Drones - An Idea

Your on to something here. Can we mod the apperance time in combat for a warp point? but still keep drone warp apperance time short.

SEV, more than a feeling.

Drones are already useful as the ultimate planet-killers. As things stand, there's hardly any defense against a bunch of super-fast drones, especially if you manage to slip 'em by cloaked.

Seeing half a dozen baseships simultaneously pop out of the same little warp point at once does seem silly, though.

Somebody has been reading David Weber/ Steve White's Starfire series I see.

One tweak to this idea is that a drone's combat movement could be very low. Thus to protect your ships from something like this they could just be positioned a distance away from the warp point.

If I had my way somebody...(not me cause i'm lazy) would create a Starfire mod that emulates as much as possible the books by David Weber.

I'm trying out the increase in warp transit time right now, but can't seem to find a WP that's gaurded!!!! one time in a million.

SEV, more than a feeling.

My enimies are placeing their ships and sats on the wrong side of the WP's. Finally found one to try out... the setting didn't work how I thought.

I changed min time between warp transits (ms) I set it to 5000. in combat at 6 sec, my first ship appeared, then my second ship appeared very soon after that (in other words not 5 sec later).

Has anyone played around with these settings already?
SEV, more than a feeling.

I'm not sure it's a great idea, try playing against humans. Every warp point in my empire has minefields and heavy sats guarding it, choke points leading to my capital system would have a battlestation as well.

Making warp transit even more difficult would make assaulting a fixed position with only one entrance impossible. Even a baseship with minesweeping is going to get nuked by even a moderate amount of defenses that the attacker will never be able to overwhelm. By the time the second baseship is emerging, the defender's weapons will have cycled. And if he knows your fighting for it, he may have a fleet of his own there.

No, having to emerge in one bunched up central mass, usually in the middle of his satellite kill zone, is challenge enough, thanks.

As for drones, one idea I had last night was allowing them to carry boarding parties! Not only cool for capturing ships, but also was thinking of the 'War of the Worlds' scenario, with planet vs planet wars, with Martians jumping out of their pods and enslaving the planet! (can you tell I have war of the worlds music set up in my game right now)

All that is done before the naked stars is remembered

Are you suggesting troop on drones, or boarding parties. Both are a cool idea. capture a planet with a cloaking drone (with troops), or capture ships with boarding parties. Does this currently work, or is this something that would need to be modded?

SEV, more than a feeling.

AFAIK, units (such as drones) can't carry other units (such as troops) in cargo, but modding boarding parties to fit on drones or other units MIGHT work... I know you couldn't do that in SE4, but it might be possible in SE5...

At the very least, you could always create a "neutron warhead" or "cyanide warhead" which can be installed on drones or mines or something and has the Kills Crew damage type... then you could cripple enemy ships and send in the boarding parties later... heck, you could probably even create a "subverter warhead" which (temporarily) takes control of the enemy ship using the same damage type that the psychic Allegiance Subverter uses...

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The power of the ancients is now yours to command. You are truly the Master... of the obvious

This is an area that needs to be exploited by the borg. They should be the masters of ship capture.

SEV, more than a feeling.

In the starfire universe, mines can't be placed directly on the warppoints creating an open area around them. Also, the idea is to use the drones to mass transit (causes about 10 - 20 percent to die) and missile spam the defenders, then follow with ships (one at a time, unless you don't mind your ships suicideing). I like the idea if you can slow down transit time and make mines have a minimum distance from the warp point. I might start working on a Starfire mod, if someone could make warp points like that...

By the way, in Starfire, the defender had no idea you were coming untill the first ship transited. Only the laser buoys would get shots off before the attacker opened fire, so you didn't put forts TOO close or the attacker would own them with primarys (really short range, ignores shields and armor) and forcebeams (a tractor beam and a repulser combined to rip the target apart). Good game and books.