Nasty Drone Bug Reported

[LGM]

Most people, I figure, want to use Drones since they are new to gold. Turning them off is kind of like going back to 1.49, minus bug fixes and the weapon mount additions. The way I see it, the purpose of buying gold was to get the fix for the combat order problem. Other than that, I see little improved value in the game. We have only seen one patch since January. I guess there are some cosmetic UI changes too. Some might debate that the weapon mount changes were good as planets can be tougher to attack now.

[capnq]

OK, I've done some testing. It looks like a mine that does as least twice as much damage as the drone ought to be able to take will kill the drone, otherwise the drone will shrug off the mines.

This is quite a bit worse than I expected, but I still don't think it's a game killer.

In my tests, a small mine with two Mine Warheads II (400 points damage) would kill a small drone that should have only taken 200, but not one that could take 210. A small mine with one Mine Warhead II and one Mine Warhead III (500 points) would kill the latter drone.

[Edit] BTW, IMO some of those "cosmetic UI changes" in Gold make managing my designs in my v1.49 PBW game seem tedious by comparison.

[ July 31, 2002, 20:16: Message edited by: capnq ]

[Baron Munchausen]

This might be a side effect of the way shields are handled with units. With ships, shields are NOT counted when you are attacked by mines. Does this drone have shields? The shields might be included in its damage totals even when it is hit by mines because of the 'short cut' inclusion of shield damage into the units damage total.

[Fyron]

Capnq, the warheads do damage separately, not combined. The 200 damage warheads on your mines was unable to damage the 210 drone. This is why the first mine did nothing. It wasn't comparing 400 to 210, but 200 to 210 and 200 to 210. The second mine only destroyed the drone because it's second warhead could do 300 damage by itself, which is more than the drone could take.

[Wardad]

Just for grins,

I designed a Shielded drone III and an Armored drone III.
I placed the in the combat simulator and read the Stats.

The shielded one had 375 shield points and 350 hit points. ???
The Armored one had 450 hit points. (2 level III crystaline armor, 60 kt of space, 300kt hit points)

I wish I had more time to take them for a test drive. I bet either one could sweep level III mine warheads.

[capnq]

Capnq, the warheads do damage separately, not combined.

Aha! That makes a lot more sense than my double-damage interpretation. Wish I'd remembered that before I spend all that time testing.

When dumbluck mentioned that very thing at the beginning of the thread, I misinterpreted it as each mine's damage rather than each warheads'.

[dumbluck]