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

#91
McDuff wrote: 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.
Basically this.
That's why I phrased these drones more like a weapon system rather than individually controlled units.
Same thing as telling a group of missile launchers to destroy a target.

What remains at every level is that drones work a little different from either missiles or fighters. It's the whole point, really. =)
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#92
Gazz wrote:@ThymineC
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.
Say I'm being a trader somewhere. My combat ships are outside flying patrol. Some bad guys invade. I choose to sit in my space station and say "gentlemen, deal with the miscreants."

If it's just AI fighting AI, what's wrong with that? Get involved if you want, or don't and command your armies from the comfort of your heavily fortified station.

Why is it different if it's a drone ship rather than a wing of fighters? It seems to be the exact same thing, gameplay-wise, whether you're ordering a capital ship to kill your enemies or ordering a drone to do it. If the problem is that the system can work without you, I thought that's what the system was supposed to be able to do, in which case I've missed something fundamental here.
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#93
Gazz wrote:
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.

I am personally still against drones but this is the idea i can get behind if they need to be implemented.

Only I don't like order stacking. Makes for a good handicap on drones.
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#94
McDuff wrote:
Gazz wrote:Why is it different if it's a drone ship rather than a wing of fighters? It seems to be the exact same thing, gameplay-wise, whether you're ordering a capital ship to kill your enemies or ordering a drone to do it. If the problem is that the system can work without you, I thought that's what the system was supposed to be able to do, in which case I've missed something fundamental here.
Because drones should be distinct from any other type of ship. That is why i like Gazz's Idea.
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#95
Gazz wrote:@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
What about this?
Charley_Deallus wrote:All I remember about combat drones from the X3 games is that they were great cannon fodder for helping distract enemies so you could get away, or use them to block enemy fire. They would gradually lose health and then just die when it ran out. So...timed combat drones that lose effectiveness over time?
I don't imagine drones exactly losing health over time, but something else that'd make them behave the same way. Drones could lose power over time. When you launch a drone, it has a finite amount of energy stored in its capacitor. Every action it takes will drain from that capacitor, and then the drone becomes inactive when it runs out. Drones then become single-use objects and so become more like the expendable output of a weapon than an entity in their own right, as fighters would be.

If we were to take this route, I'd still like bandwidth to be implemented too, but the two don't depend on each other.
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#96
Yeah, I guess the losing health part was like they were a timed weapon. Energy would make more sense. So rather than them gradually losing health, they could fight at 100% until their capacitor runs dry. It kept them from becoming a zerglike entity and just keep growing and growing until it could wreck a fleet or something. They could keep growing...just for a limited amount of time. I dunno if you would want to include the option to scoop them back up after their battery dies for the possibility to recharge them and reuse them or not. I like throwing ideas at you guys and doing some trial and error stuff.
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#97
Charley_Deallus wrote:Yeah, I guess the losing health part was like they were a timed weapon. Energy would make more sense. So rather than them gradually losing health, they could fight at 100% until their capacitor runs dry. It kept them from becoming a zerglike entity and just keep growing and growing until it could wreck a fleet or something. They could keep growing...just for a limited amount of time. I dunno if you would want to include the option to scoop them back up after their battery dies for the possibility to recharge them and reuse them or not. I like throwing ideas at you guys and doing some trial and error stuff.
other drones to scoop the battledrones up after they run dry :)
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#98
Putting more thought into this, I think there might be a more technical limitation for drones being in the game.

Unless there is a cheesy mechanic to limit the number of drones that can be brought into an engagement, it would be far too easy to have more drones than lower-end PCs can handle. If we start having drone carriers, and the idea (from Josh) is to have around 100 ships (even 100 ships per side) in a battle, and a carrier can carry something like 50+ drones, it could easily exceed the 1000 mark.

Even if we limit the number of drones per ship, someone could still try to bring the game to a crawl by doing something like use nothing but drone carriers.

...But what if a player wants to bring more than 100 ships to an engagement? What if they brought 1000 or more?

There's nothing stopping someone really. I'm also assuming that larger ships will also cost more cpu time to have in close proximity (for whatever reasons; hit detection, rendering, etc) than drones. It just feels like there is more potential that any recommended limitations for battle size to be surpassed if drones enter into the equation.
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#99
DWMagus wrote:Putting more thought into this, I think there might be a more technical limitation for drones being in the game.

Unless there is a cheesy mechanic to limit the number of drones that can be brought into an engagement, it would be far too easy to have more drones than lower-end PCs can handle. If we start having drone carriers, and the idea (from Josh) is to have around 100 ships (even 100 ships per side) in a battle, and a carrier can carry something like 50+ drones, it could easily exceed the 1000 mark.

Even if we limit the number of drones per ship, someone could still try to bring the game to a crawl by doing something like use nothing but drone carriers.

...But what if a player wants to bring more than 100 ships to an engagement? What if they brought 1000 or more?

There's nothing stopping someone really. I'm also assuming that larger ships will also cost more cpu time to have in close proximity (for whatever reasons; hit detection, rendering, etc) than drones. It just feels like there is more potential that any recommended limitations for battle size to be surpassed if drones enter into the equation.
This is exactly why i oppose combat drones out of principle.
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#100
Neandertal wrote:
DWMagus wrote:
Spoiler:      SHOW
Putting more thought into this, I think there might be a more technical limitation for drones being in the game.

Unless there is a cheesy mechanic to limit the number of drones that can be brought into an engagement, it would be far too easy to have more drones than lower-end PCs can handle. If we start having drone carriers, and the idea (from Josh) is to have around 100 ships (even 100 ships per side) in a battle, and a carrier can carry something like 50+ drones, it could easily exceed the 1000 mark.

Even if we limit the number of drones per ship, someone could still try to bring the game to a crawl by doing something like use nothing but drone carriers.

...But what if a player wants to bring more than 100 ships to an engagement? What if they brought 1000 or more?

There's nothing stopping someone really. I'm also assuming that larger ships will also cost more cpu time to have in close proximity (for whatever reasons; hit detection, rendering, etc) than drones. It just feels like there is more potential that any recommended limitations for battle size to be surpassed if drones enter into the equation.
This is exactly why i oppose combat drones out of principle.
well, one could say the same about missles, guns, ships in general.
drones would need to be balanced, true, but they are no inherent performance killer, at least no more than all other dynamic objects in the game
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#101
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
Neandertal wrote:
DWMagus wrote:
Spoiler:      SHOW
Putting more thought into this, I think there might be a more technical limitation for drones being in the game.

Unless there is a cheesy mechanic to limit the number of drones that can be brought into an engagement, it would be far too easy to have more drones than lower-end PCs can handle. If we start having drone carriers, and the idea (from Josh) is to have around 100 ships (even 100 ships per side) in a battle, and a carrier can carry something like 50+ drones, it could easily exceed the 1000 mark.

Even if we limit the number of drones per ship, someone could still try to bring the game to a crawl by doing something like use nothing but drone carriers.

...But what if a player wants to bring more than 100 ships to an engagement? What if they brought 1000 or more?

There's nothing stopping someone really. I'm also assuming that larger ships will also cost more cpu time to have in close proximity (for whatever reasons; hit detection, rendering, etc) than drones. It just feels like there is more potential that any recommended limitations for battle size to be surpassed if drones enter into the equation.
This is exactly why i oppose combat drones out of principle.
well, one could say the same about missles, guns, ships in general.
drones would need to be balanced, true, but they are no inherent performance killer, at least no more than all other dynamic objects in the game
Unfortunately of all the (not ships) things you mention drones are the most CPU intensive because they are the most complicated (They need to avoid collisions, Aim...) . Thus they should be the first to go.
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#102
Neandertal wrote: Unfortunately of all the (not ships) things you mention drones are the most CPU intensive because they are the most complicated (They need to avoid collisions, Aim...) . Thus they should be the first to go.
So loading a carrier with 50 fighters flown by fully simulated NPC is a better option?
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#103
Katorone wrote:
Neandertal wrote: Unfortunately of all the (not ships) things you mention drones are the most CPU intensive because they are the most complicated (They need to avoid collisions, Aim...) . Thus they should be the first to go.
So loading a carrier with 50 fighters flown by fully simulated NPC is a better option?
We are not debating whether or not fighters should exist. the debate is whether there should be drones in addition to everything else.

Josh has stated that he is looking at 100 ship battles. that meas if I bring 50 ships and you bring a carrier with 50 fighters we are at a 101 ship battle. Now you want drones as well? with what CPU power?

On that. I would rather just ad more ships if the engine can handle more, I don't want to ad drones if the engine can handle more ships.
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#104
Neandertal wrote:
Katorone wrote:
Neandertal wrote: Unfortunately of all the (not ships) things you mention drones are the most CPU intensive because they are the most complicated (They need to avoid collisions, Aim...) . Thus they should be the first to go.
So loading a carrier with 50 fighters flown by fully simulated NPC is a better option?
We are not debating whether or not fighters should exist. the debate is whether there should be drones in addition to everything else.

Josh has stated that he is looking at 100 ship battles. that meas if I bring 50 ships and you bring a carrier with 50 fighters we are at a 101 ship battle. Now you want drones as well? with what CPU power?
Or you can just bring fewer carriers, and I'm sure 100 ships isn't a hard limit anyway. I would be pretty disappointed if two carriers with 50 fighters was the upper bound on a battle size.
Neandertal wrote:I would rather just ad more ships if the engine can handle more, I don't want to ad drones if the engine can handle more ships.
I would rather just give the player the choice of what more to add.
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Re: Combat Drones & Why I Oppose them for Limit Theory

#105
Neandertal wrote: We are not debating whether or not fighters should exist. the debate is whether there should be drones in addition to everything else.

Josh has stated that he is looking at 100 ship battles. that meas if I bring 50 ships and you bring a carrier with 50 fighters we are at a 101 ship battle. Now you want drones as well? with what CPU power?

On that. I would rather just ad more ships if the engine can handle more, I don't want to ad drones if the engine can handle more ships.
My point is that a carrier shouldn't launch real fighters, but drones instead (not in addition to!).
Josh said he's looking at 100 ship battles, with ships that are fully simulated. That's why I like the idea of drones. They wouldn't need as much simulation as the NPC flown ship.
If a carrier works with drones instead of fighters, then only the AI of the carrier needs to be calculated, with drones almost acting like guided projectiles.
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