Missiles as units (a.k.a microdrones)

geoschmo · #1 June 15th, 2002, 01:09 AM

Shadowstar,

Boarding parties don't work on any kind of unit, drone, fighter, etc. They have to be on a ship. That's a hardcoded restriction. Of course, if it were changed in a future patch...

Geoschmo

Baron Munchausen · #2 June 14th, 2002, 04:26 PM

The problem with mounting a ranged weapon on a drone is twofold. First, as others have pointed out it tends to rush in and ram first, so it often doesn't get to fire. Second, in order to do a reasonable amount of damage with that ONE shot it has to be given insane damage levels. MM needs to fix drones so warheads with 'special' damage types work properly. The one ranged-weapon that is a good idea on drones is PDC because fighters are an excellent counter-measure against drones. They are also fast and can be even more numerous than an attacking wave of drones.

It would also be nice if some form of 'boarding attack' was possible at range. Boarding shuttles would be most logical, and could be doable with boarding parties on a fighter hull, but a simple range attack might be just as good. Call it 'transporter' if you like.

This would have to be very high tech, of course.

[ June 14, 2002, 15:28: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

MKSheppard · #3 June 14th, 2002, 08:11 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
The problem with mounting a ranged weapon on a drone is twofold. First, as others have pointed out it tends to rush in and ram first, so it often doesn't get to fire. Second, in order to do a reasonable amount of damage with that ONE shot it has to be given insane damage levels. MM needs to fix drones so warheads with 'special' damage types work properly.

I finally had to figure out how to get it to work,
by doing a "workaround" to get unique types to
work properly.....I'll keep it this way
until MM fixes the warhead stuff in a future
patch....

just give it a 4 attack range, and it will
go BLAM BLAM BLAM and then kamikazi in, which
allows you to attack it successfully with your
special weapon, and kill itself, completing
the missile cycle...

[ June 14, 2002, 19:32: Message edited by: MKSheppard ]

Mephisto · #4 June 14th, 2002, 08:22 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
First, as others have pointed out it tends to rush in and ram first, so it often doesn't get to fire.

Drones behave like every other ship in the game. Just don't give them a "Ram" strategy and they won't. All my AI races uses drones that do not ram but are armed with energy weapons. Works just fine.

capnq · #5 June 15th, 2002, 01:56 AM

Quote:

The problem with mounting a ranged weapon on a drone is twofold. First, as others have pointed out it tends to rush in and ram first, so it often doesn't get to fire. Second, in order to do a reasonable amount of damage with that ONE shot it has to be given insane damage levels

One way around this is to put fewer engines on the drone. A drone that isn't faster than the enemy ships will keep firing at them as it tries to close, but not quite catch them to ram.

Using "Least Damaged" as one of the targeting priorities can have interesting results, especially with swarms of drones vs. multiple opponents.

geoschmo · #6 August 9th, 2002, 07:42 PM

I have been thinking more about this idea lately.

Has anyone tried it in a mod yet? Any unexpected suprises? Major roadblocks keeping it from working?

Geoschmo

Phoenix-D · #7 August 9th, 2002, 08:11 PM

HH mod uses it. See that thread for the major issues.

The problems are you can't target the drones manually in tactical (they attack always using their strategy), a lot of drones will actually get in each others way, you can't set a fire rate of below 1 per turn, and they will always outrange any other weapon.

Phoenix-D