What we really need are attack drones, bit like the Thargoids have.
Drones coming for powerplay
- Thread starter Space Ranger
- Start date
How did Daily Mail reporters get into the conversation?
"The collection drones have two modes of operation. The first is a targeted mode where you select something to collect and fire the drone which then collects the cargo or mining chunk and returns it to the ship – make sure that your cargo door is open! This will consume the drone. There’s also an area collection mode so when fired without a target the drone will collect what it can within a radius before it expires."
It doesn't make sense that the "drone is consumed" .. what, it just explode for no reason after its done collecting?
No, put is so that it uses the ship fuel, and it should at least be a internal class 2 for 1 drone.
Higher rating = better fuel consumption
Higher class = +1 drone
That way a mining anaconda can strip the shield and have 7 drones working at a time (class 8).. A rating E would use 1 fuel pr drone (i believe a sidewinder as the smallest ship has a fuel tank of 4), a rating A drone would use 0.25 fuel pr drone etc.
As for the pirating part, having more drones would mean collecting canisters that much faster and be on your way..
I think that having the fuel consumption would balance things out a lot more then having the drone consumed, as it would force people to think before using them (do i have enough fuel to get back to the nearest station or fuel-able star? and as such would sometimes still have to go with the old manual cargo hatch). also, it makes more sense then the drone just disappears.
Let me know that you think of my idea, or if you have your own idea of this topic
I fully agree with you. I really wish they stop making drone expendable. It is counter intuitive and honestly...stupid. Stupid in a level that auto-dock would be consumable too.
For your ideas I would further add that these drones are almost next to useless for mining if they are consumable. Since either you run out of drones sooner you can say "I'm full" OR picking enough drones is out of having enough refineries and cargo space. Thus utterly counter productive. Same problems wold persist on pirates as well. I mean if pirates force type-9 unload its cargo...that mean 400+ cans in space. If they keep drones consumable I doubts they would have 100+ charges.
So if a drone is consumed after use, how many rock fragments can they pick up? 1? Because when mining, 1 fragment, does not make 1 ton of ore. In fact, sometimes it takes upwards of 10 to 15 fragments to make 1 ton. Hmm, theory crafting time!
Take the following Asp build, with the limpet controller standing in for a drone controller.
So with a cargo hold of 104,you get 104 drones. For the sake of argument, let's say a drone only collects 1 fragment at a time. Now let's say that every fragment is a solid 10% gold. You'd only get 10 tonnes of gold per every 100 drones. Now let's say you get galatic average for that Gold of around 9k. So that's 90k per run. Now let's say drones are 300 credits each. 100 drones, that's 30,000 credits. So you're netting 60k per trip. Not bad. Not great. Considering an average trade run will net you double in profit in a properly equipped trade ASP. Yeah, mining is still not worth it. Even if it is quicker.
I suppose we'll have to wait and see, however, I'm not holding my breath for this to fix things. If each drone could take around 10 fragments before returning to the ship, that'd be great. If the drones were incredibly cheap, that'd be great too. However, currently I don't count on FD to make this a legitimate fix to mining. It's a band-aid at best.
Take the following Asp build, with the limpet controller standing in for a drone controller.
[Asp]U: 0I Chaff Launcher
U: 0I Point Defence
U: 0A Shield Booster
U: 0A Shield Booster
S: 1F/G Pulse Laser
S: 1F/G Pulse Laser
S: 1G/G Multi-cannon
S: 1G/G Multi-cannon
M: 2D/F Mining Laser
M: 2D/F Mining Laser
BH: 1I Lightweight Alloy
RB: 5A Power Plant
TM: 5A Thrusters
FH: 5A Frame Shift Drive
EC: 4A Life Support
PC: 4A Power Distributor
SS: 5A Sensors
FS: 5C Fuel Tank (Capacity: 32)
6: 6E Cargo Rack (Capacity: 64)
5: 5E Cargo Rack (Capacity: 32)
3: 3A Shield Generator
3: 3A Refinery
3: 3A Hatch Breaker Limpet Controller
2: 2E Cargo Rack (Capacity: 4)
2: 2E Cargo Rack (Capacity: 4)
---
Shield: 189.76 MJ
Power : 16.18 MW retracted (79%)
19.20 MW deployed (94%)
20.40 MW available
Cargo : 104 T
Fuel : 32 T
Mass : 395.8 T empty
531.8 T full
Range : 28.79 LY unladen
23.16 LY laden
Price : 27,567,371 CR
Re-Buy: 1,378,369 CR @ 95% insurance
U: 0I Point Defence
U: 0A Shield Booster
U: 0A Shield Booster
S: 1F/G Pulse Laser
S: 1F/G Pulse Laser
S: 1G/G Multi-cannon
S: 1G/G Multi-cannon
M: 2D/F Mining Laser
M: 2D/F Mining Laser
BH: 1I Lightweight Alloy
RB: 5A Power Plant
TM: 5A Thrusters
FH: 5A Frame Shift Drive
EC: 4A Life Support
PC: 4A Power Distributor
SS: 5A Sensors
FS: 5C Fuel Tank (Capacity: 32)
6: 6E Cargo Rack (Capacity: 64)
5: 5E Cargo Rack (Capacity: 32)
3: 3A Shield Generator
3: 3A Refinery
3: 3A Hatch Breaker Limpet Controller
2: 2E Cargo Rack (Capacity: 4)
2: 2E Cargo Rack (Capacity: 4)
---
Shield: 189.76 MJ
Power : 16.18 MW retracted (79%)
19.20 MW deployed (94%)
20.40 MW available
Cargo : 104 T
Fuel : 32 T
Mass : 395.8 T empty
531.8 T full
Range : 28.79 LY unladen
23.16 LY laden
Price : 27,567,371 CR
Re-Buy: 1,378,369 CR @ 95% insurance
So with a cargo hold of 104,you get 104 drones. For the sake of argument, let's say a drone only collects 1 fragment at a time. Now let's say that every fragment is a solid 10% gold. You'd only get 10 tonnes of gold per every 100 drones. Now let's say you get galatic average for that Gold of around 9k. So that's 90k per run. Now let's say drones are 300 credits each. 100 drones, that's 30,000 credits. So you're netting 60k per trip. Not bad. Not great. Considering an average trade run will net you double in profit in a properly equipped trade ASP. Yeah, mining is still not worth it. Even if it is quicker.
I suppose we'll have to wait and see, however, I'm not holding my breath for this to fix things. If each drone could take around 10 fragments before returning to the ship, that'd be great. If the drones were incredibly cheap, that'd be great too. However, currently I don't count on FD to make this a legitimate fix to mining. It's a band-aid at best.
I like expendable drones, but I'd also like to see a manually guided grapple that doesn't use ammo, just takes up an internal slot.
This would give three options:
1. Manually collect with your ships cargo scoop, status quo
2. Deploy expendable drones at a small hit to profits. Automatic retrieval. Can deploy many at once.
3. Mini-game to manually guide a tethered grapple claw to the debris and retract it. One at a time, uses an internal slot, doesn't use 'ammo', and your ship can stay where it is.
Plus if you are attacked while the claw is deployed, you need to allow it to retract before you can close your cargo scoop door and get away.
This would give three options:
1. Manually collect with your ships cargo scoop, status quo
2. Deploy expendable drones at a small hit to profits. Automatic retrieval. Can deploy many at once.
3. Mini-game to manually guide a tethered grapple claw to the debris and retract it. One at a time, uses an internal slot, doesn't use 'ammo', and your ship can stay where it is.
Plus if you are attacked while the claw is deployed, you need to allow it to retract before you can close your cargo scoop door and get away.
The risk/cost is you've lost interior cargo space to the drone module? eg: 2 or 4t of space gone.
What I'm unclear about is how much space these disposable drones use?
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From what it sounds like, a drone can actually make multiple trips before it expires, which DOES make it useful for mining and makes it SUPER useful for pirates. I'll be interested to see if they MUST expire after a single use - meaning that you'd pretty much ONLY want to use them for mass cargo collection, or for grabbing a single canister that you absolutely cannot allow to be accidentally squished on your windshield - or if they can return to your hold with their battery drained, but still have a little power left for more shenanigans.
Since they look approximately cargo-canister sized, I would expect them to take up 1 cargo space.
Since they look approximately cargo-canister sized, I would expect them to take up 1 cargo space.
Along with 70% of the WOW community, 25% of the rest being Druids and the other 5% were all sorts, everyone had at least 1 hunter character and anyone who had a lvl50 character also had a DK.
I would prefer an hour out and 5 minutes in. So you can deploy the drone for an hour or so and recall it for 5 minutes to refuel etc. It doesn't happen automatically so if you forget to recall it in time, you'll have to go scooping to get it back. A small display shows the drone's fuel status and damage status. Repair is done via the same repair module used for ships systems. I don't even care if you have to leave 1 tonne of cargo space spare for the drone to park in.
Re-usable drones make more sense. Who would create all that complex electronics and build a mechanical structure just to have it SD after a couple of minutes? That's just plain stupid.
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Love it
She'll V Power now available for all discerning CMDR's
I wonder how these things will work for mining since collected fragments go to your refinery instead of the cargo hold and once full it releases just 1t of the completed mineral/metal, so unless you have hundreds of these things, for mining they won't be very good since one asteroid does not fill one cargo hold...unless they remove the rather silly limit on dropped fragments from an asteroid (seriously just 10 little fragments from a huge asteroid?).
They could also make a mining variant that requires one equipment slot on the ship but fires just one reusable drone.
They could also make a mining variant that requires one equipment slot on the ship but fires just one reusable drone.
Press a button to send drones to collect ore huh?
How does this do anything BUT make mining more boring? It takes away the only skill element.
The consolifying continues eh?
profits fun for many, and scooping is the most boring thing in the game. Truth is nothing to do with mining takes any skill currently, and it still won't with drones though you will be able to make slightly more than 0cr/hour
Scooping might be boring for you, personally I find trading the most boring thing by far but I don't whine about it and ask them to change it, I simply do something else.
As for 0cr hr, I currently make 345,000-380,000 per 44-46 minutes from mining. Sure trading can earn more but still, it's light years from 0cr hr.
I'm happy to see them coming I'm just a little peeved that they're disposable.
ill withhold judgement until I see how long they last until they expire but I would have rather seen it as a module with higher classes having more drones that could be destroyed but would not expire on their own.
ill withhold judgement until I see how long they last until they expire but I would have rather seen it as a module with higher classes having more drones that could be destroyed but would not expire on their own.
That's actually not such a bad idea! I would also love to use the thing for hunting space whales in the future expansions, or the very least Type 9s.
Definitely not accurate from launch till WotLK. Paladins by far were the most numerous. This accounts for instances, raiding (40 man and beyond) and PvP both with open world before BGs, and after during the GM/HWL grinds. Hunters really didn't pick up in popularity until midway through Burning Crusade when they were made easier to play. In fact, Warlocks outnumbered Hunters as well since they were very good at CC, DPS, PvP and soloing (they were one of the few classes that could actually effectively kite.)
I don't recall them being particularly popular in Arenas either, though Paladins and Warlocks both were very popular choices.
As for me, I was part of the 1%. Not many protection warriors from launch till WotLK. Spent a lot of time playing with Ciderhelm long before the TankSpot days doing crazy warrior only groups and other fun stuff.
Gotta admit, I miss those 18+ hour Alterac Valley battles. No idea what the game's like now. I left when it was evident they were dumbing things down to ridiculous levels. I actually went back to EQ at that point.
As far as the upcoming drones, I'm trying not to speculate too much on how they'll work. I'm content to wait and see once they go into beta. ED's slowly getting closer to offering as much content as X-Rebirth which apparently seems to be inspiration for the devs. Not sure if that's a good sign, or not.
If this was a thing I'd go into an ice ring looking for the white whale.
I'm sure Captain Ahab would agree.
I don't get why all the fuss either to be honest. I'm sure there is a place for the drone but I doubt that I will use them. Part of the occupation of mining requires some work - so what? Some flying skill, and setting up with good thrusters is about all you need. To me, the biggest thing they could do to improve the mining experience is actually, I would have thought, a very simple thing to implement. That is, after chipping the first lump and getting an analysis then, from that point on (while at the location) just label the rock with the info as was found in the analysis. Very simple. The ship's computer should be able to overlay that info onto our HUD, much as it does for the planets and the countdown as we get closer. Surely that can't be too hard!