Drones

jimbob55 · #1 February 2nd, 2001, 10:23 PM

quote:
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.

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 · #2 February 2nd, 2001, 11:02 PM

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 · #3 February 3rd, 2001, 12:35 AM

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 · #4 February 3rd, 2001, 02:07 AM

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).]

Tomgs · #5 February 3rd, 2001, 02:08 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Zanthis:
BTW, I never noticed, can you still fire when your ship runs out of supplies?

Yes but you will have only one movement and your shield drop.

DirectorTsaarx · #6 February 5th, 2001, 10:12 PM

But (IIRC) these effects (no shields, etc.) don't occur until the current combat ends (if you run out of supplies during a combat).

Nitram Draw · #7 February 5th, 2001, 11:01 PM

Speaking of supplies, I have noticed that I don't use supplies when I fire weapons. I thought this was suppose to be the case. Is it a bug or am I misunderstanding this?