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Re: Drones! I love it!

#76
Im wondering if we could abstract drones to some density-field function and particle effects?
:think:

This abstraction could be dependent on the amount of drones in an area.
So a single drone would still be handled as an independent object, but beyond some treshhold of basically indistinguishable drones.
(Same mothership + same command + roughly same location) they get unified into a single "group of drones" object which is basically a bubble filled with particle effect drones.

So an explorer shooting prospector drones on asteroids would use "normal" fully simulated drones (however that looks) and an enders game like supercarrier would eject particle effect clouds of drones which behave then as a very low number of individual objects.


Collision detection could then mostly be foregone (and when its used, its a probabilistic action on the whole cloud).

This would remove the necessity for hard drone number limitations but would require some serious thought in the abstraction department.

Comments? Critique?
Last edited by Cornflakes_91 on Thu Oct 29, 2015 7:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
Post

Re: Drones! I love it!

#78
Cornflakes_91 wrote:Im wondering if we could abstract drones to some density-field function and particle effects?
That sounds like a great way to scale drones.

The downside is that targeting individual drones would become impossible for the player. No locking on, no leading shots, no ability to have a valid interaction with the swarm. Special interactions with swarms will need to be coded. Perhaps 'any shot that hits the swarm has a chance to take out one drone' and/or 'any missile that explodes in the swarm takes out a volume-based percentage' then you can interact with them. Point defenses, if they exist, would also be a good defense.

There also might be a jarring transition between the particle and individual modes of the swarm, as well as complications on how they are rendered so as to not look bad. Josh has already indicated he has a good solution for asteroid field popping, with sprite standins; this would likely work for a drone swarm too.
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Re: Drones! I love it!

#80
MyrddinE wrote: The downside is that targeting individual drones would become impossible for the player. No locking on, no leading shots, no ability to have a valid interaction with the swarm. Special interactions with swarms will need to be coded. Perhaps 'any shot that hits the swarm has a chance to take out one drone' and/or 'any missile that explodes in the swarm takes out a volume-based percentage' then you can interact with them. Point defenses, if they exist, would also be a good defense.
.
well, if theres a blob with 300 drones does it matter that you cant target em individually? :shrug:


And it wouldnt need that much custom rules, and could share them with field function mine fields.

For AOE damage it could compare volume of the blast, volume and density of the group and deduct as many drones as would be destroyed.

For non-aoe shots it could calculate some effective cross section of the drone group (drone cross section x number of drones) and compute a chance to hit from that.
For dense groups something like 100% or so xD
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Re: Drones! I love it!

#83
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
AbhChallenger wrote:I still think it is easier and simply a better idea to remove combat drones altogether.
Where is any of the field function stuff limited to combat drones?
You want that stuff for other types of drones I can understand. For combat drones I have always been against them.
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Re: Drones! I love it!

#84
AbhChallenger wrote: You want that stuff for other types of drones I can understand. For combat drones I have always been against them.
For the same reason you are against combat drones i tried hard to make drones different from small ships.

With almost everyone bombarding me with "i want drones to do the same things as small ships" :roll:


May think about some way to make everyone happy instead of just flatly stating that they should be removed :P
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Re: Drones! I love it!

#85
Cornflakes_91 wrote:May think about some way to make everyone happy instead of just flatly stating that they should be removed :P
He was sharing an opinion. An opinion that I'm of the same mind.

I don't like the idea of drones in a combat situation either. At least what I've experienced with drones that is (EVE Online). EVE's drones felt incredibly OP due to balance. If things are balanced REALLY well, maybe.
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Re: Drones! I love it!

#86
DWMagus wrote:
Cornflakes_91 wrote:May think about some way to make everyone happy instead of just flatly stating that they should be removed :P
He was sharing an opinion. An opinion that I'm of the same mind.

I don't like the idea of drones in a combat situation either. At least what I've experienced with drones that is (EVE Online). EVE's drones felt incredibly OP due to balance. If things are balanced REALLY well, maybe.
EVE's drones aren't OP, IMHO... Very powerful, yes, but not OP. You can only have a maximum of 5 unless you're in a carrier and they can be quite expensive to replace if they're higher tech. Besides, everyone has drones, not just a select few people/ships.
<Detritus> I went up to my mom and said "hey... do you feel like giving five dollars to black lives matter?" and she laughed and said no :v <Black--Snow> my life does matter though ~~ added by Hema on Jun 11 2020 (2770)
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Re: Drones! I love it!

#87
Cornflakes_91 wrote:Im wondering if we could abstract drones to some density-field function and particle effects?
:think:

This abstraction could be dependent on the amount of drones in an area.
So a single drone would still be handled as an independent object, but beyond some treshhold of basically indistinguishable drones.
(Same mothership + same command + roughly same location) they get unified into a single "group of drones" object which is basically a bubble filled with particle effect drones.

So an explorer shooting prospector drones on asteroids would use "normal" fully simulated drones (however that looks) and an enders game like supercarrier would eject particle effect clouds of drones which behave then as a very low number of individual objects.


Collision detection could then mostly be foregone (and when its used, its a probabilistic action on the whole cloud).

This would remove the necessity for hard drone number limitations but would require some serious thought in the abstraction department.

Comments? Critique?

To reinforce and illustrate what i was kinda thinking with field function drones / drones being different from normal ships, even though i didnt think of the amount-modified abilities

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/1 ... s-at-once/
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Re: Drones! I love it!

#88
I like the idea of being able to split a swarm of drones up and use those drones in complex engagements. I see how the idea could be implemented in a RTS game but how would you implement the idea in a FPS? How would you handle targeting drones and dealing damage to them if they number in the thousands?
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Re: Drones! I love it!

#89
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
MyrddinE wrote: The downside is that targeting individual drones would become impossible for the player. No locking on, no leading shots, no ability to have a valid interaction with the swarm. Special interactions with swarms will need to be coded. Perhaps 'any shot that hits the swarm has a chance to take out one drone' and/or 'any missile that explodes in the swarm takes out a volume-based percentage' then you can interact with them. Point defenses, if they exist, would also be a good defense.
.
well, if theres a blob with 300 drones does it matter that you cant target em individually? :shrug:


And it wouldnt need that much custom rules, and could share them with field function mine fields.

For AOE damage it could compare volume of the blast, volume and density of the group and deduct as many drones as would be destroyed.

For non-aoe shots it could calculate some effective cross section of the drone group (drone cross section x number of drones) and compute a chance to hit from that.
For dense groups something like 100% or so xD
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Re: Drones! I love it!

#90
So you assume that drones have next to no health and that 1 point of damage is enough to destroy a drone? Because that's the only way I see this working in any feasible way. No matter how you cut it the computer is going to have to manage a percentage of the drones health. This also means that you can't divide a group of 300 drones into 300 groups of 1 drone each. Because the mechanics you describe make that impossible.
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