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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#76
So another magic system (subsystem in this case) made for the purpose of drones?

Drone suddenly go inactive due to such a system being destroyed? I guess I am against the H-Drive after all if it continues to be used as a reason to have combat drones. It is absolutely absurd for a combat drone to just stop working because it does not have some uber high connection to the host ship in my opinion.
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
Neandertal wrote: So why can he have only drones?
because he spent all his volume on drone support systems instead of direct combat systems
wut?
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#78
AbhChallenger wrote:So another magic system (subsystem in this case) made for the purpose of drones?

Drone suddenly go inactive due to such a system being destroyed? I guess I am against the H-Drive after all if it continues to be used as a reason to have combat drones. It is absolutely absurd for a combat drone to just stop working because it does not have some uber high connection to the host ship in my opinion.
Magic system? If your drones are required to remain in communication with their parent vessel (hence why bandwidth is important), then it makes 100% complete sense that if you destroy the means of communication between drones and the carrier, they would become inoperable.

And I don't see why it's that absurd. After all, it was done in Star Wars. It's plausible, it evidently leads to interesting plot developments and (in my opinion) also good gameplay.
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#80
AbhChallenger wrote:
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
because he spent all his volume Hardpoints on drone support systems instead of direct combat systems
That is so much like EVE Online I want to throw up.

Combat drones are combat drones. They are bad enough as is but now we are using EVE Online style modules to explain them?
wtf? why is it EVE just because you have systems on your ship for supporting your drones?

launchers, repair equipment, communication equipment, its just general logic not some EVE replica

Edit: supporting E-War equipment....
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#81
ThymineC wrote:
AbhChallenger wrote:So another magic system (subsystem in this case) made for the purpose of drones?

Drone suddenly go inactive due to such a system being destroyed? I guess I am against the H-Drive after all if it continues to be used as a reason to have combat drones. It is absolutely absurd for a combat drone to just stop working because it does not have some uber high connection to the host ship in my opinion.
Magic system? If your drones are required to remain in communication with their parent vessel (hence why bandwidth is important), then it makes 100% complete sense that if you destroy the means of communication between drones and the carrier, they would become inoperable.

And I don't see why it's that absurd. After all, it was done in Star Wars. It's plausible, it evidently leads to interesting plot developments and (in my opinion) also good gameplay.
Star Wars (EP1) is just as absurd that drones have to be controlled from a ship that happens to have a critical vulnerability in the hangar that is OPEN to space.

Even today drones can do entire missions without the slightest input or output over radio. So brazillions of years from now drones instead say "%$#@ it ima just gonna shut down" because mama vessel aint talkin to dem no more?
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#82
AbhChallenger wrote:Even today drones can do entire missions without the slightest input or output over radio. So brazillions of years from now drones instead say "%$#@ it ima just gonna shut down" because mama vessel aint talkin to dem no more?
Drones today don't need to do calculations that support almost human-level intelligence. Computer vision, natural language processing, higher-level reasoning, etc. are all extremely difficult tasks that would likely involve having extremely powerful computers. If you want to reduce costs, it makes a lot of sense to manufacture drones to transmit and receive data from one highly-fortified, centralised location instead of having a supercomputer installed in every single one of them.

Sure, Anakin managing to breach the defences of the station isn't terribly realistic - that's purely a concession to making the story interesting - but the actual idea of having drones rely on centralised command and control is very plausible.
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#83
AbhChallenger wrote: Even today drones can do entire missions without the slightest input or output over radio. So brazillions of years from now drones instead say "%$#@ it ima just gonna shut down" because mama vessel aint talkin to dem no more?
remote sensor support, target information, etc..

in space there is no horizon, so why waste resources on sensor equipment the mothership can provide.

also they could shut down not of hard neccecity but as an security measure, as when they loose their uplink to mama they could be spoofed into attacking friendly targets much easier
which would be in space combat where delta-V does not have any meaning anymore much easier as friendly courses would be much harder to predict
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#85
Neandertal wrote:So you guys want drones to be like the drone frigate from homeworld?
I dunno, do we?

I think the idea of remote-controlled drones being reliant on a central CPU makes sense for one very good reason:

Josh has stated that he expects the max size of a major fleet battle will be about 100 ships.

Being able to treat a set of drones+control ship as a single AI reduces that computation cost, so drones can be considered more in the "slightly smarter guided missiles" end of things and you can get more of them.

Of course, as oft-stated previously, this all depends on what the underpinning architecture around fleet management is anyway.
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#86
AbhChallenger wrote:Even today drones can do entire missions without the slightest input or output over radio. So brazillions of years from now drones instead say "%$#@ it ima just gonna shut down" because mama vessel aint talkin to dem no more?
Realistically speaking, a swarm of "properly intelligent" drones does not need you any more.
The problem with that is that it's not much of a game...

So if I have anything to say about this then drones will be severely dumbed-down in comparison to fighters.


Just tossing ideas out but for instance...
  • The MMO pet comparison isn't a bad analogy.
    A drone understands only very basic commands such as
    • Attack this target.
    • Defend me.
    • Return to base.
    There are no waypoints, tactical maneuvers, or surgical strikes.
  • You can not reprogram a drone in flight. The only in-flight order is the unconditional recall.
  • You give orders not to individual drones but to an entire drone bay.
    If you have 2 drone bays you can launch 2 swarms with different orders.

    Changing a drone bay's order automatically recalls all of it's drones for redeployment.
    You might queue attack orders, though.
  • A drone bay is a launcher. Just like with a missile launcher you can load different types of ammo.
  • As drones are destroyed, the drone bay keeps launching reinforcements - of it's "current ammo" type.
    It has a rate of fire and and a reload time just like any other launcher.
  • A drone bay has a command limit. You want to run a drone ship, you install plenty of or huge drone bays.
    The size / complexity of a drone may use up different amounts of that command limit.
    A more complex drone may be able to execute an order like "Defend this target".

    The bay's magazine size may be lower than it's command limit. Then it would launch 2+ waves of drones.
  • Also works for construction drones.
    You do have to stick around until the new station's drone bay is built but after that, it can support it's own drones and you can leave.
The MMO pet comparison wouldn't be wrong but this kind of system behaves more like a smarter missile launcher. Has more of a weapon than of a fighter.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#89
@ThymineC

It's an intentional handicap.
You can't just launch 100 drones, then sweep them through an enemy fleet like a large broom without downtime.

You could queue attack orders for a drone bay. No argument there.
Or you install multiple bays.
But if drones are tactically identical to fighters, why should both exist?

At longer range, a pure drone ship would be less effective due to turnaround times.
...but it has re-usable "ammunition"!
A missile frigate can service a lot of targets quickly but every missile fired is one missile expended.
Got to balance that somehow. =)

It's too easy to build a perfect system which then can just play itself without you.
If drones end up too weak, beefing them up would be trivial. But developing a genuinely new handicap that wasn't intended in the first place... that's messy.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#90
Tbh, whatever the situation, any fleet of sufficient size and complexity *does not need you any more*.

So if it's a problem for you with drones, it will also be a problem with other ships.

On the other hand, the game is theoretically designed to give some kind of balance between play at various levels of abstraction and to avoid tedious micromanagement of every little unit in your control, so I severely doubt the idea of hacking some tedious micromanagement back into it is going to fly very far.

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