Interstellar Missiles

you've dismissed drones, but really this is what they are. currently their too expensive...

but if they're cheaper and moved slower and had a ton of structure points... they would be difficult to shoot down and move slowly towards their target.

SEV, more than a feeling.

Uh, I know you said it already but a drone does all that.

A single conventional warhead would be a wet fart on any sort of planetary scale. We've already got the nukes, and it'd be easier enough to mod in plague, anti-condition, etc warheads.

Take IRM's drones (which use their own specialist engines, etc that cut cost vastly), make your own warheads, tweak numbers a bit to re-balance. To really do right however, you need to be able to order drones to "Retreat" and not blow up on the first thing it finds. That's the tricky part.

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Easy to fix, just change it in VehiculeUnitTypes.txt.

Why we can't control drones :

Unit Capability 11 Type := Cannot Be Controlled By Player Once Launched

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Can we say Drone+Planetary bombardment weapons? Doesn't even need modding, and I can sure see a Drone being able to carry a rack of bombs of some kind that it drops from orbit. Planets are easy enough to hit.

You can do the same with fighters...

That would certainly work yes. I'd prefer deploying satellites to do that job, but you'd need a ship to first get out there yes... Not possible in IRM though, due to how drones have been very specifically designed to be Missiles there.

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Imo drones should NOT be totaly controlable, becose they would then be too good.

Imo you should have only these options with drones in tactical combat:
1) Make it retreat (then NO other movement orders)
2) Select target to ram without posibility to change, unless target disapears (destroyed/captured/retreated)
3) full controll of targeting (like now)

I've never been able to give drones orders to specifically target one ship in a fleet. They all go for the same ship and once that ship is dead, they all go for the next one. Sure, doing complex maneuvers with them is overpowered, but I'd at least like to Aim them.

Mind you, I also believe drones should not be allowed to have non-ramming weapons on them, like IRM. Drones that can be armed with Wave Motion Guns... that by itself is overpowered (since they can move, and move FAST).

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

No, the wording you gave (especially a vague definition of what you mean by "Missile") in your first post along with the contextual knowledge we have means it didn't make sense. Because at least in stock, we know that an Anti-Planet drone could do 500k damage which is half a Sphereworld's total facility structure (read: one-shot kill to any planet). It's bloody easy to make such a "Missile" - have a super high damage drone warhead.

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

If it's "simple", then it means it needs much more careful (as opposed to long) explanation. "Your Logic is not my Logic" is surprisingly applicable to many situations. As far as I can tell, you've just messed up the point even further by seemingly going against what you said before.

Well whatever. Re-explain if you wish, though do not feel obliged to.

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

What you are describing are in current game terms drones large long range anti planet missiles which are very powerful but very vulnerable to point defence and not that controllable. If you want a class of specialist unmanned vehicle (probes) you could base it on the drone as it is and mod it to include sensors and scanners et al.

I personally would prefer it that drones did not become viable fighter substitutes or too general purpose.

One of the greatest lures of SE is the number of different unit types that are available to design: drones,satellites,troops,weapon platforms,ships,bases,fighters. Most 4X games have only ships.

If you combine that with the different roles each one unit can play you get a plethora of "unit types".

As a result it is only natural that ppl will request more specialized unit types, even if there is a way to mod that concept up to a point.

What Darfix wants if I understand him is perhaps the ability to "launch" missiles from planets, ships, and bases that have an explicit, irrevocable and unalterable target order as an integral part of the launch command (one that can target only ships, bases and planets.)

This is something that can be emulated to a point by modding on the "drone unit mechanics" using a unit graphic that represents a missile.

However the UI has to be hard coded to supply the complete "effect" of launching someting on a target on a system scale.

Then the problem isn't the drones attacking planets, it's the planet being too weak against drones.

Some of the race drones look like missiles, others like fighters and some just look weirds . And drones in IRM carry just engines, warheads, armor and shields.

I get the feeling part of the confusion was arising because Darfix is simply trying to present his Idea, whereas everyone is thinking "how do we implement this?" instead of the idea itself. More relevantly though...

Darfix's definition of a "Drone" is "unmanned unit that can have weapons on it" whereas most of us treat "Drones" in the idealised IRM sense of "cheap, fast, long-range missile".

In other words, he wants a new Drone type unit which can't be armed with weapons and instead, has warheads of various abilities (including conventional damage), likely also with different movement/defence/supply_usage and armour/shields to the "weapons Drone". We went off on a tangent because we've already seen this done in IRM aside from "special effects warheads" which are easy enough to implement so aren't worth specifically mentioning (until someone reports that it doesn't work despite intuition).

Is this what you meant Darfix? You want "weapon Drones" and "Long-Range Missiles" to be separate units so as to specialise them further? Thus you want "Weapon Drones" to not have warheads on them, not instantly go kamikaze; and "Missile Drones" (completely different unit type/chassis) to be cheap things that can only have warheads on them (as well as [cheap] armour/shields/engines) that only think about ramming (planets) as they have no weapons to shoot.

Mmm, a pretty average case of miscommunication. This isn't the place to comment further on it so I'll leave it there I guess.

Incidentally, I'd say if you do implement such a split in Drone jobs, ships shouldn't be able to have "Missile Drone" launchers. Otherwise any sensible human will park their fleet 1 turn's distance away from a planet and unload all "Missile Drones" from there instead of from 10 turns away (since even the AI knows to guard waypoints).

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

It may just be me, but this sounds like it's a matter of asthetics. Drones are for all intents and purposes, interplanetary missiles. The fact that some shipset designers didn't make them look like missiles is irrelavent in terms of game mechanics. After all, the missiles plying interstellar space will probably bear little resemblance to those we so enjoy lobbing about our planet.
As for small, consider the following: The largest nuclear bombs ever made weighed in the neighbourhood of 40,000 pounds. That's 0.02kT. The anti-planetary warheads in stock SE5 are 20kT, or 1000 times 'bigger'. Consider then that given maxed engines and nothing else, a large drone can accomodate 7 such warheads. Even assuming you're using modern day nuclear technology, that's a hell of a big boom in anybody's books.
In terms of the UI aspect of it, if you want to drop a drone on somebody, you launch it from the planet, then give it an attack order on whatever defenceless planet has garnered your ire. Sure it's a little more click intensive than clicking on 'Launch Missile', but really, we have enough buttons as it is without adding one so specific.
As it stands, I don't really think the difference between 'Interstellar Missiles' and Drones is great enough to warrant seperate unit types. It'd kind of be like wanting seperate unit types for anti-ship fighters and anti-fighter fighters.

Suction feet are not to be trifled with!

I keep reading this thread, and wonder. Look at today's missle systems and other gear, such as UAVs. We obviously know the future will have more advanced weapons systems, that is a given. We have to take into account that the cruise missles today are rather smart and getting moreso at a fast clip, while UAV tech is skyrocketing now. UAVs can be made for bomb runs, even suicidal ones. Hence we have drones designed to ram and boom. That's the same as a cruise missle, ram and boom.

In all technicality, we already have drones like SEV, just shorter range and smaller. Since we don't need fins or wings in space, due to lack of atmo to push around in flight, they can be made in any shape desired to best house components and/or aesthetic intimidation.

We already have missles as weapons for capital ships that more or less match today. Drones are the ICBM on steroids with a new haircut.

And it's never one button to fire off a missle.

"Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and will always long to return." ~Leonardo DaVinci

In my MegaEvil Empire of Terror(TM) that's the only way to launch a missile.

But seriously, in a realistic point of view, you are right, with the exception of FTL missiles.