MP: Drone Frigates

[cloaked2222]

In 2.1, drones look pretty but rarely attack when the ship is attack moving. In 2.4 Fear made some changes to fix the balance (yay), but it looks like its yanking a pack of dogs back every few seconds. -_- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed2bS7EINp4&feature=youtu.be

The look of the hw1c drones in a circle around the frig is quite important. This needs work, I think Fear's kinda thrown in the towel for now so I'll try to work on it sometime.

Edit: Fear said to make each drone move to their original parade location around the ship, rather than just towards the rear of the ship. See kus_dronefrigate_parade.lua for the coordinates.

[Novaras]

The current behavior is fine but could definitely use tweaking to make it look better.

You're just gonna have to give up on the sphere for a move attacking drone frigate. Formations, guarding, nor parading will work.

Only 'soft' move commands allow move-fire behavior. 'Hard' move commands such as parade will override any attack order currently issued.

Currently the drones are simply told to move to where the frigate is located if they are too far from it. This could be improved quickly in various ways:

• tweaking the distance
• tweaking the ms of drones
• adding randomness to the location the drones are 'yanked' to
• periodically issue a parade command just to get the sphere shape back a bit (will cause uncontrollable downtime on firing from drone frigates)

Drones will mostly keep the sphere for a stationary frigate too.

[Novaras]

I don't recall - any changes happened here?

If you still think drones look bad, can issue a parade command every N script calls which lasts however many script calls after before resuming normal behavior.

Also, instead of drones moving 'to the frigate' when out of range, they could be paraded for some calls.

Do you want to do this or should I?

[cloaked2222]

Ya please work on this some more. I even noted in the b10 change log that we're still working to improve this. (you are =P)

At a minimum: "Fear said to make each drone move to their original parade location around the ship, rather than just towards the rear of the ship. See kus_dronefrigate_parade.lua for the coordinates."

[Novaras]

https://github.com/HW-PlayersPatch/Development/pull/175

[Novaras]

merged to b11: https://github.com/HW-PlayersPatch/Development/commit/a5ac36dea1ad8e0963d72882e93003dafa2c5d5a

[cloaked2222]

All tests of one unless noted 3+ tests.

2.3b9 tests: Drone frig tests done while not moving. 4 flak vs 70 h int = 86sec (3+ tests) 4 v ass vs 70 h int = 107 4 drone vs 70 h int = 109 4 flak vs 70 k int = 95sec (3+ tests) 4 v ass vs 70 k int = 133 4 drone vs 70 k int = 120

2.3b10 tests: 4 drones vs 70 h int=50 (3+ tests) (target 75) 4 drones vs 70 k int=75 (3+ tests) (target 85) 4 flak vs 10 k lights = 137 4 drones vs 10 k lights = 99 (target 120) 4 v ass vs 10 k lights = 78 4 k ass vs 10 k lights = 64

Drones are OP atm, suggested targets in bold. Vs fighter model is flak->drone->..v ass->........k ass. Vs corv model is k ass->..v ass->......drone->flak

Lets first do this: Damage 10->15 and FireDelay 0.2-0.3 (This is for better performance, GBX cut 24 hw1c to 14 HWR drones for performance, this basically negates that by spewing more bullets from one ship than a big group of fighters). Range 3000->2660 (flak is 2200 v ass is 2500) Then tweak penetration values as needed.

[Novaras]

why flak -> drone?

[cloaked2222]

Edit: updated targets above to give a more hw1c flavor of 'drones really pfft fighters'. I've updated the weapon locally on 9/22 to meet the targets.

Performance is real: Perhaps we should use 20 damage and 0.04 fire delay due to the above comment. dam

[Novaras]

already agree

Drones

desc

• Weapons:
• Kinetic gun:
• Delay between shots: 0.2 => 0.4 (+100%)
• Base damage: 10 => 20 (+100%)

[cloaked2222]

Resolved

[cloaked2222]

A few more things to fix on the new drone script:

1. When the drones start attacking, they first all move/swap to a different position in the parade. lol Maybe the code is accidentally mixing up drone 0-13 with 1-14 somewhere, idk.

2. When you recall the drones, a couple often get stuck underneath the frig until you move it. Compare 2.1 lua recall code to current.

3. The sphere lags behind the frig, try to keep it closer if possible (this is a bit better than v2.1 tho I think). Especially when attacking enemy fighters.

4. The build11 code causes Syncs in MP. The code is here: https://github.com/HW-PlayersPatch/File_Share/tree/master/WIP Remove the random element, and remove the distance element. Every few calls just issue a move order to where it needs to go, regardless of if its already there or not.

[cloaked2222]

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