missiles and send them through a warp point first when you expect the enemy to be defending it. In Starfire, there is a limit to how many ships can come through per tactical turn, which takes into account ship size as well. If you exceed this, you start losing them to "interpenetration", which live crews won't do under most circumstances. Warp point defenders can be set up at optimum range and bLast the ships coming through a few at a time, so the attacker has to have a much bigger fleet than the defender to prevail, and is still sure to take huge loses. You can shove lots of drones through, though (they are small), and they don't care about interpenetration loses. So, you pack them full of missiles and program them to target the types of ships you expect on the other side, and send your fleet through after this "preliminary bombardment" has "softened up" the defenders.

So, based on the Starfire example, my guess would be that "drones" in SE4 will be some sort of short endurance, warp capable, one-use-only, self-propelled satellite.



[This message has been edited by Barnacle Bill (edited 02 February 2001).]

[jimbob55]

quote:

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Thank you for your suggestion Atrocities, but I'm afraid it will not be that easy. If I create a small ship, I have to use ship components and that makes it even in the most basic design much more expensive than a fighter. And there is no way to create the selfdestruction after a fixed time.

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Create a component like the EMC (Emergency Move component)which allows 7 movement but is destroyed on use. make it 10Kt size (and figure out some way to limit it to frigate hulls...hmm). Alternatively cobble together a new hull size smaller than a frigate. Make it dirt cheap and require a 'drone control computer' which can only be mounted on ships with the EMC. and the EMC does not function at all with any other type of engine.
One disposable ship. Add the ability for the drone control computer to act as self destruct device and bingo...
Of course, I don't know if this would actually work in practice.

[Q]

Interesting ideas jimbob55.
I never saw a possibility to limit a component to ships of a maximum size, only to a minimum size. Where would you specify this? And how do you make the use of one component dependent on the presence of an other component?
I would really like to know, if this is principally possible, but it's definitely not easy at least for my standard.
Last if you have a self destruction device you may use ist, but you are not forced to destroy your drone, if you don't want to. That's certainly a big difference to something that blows up inevitably after a certain time, no matter how much you would like that it just continues for one more turn.

[Zanthis]

I hope they aren't doing something like Starfire. They don't need to. With just a few minor things you could make that type of drone very easily:

Add an ability that allows passage through WPs. Put this ability on an component for fighters with "Destroyed after use" and you get a one-shot drone. With one or two other abilities, you could give them limited life spans.

What I want is to design my own missiles. I don't care if they are actual cargo or you just pick which designs are fired each turn (you are assumed to have unlimited of each design so long as your supplies hold out).

BTW, I never noticed, can you still fire when your ship runs out of supplies?

[jimbob55]

Point taken.
I'll stop hypothesising all over the place and have done some faffing and this is the best i can think of:

New ship type: One way tripper. A very cheap hull size 100Kt requires Bridge, life support, crew quarters and has max 1 engine.

Probe engine: 70Kt generates 1 move, or can act as emergency pod to produce however many moves you want. I made it 9.

So with these 2 items you can produce a VERY slow ship with no weapons which can do a burst of 9 moves in one turn and become a floating derelict / outpost. It could store 100 supply points + use 10 per move if you like (although it will still move 1 every turn after it's out of supplies...)
I have tested it and it works.

The size of the engine reduces the chances of it being fitted to regular hulls (even for the emergency move allowance) and if you build a battlecruiser with just probe engines and a repair bay, well fine....it's an expensive thing to maintain. You could build a one shot minesweeper with 1 drone engine and a bunch of minesweeping comps...
It would be possible to restrict all but one ship type from having a component, but it would involve editing every shiptype record and adding :
Requirement Drone engine - Cannot have. (haven't tested this bit yet)
I tried mounting engines and emergency supply pods on a satellite, but there is no movement allowed for satellites in the interface. If you look at specific sats it says '4/4 moves' but the move button is disabled. :-(

The other posibility would be to fit a normal size engine to a fighter, I'll try that later just to see if it will allow the fighter to warp. (probably not).

[This message has been edited by jimbob55 (edited 03 February 2001).]

[This message has been edited by jimbob55 (edited 03 February 2001).]