Lesser Drones

[Karl913]

Had an idea.. Was looking at the part of how to win in how to play: " Or small army of fighters "?
Not very ideal way to win.. So l think lesser drones could be something cool.. They could do different tasks mostly out in space, and mostly following a specific person. (Different roles for this drone is something like 'defend miners' 'follow BC' 'Help wraith' etc.) They'd be like.. 75y and 30g, kinda cheap, and you could buy fighters for them at the dock station or a special console with maybe 16 slots for ships special for the lesser drones. Or they could be used as guards once boarding comes out. Just a thought l had. Would like to see what everyone else thinks or if this should just be scrapped.

[Tempest]

i too support the idea of buying an ai specifically for combat and things like this, ive been informed that a drone for weapons console is in the works. However lets look at how AI miners do their job, they fly until they ram an asteroid then mine it if its set to mine that color, that isnt exactly perfection. the reason being behind this is the intense amount of difficulty to make an ai operate a ship in that form, especially a wraith or corvette. such expensive ships id never trust in the hands of an ai not capable of strategic thought. i would however love to have an ai able to follow miners and protect them in 4v4 games this would become so useful, but i do understand the difficulty of making such a thing happen which is why i haven't suggested it up until now xD im not a map maker but im sure doing something like that and having it be effective is extremely involved and difficult.

[Siretu]

It is hard and it'll take various iterations to get it to work properly. The miner AI has the same problem, although it gets better with each iteration. I've only done serious work on the mining AI in three patches:

1. When it was first introduced
2. When I made it able to switch from mining to another task. (Earlier, if you tried to switch order to refining, it would stop working due to the complexity of finding its way back home and docking)
3. When I made it smarter by adding accelerating, enemy avoidance(which isn't perfect yet) and more frequent returns.

Anyway, I really want to strive towards better AI, but it's a slow progress (especially as I try to implement other features and fix other bugs and such).

As for the idea, I would rather keep the concept of drones with roles and improve that instead of making another tier of drones. I'm not against the concept of having drones defending miners, following BC or helping the wraith, but it'll probably be implemented as an order for normal drones.

[Karl913]

l understand the difficulty of making an ai with these new ships.. That's why you'd have the console with special ships just for them that would be cheap, and would move like normal ships in melee matches, and would follow closely to the player it is meant to be following. A sorta-kinda-maybe easy example would be to have the drones 'attacking' the ship it is following, but doing no damage and acting like an interceptor and no animation. And then have a real attack that would make it stop acting like an interceptor and attack the enemy with missiles kinda like a viking, but not homing.

Oh, hah, l'll read yours now Siretu.. Made this when Tempests was the only one up. xD

[Red-Rocket]

The game isnt complete yet, there are still core elements that can be implemented, *upgrades, missiles for ships, more small ships* it isnt usefull to program an ai when later on that programming will go to waste, working on the 3 CORE elements is right, i just dont see the ai becoming advanced until the game itself is complete, (which it propably wont because if we make it so that the BC will always increase in defensive measures against new weps correctly then there is no stopping point theoreticly)

[Karl913]

Ok. Thanks for the quick replys. Just a theory l came up with in my head after seeing " Or a small army of fighters ". l agree there are many more important things to add first, and wanted to get this out there before l forget it. ( BTW, l still think this should be implemented though, and could become apart of the core game aswell. )

[Red-Rocket]

We could have a console upgrade that will alow another hangar that launches craft *valkeries maby* and is kinda like star battle and the campaign (HOTS where you control the hyperion) in a sense but its automatic. Im not completely for this idea because *everything is done by the players* but maby we should move on from that, there are some things that should and can be implemented

[Karl913]

Mmmmm... Game modes are the key to every and all and any answer and stuffz. =D

[DumbMarine]

The description of this is kinda vague. It sounds like these are things you attach to ships. What if it were an item you bought like the frequency nullfiier that small ships could carry? It would give a ship one protoss interceptor that is completely independent.

Describing it as an alternate AI or a new console seems like overkill.

[Tempest]

I think that having a drone radar pinging and manning weapons at the same time would be perfect. its wasteful just to have it sit on weapons, even if it shoots accurately onto incoming ships, it should cycle between nav and weapons pinging when theres nobody nearby. However at a strategic standpoint if your getting rushed those extra seconds you take to pull the drone off of the navigation or weapons could be costly maybe one vote for disconnect would be smart for ai's on consoles.