Idea . Drone System

[Eugen]

first of all hallo there.

please keep in mind there will be grama and/or spelling errors i am no pro in english .^^

I tought about it for quite some time than it is a fact that there ships who has the slots but dont use it because the aviable Moduls dont fit for the role.
Traders dont use hanger or stealth or jumdrives because they wahna keep the cargo hold.

My idea i come up with is a drone system, "mainly for hanger slots" basicly its a small craft thats console commandet
"aka /drone Start, /drone Attack, /drone Dock, /drone comeback"
they could come in many forms like Attack,Repair,Mining Drone.

Also Very importent they should be Destroyable!

The Attack Drone is strait forward a ai ship(a drone model) with one or two guns/rockets it should not be overpowert but at least should help the user a bit.

The Repair drone should only repair the hull over time and needs energie preferable from guns and can be boostet throu ship/iff/id/(commodities not needet but should boost it big times like + 50-100% and is used up in the proces)
"best would be a repairship with lets use the exemple dse iff/id with shiphull segments in the cargohold"
but basicly can be used by everyone (but slower) and can be used to repair other players to .(new ecconomy?)

The Mining drone

This might be the trickiest one than it would need some tweeking of the miningfields. (at least in my form)
it would need lets say one or two nodes (not destroyable) in every Miningfield.

Basicly the drone docks on a big Rock/Derbie/Gasminer and Drain the Comoditi overtime also modified with iff/id/ship to keep the allready inplace system.
But it would allow the biger ships for exemple a junker Pilgrim liner to mine scrap metal ,granted it should be slower than fly around and shoot the small stuff.(so a normal miner should still be the best way)
also should need energie in any form (guns/shields?)

all above should be useable with a hanger slot but can be specific so Caps (if they dont use hangers) can not use Mining drones(or maybe they can?) but for exemple could use better attack Drones.

waht brings me to the tech slots.

This i am not shure about if its needet but it would make it more believable so , there could be a modul to replace destroyed Drones on the spot and automaticly overtime (with the needet Comoditis(Nanobots?), like metal bars)

A other thing i had in mind was a shield repair modul for repairing or aiding of allies players ""Not Himself"" ( in group ) so a player could play as a support ship and it could be combot with the Repair drone.
And also should be modified with iff/id/ship.

Now the how to get that stuff, my idea was this could be bought on shipyards so every player has at least the access to a basic version.
The best version should still be made by player bases.

This should not be needet to mention but i´ll do it anyways and it count on both slots.

There should also be a differentiation between Civil and pure military tech.

So a trader can get attack drones but they are not so deadly as the House Navy ones.

Also Pirats/Quasi legal should only be able to get the Civil ones (exept they have a standing Regular army like the Outcasts/Corsairs/The Council /BHG Core)

Hope u Guys/Lady´s like the idea´s.

[Sabru]

sounds like EVE

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[Eugen]

realy? lol ok if it is like eve than it is a "wierd" coincidence. Oo since i played eve just around 4 h and abandoned it .

[Shagohad]

sounds like EVE

Hate to break it to you, but Freelancer Discovery is the poor man's EVE.

I had put thought into drones as well. For carriers. You essentially spawn a NPC fighter or bomber and it'll fight for you until it blows up. They're treated like ordinance so you have to buy them and look after them, but the idea is that you have launchable AI fighters that will attack things that you tell them to. It'd make carriers more dynamic if they popped out rank 18 NPC's into a fight.

Mind you, these things won't be cheap. Losing them is a big deal. I'd price them at 2 or 3 million creds each depending on the type of strike craft.

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"THE HULL HAS BEEN BREACHED AND THE SCIENCE IS LEAKING OUT!"

[Nocturnia]

I had put thought into drones as well. For carriers. You essentially spawn a NPC fighter or bomber and it'll fight for you until it blows up. They're treated like ordinance so you have to buy them and look after them, but the idea is that you have launchable AI fighters that will attack things that you tell them to. It'd make carriers more dynamic if they popped out rank 18 NPC's into a fight.

Mind you, these things won't be cheap. Losing them is a big deal. I'd price them at 2 or 3 million creds each depending on the type of strike craft.

Exactly, buying carriers at this time is essentially nothing but prestige, you'll hardly actually get four to six fighter players to follow you around at all times, and the ship is not exactly as powerful as a battleship (And some are even larger). But if the carrier could launch fighter/bomber craft they would suddenly become far more useful, if nothing as fleet support. Even a few random NPC fighters in a fight can annoy someone, but if these are high ranking NPC fighters that target you or your capital ships they will draw away valuable fire.

But of course they wouldn't be simple cannon fodder, owning a carrier and supplying it with these fighters would be as you said expensive, besides the price for them, it would make sense that the carrier would also have to carry H-Fuel to launch them (Like 10 H-Fuel per launch) and optionally Batteries and Nanobots.

[Shagohad]

I want emphasis on the fact they're helping. They can sit a few kilometers away and send out these squadrons. Five rank 18 NPC's will dissuade any would-be attacker. And you could even launch bombers that are armed with SNACs.

I can't hammer out balancing because that's not my department, but I think giving it a try would be worth a shot. Hell, you could launch the little guys and have them fly alongside you as you patrol.

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"THE HULL HAS BEEN BREACHED AND THE SCIENCE IS LEAKING OUT!"

[Nocturnia]

I can't hammer out balancing because that's not my department, but I think giving it a try would be worth a shot. Hell, you could launch the little guys and have them fly alongside you as you patrol.

Yes, this would obviously make Carriers a far better RP platform too, rather then a capship simply moving alone or standing on one location it would be a ship surrounded by fighters which move along with it, giving it the appearance of an actual carrier.
Though general placement of these "drones" on capships such as battleships (Though in smaller numbers) would make battles between them visually more attractive.

Though the biggest problem if such a plugin were to be developed is obviously server impact.

[Shagohad]

Care to explain that last statement a bit?

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"THE HULL HAS BEEN BREACHED AND THE SCIENCE IS LEAKING OUT!"

[Nocturnia]

Care to explain that last statement a bit?

Well, imagine if let's say, this plugin gets implemented, and then GRN moves to Magellan (Like yesterday) and LN moves in a few fighters, a Dread and let's say two of these new shiny carriers. Suddenly deploying 16 NPC fighters might cause some serious server lag. Not to mention if one day two of these Carriers fight each other.

[Spud]

I wouldn't make mining drones, cause player teamwork should be encouraged instead.

But carriers sure could use more love. That could be done by:

1. More docking module slots on carriers

2. Less module slots on non-carriers

3. Make docking possible when the ship is moving

4. Make bottpassing impossible. It seems to be possible to make it impossible cause its already made impossoble to trade stuff when cloaked on trial ID. Making bottpassing impossible would also make snub fights much more fun, and make the BS-passing-bots-to-fighters less of a powergaming strategy

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