Drone and Anti-Drone Tactics?

dmm · #1 February 5th, 2002, 06:43 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Jourin:
The purpose of drones is to do missions you would not assign to manned ships.

My evil emperor uses products of conception (POCs) for that role. Gestating females who exercise their right to choose can get the POC removed at a gov't clinic free of charge. It then goes into an artificial gestation chamber for maturation. It is then raised by other POCs until the state decides what to do with it. There is no moral problem with assigning POCs to dangerous space missions, since they are not people.

Q · #2 February 5th, 2002, 09:57 PM

quote:
Originally posted by [K126]Mephisto:

Of course this is open to discussion. I just wanted to point out that the were deliberately designed to be cruise missiles and nothing else. If this is good or bad, what the fans want or don’t want, is an entirely different matter.
Personally I think it is a wise decision. If they can move around and warp they are nothing less then small ships without maintenance that can be build without a spaceyard and are very fast. Why should anyone build small ships instead?

I respectfully disagree.
The main disadvantage of drones compared to ships is their limited life span. So drones will not replace small ships.
In my very humble opinion MM made the same mistake as with the fighters in the very early SE IV release: The small fighters with only 10kT were just not useful. It is a pity to introduce features that will not be used. May be MM was afraid that drones would get too powerful, but now I believe we are on the opposite:
After what I have seen with the demo I probably will use still much more fighters than drones. And for the AI using drones I better say nothing.

However I am absolutely convinced that drones can be a great addition to the game, if some changes are made.

Baron Munchausen · #3 February 5th, 2002, 11:32 PM

Since drones use ship engines in the default config they are very, very expensive for expendable units. You will pay about 1/2 the cost of a fully equipped cruiser and yet have to throw it away when the drone is launched. Either drones should use fighter engines (in which case they must be moved out of fighter tech levels to some 'smaller components' field) or there needs to be a special set of drone engines that are less expensive. In my personal mod I've made the special engines -- half the size and less than half the cost (but more than fighter engines) -- and this helps a great deal with the cost. They still cost about as much as a satellite, which is multi-use while a drone is not, but that's better than half the cost of a cruiser!

As far as explore and patrol, yes, I posted several times in the beta forums that they would be flooded with requests for these two functions if they didn't include them. This is the FIRST use that most people think of for them, not combat. All I can say is, send in those emails.

I hope he will implement remote refueling, too, but that might be more difficult.

Mephisto · #4 February 6th, 2002, 01:29 AM

One short example against the more versatile drones: If you could command drones to move around you could also easily use them for defense. In a system with 10 planets you can build an average of 6 to 7 drones per turn. Each of this drones will Last at least 5 rounds. You don�t need any spaceyards to build those. You don�t have to pay maintenance. But you could easily park them on a warp point and build a very very powerful defense with about 25 to 30 drones on defense at all times. As it seems MM found this to unbalancing so he decided against it. But if you think it should be altered mail Aaron about it. As we all know, MM is listening to the community very carefully.

Phoenix-D · #5 February 6th, 2002, 02:25 AM

If you want to play the definitions game, try this one:

If something is done intentionally, it is NOT A BUG. It's a design decision. This is where the flame part of your statement came in- accusing MM of releasing a game with a known bug when in fact you've named nothing of the sort.

There's much in SE4 that doesn't agree with current military terms.

EDIT: here's a few
Battleship: a warship of the largest and most heavily armed and armored class. In SE4? A ship of 800kt. Dreadnaughts and baseships are bigger.

"Shields" in current terms are nothing like SE4 shields. Neither are ion engines. "Capital Ship Missles" can be mounted on pretty much anything other than a fighter.

Phoenix-D

[ 06 February 2002: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

jimbob · #6 February 6th, 2002, 02:49 AM

Err.. yeah, so a little tension here...

Well, I can definitely see Jourin's point about looking forward to getting one thing and definitely not getting it. Unfortunately definitions and thus expectations are just too flexible, especially when MM is in the business of creating a pretend, futuristic Universe.

Personally, I'd love to see (1) the Drones get cheaper, which is easily enough to mod (see below) and (2) some drones being capable of scouting through warp points, which is not modable.

My suggestion: ask MM to make a special component that allows Drones to go through warp points (how about a "warp motivator"). Make it either prohibitively expensive or (my favorite) just make it big... like half the size of the Drone. Thus people will be able to create warpable drones, but these will still be inferior to small ships because you end up with less space for additional components.

Just my thoughts on it all. Hope y'all have a good day.

-jimbob

PvK · #7 February 6th, 2002, 02:52 AM

This example of 30 drones on a warp point doesn't sound at all unbalancing to me, if someone is spending the output of ten planets to build it. It's going to be effective against some attackers, but quite expensive to maintain. I don't think it'd be more effective than alternative defenses using the same or fewer resources. The drones I've encountered (even in swarms of 30 or so) have not been all that hard to shoot down, and they expire pretty quickly, can't gain experience or be resupplied or carry cargo.

It's also probably a lot less efficient than building cargo/launcher bases at the warp point and filling them with drones that can wait for something to attack, and won't expire. This can be done without a move order for drones.

PvK

quote:
Originally posted by [K126]Mephisto:
One short example against the more versatile drones: If you could command drones to move around you could also easily use them for defense. In a system with 10 planets you can build an average of 6 to 7 drones per turn. Each of this drones will Last at least 5 rounds. You don’t need any spaceyards to build those. You don’t have to pay maintenance. But you could easily park them on a warp point and build a very very powerful defense with about 25 to 30 drones on defense at all times. As it seems MM found this to unbalancing so he decided against it. But if you think it should be altered mail Aaron about it. As we all know, MM is listening to the community very carefully.