[FLHook] Drone Bays

[Remnant]

Oh. @Titan* came forward and asked me if carriers would be able to launch drone NPCs which orders could be issued to.
Sure.

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Drone Bays - What are they?
As the title implies, drone bays are pieces of equipment mountable to carrier vessels, which allow you to launch a drone which can then be given attack orders to.

The plugin is rather straight forward. In the configuration file, different types of drone bays, and different types of drones are defined. Those working with the plugin can choose any mix between ship archetypes, and load outs available for you to launch from your carrier.

After a period of time where the carrier is in a 'launching' state (time defined in the config) - A NPC who is completely neutral to everyone pops out next to you. A ship which you can give various orders to, which is listed down below.

Currently you can only have one drone in operation. See the FAQ for why.

Drone Commands

• /dronehelp -- Lists the available commands in game
  
• /dronetypes -- Lists the available types of drones your drone bay supports launching
  
• /dronedeploy [dronetype] -- If available, starts a launch operation for dronetype to be put into space near you
  
• /dronetarget -- Sets the drone hostile with whatever you have targeted, ending up in the target being engaged
  
• /dronestop -- Cancels the engagement order and disengages.
  
• /dronecome -- Orders the drone to come to your position
  
• /dronerecall -- Orders your drone to return to you, and dock with you.
  

I may change some of the command triggers, but this is everything implemented so far.

Quirks
As when it comes to any software, the bounds of what something can, and cannot do is explicitly defined. A brief list of the bounds of the plugin is listed below. Most of these are done on purpose, as NPC directives are being minimized to keep down server load.

• Drones will not follow you through trade lanes.
  
• Drones cannot withstand the tear of changing systems unless recalled, thus if you change systems, your old drone will be lost
  
• Drones will not land on a station if you as the carrier lands. Your drone will be destroyed.
  
• You may not deploy drones while cruising, while cloaking, or while cloaked.
  

If I remember any more, I'll add them in later.

FAQ
Q: How many drones can be launched at a time?
A: Just one, currently. While Titan and I have tested the plugin in various cases, we are unsure about the server load this plugin may have when there are multiple drones in space. We have had very good luck with low loads with one or two, but we don't know how it'll fare with more. If the developers want me to support more later, sure. But for now, it's limited to one.

Q: Carriers are big ships, isn't only being able to deploy one drone a little.. Underwhelming?
A: Maybe? Although the dev team decided to make the drones very powerful by giving them a (still unfinalized) load out. Beside that, the personality parameters and NPC difficulty governing the drone is.. Pretty darn smart and dangerous. This isn't really up to me, and up to the people dealing with balancing.

Q: What's the state of the plugin so far?
A: Practically complete. There are one or two fixes I need to make later, but at least 90% of the plugin is in a working prototype right now.

I'll add more entries later.

Current bugs

• Currently, drones don't show up properly on your scanner, nor do they have a proper name.
  

The bug above still exists, however it's been made less problematic.
- When a drone is launched, you get a notification saying who is deploying.
- If a user is being targeted by a drone, you get an alert stating such.
- If you are being disengaged by a drone, you will get an alert stating such.
- If you click on a drone, you get an alert informing you who owns the drone.
- Some are considering making the drones have special mounted effects to make them more noticeable

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Youtube Explanation/Demo (Requested)

Plugin version shown above is not the final release. Take what is written in this post as what you will actually see. You get notified of more drone operations than what you see in the video.

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I'd be happy to answer questions about the FLhook side of things. Regarding balancing, either @Titan* or any other dev should be consulted. I simply do as asked in that regard.

Happy launching.

[HassLHoFF™]

Impressive Conrad and Titan.

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[Ikarus_Hagen]

This sounds great! I would gladly support this idea in front of the admins.

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For a better Sirius!

[Sand_Spider]

Nice!! What is the size limitation on the drones so far? Fighter only? Or are bombers, freighters, and possibly gunboats planned? (Gunboats might be a bit too overpowered, unless their loadout is lackluster).

Also, are Repair Drones going to be an option, or would this also be a bit much?

Finally, is there a possibility that weaker, Light Fighter Drones would be launchable from Liners?

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[Sciamach]

Holy hell, I remember someone saying a while ago this exact thing wasn't happening because it'd be too difficult to bring to fruition.

Grats to Radcon and Titan on this one. (Not sure if late April-fools joke)

Edit: Will ships not normally known for launching fighters (think: cruisers) be able to SRP drone-bays or will these be a case of "if it can mount a docking bay, it can mount a drone-bay"?

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[ sci·am·ach ]
/sīˈamək/

A simple, angry man casually working his way through life on a personal quest to acquire copious amounts of street cred.

[Remnant]

Nice!! What is the size limitation on the drones so far? Fighter only? Or are bombers, freighters, and possibly gunboats planned? (Gunboats might be a bit too overpowered, unless their loadout is lackluster).

Also, are Repair Drones going to be an option, or would this also be a bit much?

Finally, is there a possibility that weaker, Light Fighter Drones would be launchable from Liners?

Currently in our testing enviroment, we have one fighter drone, and one bomber drone.
Although the plugin is really flexible. If the devs wanted to add a different type of drone bay for liners, which could only launch certain drones, it's just a few lines in the configuration. Creating the equipment to mount is the hard part. Referencing it through FLhook is easy.
I wouldn't recommend anything gunboat size or later, since the NPC personality graph is hard coded to fighters/bombers.

Gonna have to say no for repair drones for the time being. I'm not very well versed in the idea of repair guns, besides that they've had issues. (Something something negative damage?)
Maybe I'll look into it later, but this is unplanned for now.

Ps: this isn't April fools. It's pretty much done.

Edit: Will ships not normally known for launching fighters (think: cruisers) be able to SRP drone-bays or will these be a case of "if it can mount a docking bay, it can mount a drone-bay"?

Yeah! Right now, I'm testing the plugin by calling the freelancer ID the drone bay.
As long as it's setup in the config, and that its mounted to your ship, anything can work.

I may need to write an addition later which accepts ship names instead of mounted cargo, but I'll do that later if the admins ask for it.

[SCEC]

Impressive. Just... Impressive. A question: will those modules be compatible with the docking modules you are working on? With they be occupying the same slot?

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[Titan*]

"if it can mount a docking bay, it can mount a drone-bay"?

You will able to mount both

[Laz]

Unpopular Opinion:

[28/03/2018 14:01:06 | Edited 14:15:43] T: laz what do you thnik is it possible to force AI to shoot a target with FLHook command?
[28/03/2018 14:01:34] T: maybe you know somethin about that
[28/03/2018 15:23:34] Laz: Good afternoon. I am aware this is possible, for what reason should it be done?
[28/03/2018 15:24:12] T: we want to make carriers unique
[28/03/2018 15:24:28] T: instead of making them battleships
[28/03/2018 15:25:43] Laz: I will never personally endorse the idea of having AI being involved in pvp fights, even if as a method of pvp for a particular class.
[28/03/2018 15:27:15] T: well we dont have 500 player playing on the server though
docking modules mostly pointless stuff doesnt give any advantage to ships
[28/03/2018 15:27:48] Laz: I never said I liked docking modules either.
[28/03/2018 15:28:03] Laz: I think carriers are a redundant class
[28/03/2018 15:29:19] T: thats true but if its possible to add an unique mechanism for them
that can improve discovery features a lot
[28/03/2018 15:30:21] Laz: Personally, I think the efforts are best spent elsewhere. That being said, I think what I say would be considered a unpopular opinion.

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[Firestalker Drones]

[they took our jerbs]

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The Firestalker Drones™ refers to an automation system designed by Daniel Prosper, later founder of Prosper Industries™ and is becoming a popular and very cheap alternative to in-house designed AI within the houses of Sirius.
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