Ninja Drones

[narf poit chez BOOM]

no, have a drone engine that only provides tactical movement.

[Cyrien]

Actually... I'm not worried about the AI. If I do this it will be as part of a mod I have been working on for abit now designed for PBW to get as much outa the game as possible for humans without worrying about AI limitations.

And yes I have decided to allow strategic movement for some of them. REAL capital ship missiles as it where. Also after working with it for abit, I have decided I really like the possibilities. MIRV warheads could be possible with multiple small components with a fire rate of 30 large supply consumption that get fired as seekers. Could do an energy beam missile that closes in uses up lots of supplies and fires a beam weapon.

Shielded missiles, armored missiles, ecm missiles. Alot of the things that many people have wanted that can't be done with normal seekers become possible. In addition if you have multi-rack launchers that can launch several missiles per combat turn ala drone launching tech then you can have a few massive salvos in the start that can overwhelm even unmodded PDC and then close in with beam weapons once the missile supply is used up. Any future combats until you resupply the missiles would be with just the beams.

And of course standard missiles of this sort would be ramming, thus ignoring shields adding a whole new level of depth. I am really warming upto this idea now. I love the potential it has.

[Ed Kolis]

I like it too, but didn't someone try this a while back and it totally screwed up? Not just the micromanagement of building missiles for all your ships (hey, if we can do it for fighters ), but something else I just can't place my finger on...

[PvK]

The main issue that comes to mind is that drone launchers fire all their drones in combat at full speed, so you can get your enemy to launch all their drone ammo by attacking with a single unit. You end up having to be careful, and store some reserves in ships that have no launchers, etc.

AI is a lot of work, but if someone were interested, I think it might be possible to get the AI to build multiple types of drones. I'd do it using bogus ability labels and then the hard part - getting it to design and build more than one model of drone - I'm not sure if the unit construction file responds to requests for specific unit classes or not (works for ships - not sure for units).

PvK

[Loser]

hmmm... can't recollect launched drones, can you?

And then there's the drones stored on a planet. All of them will launch in the first round that the planet is attacked. Then what do you do, send them after some random target?

[Cyrien]

So far the biggest problem I see is the planet. The AI would no doubt be a big problem and if someone else wants to take that on they can feel free. But my MOD will be for use by humans against humans so I'm not going to worry about what the AI can and can't do. Once I get what I want down then maybe I will try and get some AI work on it done.

[Loser]

Originally posted by Cyrien:
I've been thinking of working on a mod that turns drones into missiles. Work only in combat with no strategic movement allowing for the customization of missiles with various changes etc. Also allows for missile ammunition seperate from supplies. Only problem is the fire rate gets locked in to at least 1 per turn but only for as long as ammo Lasts.

That's a nice concept, but why limit them to combat movement only?

Give them engines that provide combat movement, and much more expensive engines that provide strategic movement.

The only problem I see for this is that the AI will only use one type of engine for all cases...

[Sinapus]

Wasn't there supposed to be a fix in the Last patch that let you set a limit on the number of drones per target that could be launched?