Combat Drones?

[Heretical]

Slightly less than half the size of an SRV and each one little more than "powerplant, drive, thrusters, flight controller and a weapon", combat drones are small automated drones that can be launched from a suitably equiped ship. They are fast and manouverable but lightly arnoured and shieldless and have no jump/supercruise capability. They can boost if required (although this significantly reduces their flight time if done repeatadly). They can roam some distance from their mother ship but are limited by fuel and ammunition capacity. Capable of opperating under AI control or being flown remotely they can be used to discorage attackers or as recomisence vehicles or sentry guards depending upon requirements. Commanders could choose between a range of drones with different weapon capabilities much like choosing fighters.

A Class 2 drone hanger can despatch one drone and carries two spares in a packed form (that need time to assemble in the hanger bay if needed). Larger hanger bays might carry more spares and might allow for more than one drone to be launched and opperated at the same time (how many would depend upon the games capabilities). Drones would return to the mother ship when getting low on fuel or out of ammunition if on AI, They may also be used as guided missles as a last resort if desired where they do considerable damage to the target due to both mass and power-plant explosion. They can be re-fueled and re-armed (if carrying a weapon that consumes ammunition) in the hanger and dock in a similar way to fighters.

Gives smaller class vessels some of the advantages of carrying fighters but to a lesser extent or offers larger vessels the possibility of hosting drone "swarms" although I suspect that might prove taxing to FDev to go that far...

 

[CMDR ROGER]

Fighter Hangar

For details about Ship-Launched Fighter models, see Ship-Launched Fighters. A module designed to house ship-launched vehicles. — In-Game Description The Fighter Hangar is an internal module that can accommodate Ship-Launched Fighters. It is only compatible with a subset of ships that have been...

elite-dangerous.fandom.com

Already implemented...

 

[Heretical]

I was thinking of something more compact than SLF, and that doesn't neccesarilly need multi-crew to use.

A way of providing some of the SLF capability to smaller ships perhaps...

 

[SlickPBW]

Like torpedos?

 

[Heretical]

Like torpedos?

Not really, no. Torpedoes are like their name sakes, single shot high damage guided missiles but relatively slow moving. Good on large slow moving targets, not so good with a faster moving ship.

I was thinking closer to pocket sized SLF, nimble and fast and capable of harrassing a target and doing some damage as a way of mixing it up a little when using small ships that can't carry SLF's. Ramming with one would be a last resort I would have thought. I'd suggest they have little in the way of defence though so speed agility is the only thing keeping them in the fight.

Small freighters could use them to defend from and distract attackers while getting away for example...

Just thought it was a natural development to SLF's for smaller vessels with some possibilities for non-combat use if desired.

 

[Jmanis]

I was thinking closer to pocket sized SLF, nimble and fast and capable of harrassing a target and doing some damage as a way of mixing it up a little when using small ships that can't carry SLF's. Ramming with one would be a last resort I would have

Small freighters could use them to defend from and distract attackers while getting away for example...

That's exactly what SLFs do, though, and many ships suited to non-com roles can fit them.

 

[aRJay]

Not really, no. Torpedoes are like their name sakes, single shot high damage guided missiles but relatively slow moving. Good on large slow moving targets, not so good with a faster moving ship.

I was thinking closer to pocket sized SLF, nimble and fast and capable of harrassing a target and doing some damage as a way of mixing it up a little when using small ships that can't carry SLF's. Ramming with one would be a last resort I would have thought. I'd suggest they have little in the way of defence though so speed agility is the only thing keeping them in the fight.

Small freighters could use them to defend from and distract attackers while getting away for example...

Just thought it was a natural development to SLF's for smaller vessels with some possibilities for non-combat use if desired.

That's exactly what SLFs do, though, and many ships suited to non-com roles can fit them.

Yes, but the smallest ship that can carry an SLF is the medium pad Keelback.

The SLFs are all crewed fighter designs that have been modified for remote operation but they are still physically quite large when assembled which along with the need for another hatch through the hull limits the ships that can carry them.

OP is talking about something designed from the ground up to be an RPV with a hull/frame just large enough to carry thrusters, weapons etc. and presumably like limpets launched through the cargo hatch.

 

[CMDR ROGER]

Not really, no. Torpedoes are like their name sakes, single shot high damage guided missiles but relatively slow moving. Good on large slow moving targets, not so good with a faster moving ship.

I was thinking closer to pocket sized SLF, nimble and fast and capable of harrassing a target and doing some damage as a way of mixing it up a little when using small ships that can't carry SLF's. Ramming with one would be a last resort I would have thought. I'd suggest they have little in the way of defence though so speed agility is the only thing keeping them in the fight.

Small freighters could use them to defend from and distract attackers while getting away for example...

Just thought it was a natural development to SLF's for smaller vessels with some possibilities for non-combat use if desired.

Kind of interesting, but not really practical. SLFs compliment larger and non-combat ships because of their fast turn rate and speed. They wouldn't compliment small nimble ships well, which are supposed to be small and nimble on their own without needing dedicated fighters to help. Think about it, would you not be annoyed by NPCs using these alongside their already hard to hit ships?

 

[Dragsham]

See how it's twisted? How Ops original post made to look like already existing SLFs when that's not what Op was talking about at all. I see them as anti gank. A countermeasure not requiring a large cargo slot but rather a smaller slot. Size 1 for example.
Yeah I'm up for it if it gives the freighter a window to krank up his fsd and high wake.
Stop being so negative !
Give folks who have ideas breadth to voice it and others like myself time to acknowledge its potential.

 

[CMDR ROGER]

Yeah I'm up for it if it gives the freighter a window to krank up his fsd and high wake.

If your ship doesn't support SLF bays, it's nimble enough to not need this.

 

[Dragsham]

The point is saving a slf bay instead of cargo negates the whole point of the freighters capacity. This is a fix for that issue

 

[CMDR ROGER]

The point is saving a slf bay instead of cargo negates the whole point of the freighters capacity. This is a fix for that issue

You choose between cargo capacity and defence. As far as I'm concerned, this is balanced and is not a problem. It probably would be a problem if we just had "paper light" versions of everything so players stop thinking about balancing defence and other factors.

 

[Dragsham]

There is no balance between a murder boat and a cargo vessel. Spoken like a cmdr soley in solo.
The coming PP changes with a pvp angle will require anything and every possible countermeasure a cargo vessel can get its hands on to thwart said murder boat.
Chaff, mines, drones. Just makes sense.

 

[aRJay]

There is no balance between a murder boat and a cargo vessel. Spoken like a cmdr soley in solo.
The coming PP changes with a pvp angle will require anything and every possible countermeasure a cargo vessel can get its hands on to thwart said murder boat.
Chaff, mines, drones. Just makes sense.

Hopefully not if we don’t PP.

 

[Scoob]

Are we talking SLF but lighter and without a requirement for Crew? Might be fun, and an interesting counter to SLF's perhaps? In combat, especially if I'm in a smaller ship geared for killing bigger ships, the SLF they launch is more of a threat than the actual ship.

 

[aRJay]

Are we talking SLF but lighter and without a requirement for Crew? Might be fun, and an interesting counter to SLF's perhaps? In combat, especially if I'm in a smaller ship geared for killing bigger ships, the SLF they launch is more of a threat than the actual ship.

Well the SLFs crew is sat on the ship with you which is why you can swap seats in flight, this is just a smaller drone than the SLF that needs fewer or no mods to the ship so it can be carried by anything. I think.

 

[CMDR ROGER]

There is no balance between a murder boat and a cargo vessel. Spoken like a cmdr soley in solo.

I've never brought PvP up, so that's very observant, actually.

The coming PP changes with a pvp angle will require anything and every possible countermeasure a cargo vessel can get its hands on to thwart said murder boat.

You ONLY need engineered engines to escape a ganker or pirate effectively. If you don't have that, you're begging to be hit.

 

[metatheurgist]

The point is saving a slf bay instead of cargo negates the whole point of the freighters capacity. This is a fix for that issue

But for this feature you would need a module and cargo space for limpets.

 

[Jmanis]

There is no balance between a murder boat and a cargo vessel. Spoken like a cmdr soley in solo.
The coming PP changes with a pvp angle will require anything and every possible countermeasure a cargo vessel can get its hands on to thwart said murder boat.
Chaff, mines, drones. Just makes sense.

But for this feature you would need a module and cargo space for limpets.

... which is pretty much why they are indistinct from SLFs.

But, let's pretend that somehow these are functionally different from SLFs. I disagree, but that's not relevant.

If i read the Op right, we want a limpet- like capability, but they're actually combat drones. The intent is to give smaller ships access to SLFs something(?). I believe there was also talk of "distracting an aggressor" rolled in there, and now we're talking about lack of defensive options for transporters.

Only question i have is "How?", and specifically, how this is somehow going to provide a defensive capability, without it being dual-purposed into an offensive one, which is the true problem with fittings in Elite.

Let's go with "distracting an aggressor"... how does it do that? Ostensibly, it achieves that by being an existential threat to the aggressor, so much so it will force them to decide not to engage the target, willingly or not, because either:

• they're going to die, or
• they're going to fail if they don't do something about it.

So my question here is, if that's solved, why wouldn't an aggressor use that against hsulers and other non-com ships? Aggressors don't fit cargo racks because there's no combat utility to them.

By introducing combat utility to them through this module... if they're sufficiently "good" at distracting an aggressor, combat ships will fit them purely for that reason, and be used as a tool for taking out noncom vessels.

If they're ineffective for a combat ship to use them against an aggressor, then it's unlikely they'll fulfil their intended purpose as a defensive fit for smaller ships as they are ineffective against aggressors.

This is because it's dual-purpose. It can be used for both offensive and defensive reasons... and is true for almost all fittings in ED, so the tradeoff ED has created its cargo source vs defensive capability, and murdeboats will always have the upper hand in that equation.

If we're looking for ways of smaller ahips being able to compete, or non-com ships being able to evade aggressors, right now that's just a sliding scale. What's needed is fittings which provide good defensive capability at the detriment of destroying other ships.

An example would be a turreted beam laser which does no damage but, say, applies the chaff effect to a struck target and the originating ships weapons that aren't of this type, and disrupts fixed weapons equally. So you could have multiple of these beams to distract fire away from multiple targets on a long fsd cooldown.

Alternately, a weapon hardpoint which, when activated, rapidly draws WEP and ENG, but doubles your mass lock factor to hasten retreat. A minor dual use situation in using it to slow down a retreating entity, but the draw on wep and eng means you can't sustain damage on the target.

But these combat drones, which bluntly sound a bit OP even compared to SLFs (that PP damage on impact bit... oof) sound very dual use just like SLFs, and would just be another tool for murdeboats, which wouldn't help smaller ships/ haulers at all.

Note: just on the PP peice.. i wouldn't put stock in that too much. It's not been said that PP is all about PvP... i would find that to be a horrible approach. Rather... PP would give people a reason to do PvP. That is, pvp is incentivised in the context of PP. That is not exclusive to the idea of solo/PvE still being incentivised for PP as well.

One goal of PP2 is to make it more accessible to people (per the FU video). Forcing people into an open-only PvP architecture would work against that.

 

[Dragsham]

Who said anything about open only.
It was suggested many moons ago that pvp orientated PP should exist and be rewarded by a higher % handed in. And single/solo cmdrs a lesser %. This way both parties are placated.
Drones as regards offensive use.
Most murder boats (I have 2) are limited by their armoured power plants output. With a power gobbling fsd interdictor and prismatics, shielded fsd, etc, powers at a premium.
Whereas cargo vessels can have an overcharged power plant and are not so concerned with limited output.
So make the drones internal unit size 1 or 2 a high power hungry module. Thus curtailing its use as a viable offensive weapon.
Also drones deployed from the rear of a vessel would have a much bigger impact on an attacking vessel that's BEHIND the defender. Whereas drones deployed by an offensive vessel would have flying time to reach the intended target. This "balance" would need to be fine tuned to reflect this.
Most PP cargo vessels are either cutters or type 9s 10s or even corvettes. Plenty of scope for another countermeasure.
A murder boat rails or PAs or torps etc have limited scope due to their blinged out hull and shields, & module protection.
A drones module makes sense for a defensive capability. I personally would not wanna give up my limited power (my fdl has x4 short range super pen rails gobbling up huge amounts of power) on my killship.