Fighter Drones.
From the ship's manual:-
"Q: How do I use Fighting Drones?
A: Drones are a very good disposable that can save your pilot’s seat from getting toasted.
You can eject them and set them on your enemy, which will do a few things for you; firstly, it will totally distract your enemy into spending time fighting them off and secondly, it will give you time to recharge your shields, run for it or add your own firepower to the drones’ to turn the tables on the ship that attacked you. They are pretty essential if you are just trading in a TS ship. To launch them, go to your Freight menu [f] key, highlight your drones and with the [Right Cursor] key select the number you want to use and press [Enter] eject them. Go to your sector menu, select a drone, Command Console, “Broadcast to all my ships in the sector”, “Broadcast Sector, Fighter Drones”, and select command "Protect me", "Attack all enemies" “Attack…” or "Protect…". Or use the ‘Hot keys’ [Shift+8] keys to command the drones to Attack Target or the [Shift+9] keys to command them to Protect you."
Now you are toast, it took too long.
There is a script 'Xai Autodrones' that automatically releases a random number of drones when you are attacked, and releases more if the number falls below 4.
How about a hotkey to release 10 drones at a time, then the Shift-8 or Shift-9 keys to control them - much faster.
Want more drones released? Hit the hotkey a few times, each time 10 drones are released (if you have that many in your cargo hold).
Now you can attack the target, move to safety, or jump away - depending on the threat.
What if the drones have destroyed the target - you can just leave them there and they will eventually die. What a waste of profitsss.. and you have to buy more to replace them (all those lovely credits).
You can pick them up again, just order each one to stop (select it, give it the Command - None), and then pick it up (fly towards it, open cargo bay, scoop it up, too fast and you take damage) - takes a long time.
Or you can use XaiCorp-FSUP to collect them.
How about a hotkey to tell them all to stop? - makes things a bit easier, you still have to pick them up though.
How about a hotkey that, if you have a Transporter Device fitted, teleports them back to your ship? - very much faster, and profitable.
How about if this upgrade to give you two hotkeys - 'Launch Drones' and 'Collect Drones' was available ? - Handy
How about if this upgrade was free ? - Now you are really interested.
One drawback, you *must* have a Transporter Device fitted to collect the drones.
Yup, from the strange mind of B-O'F, this software is now available for download, even better, for free (nice price!)
The readme:-
Code: Select all
bof.drones - 2006/08/10
Adds two hotkeys to:
* Launch Drones - launches 10 drones at a time, if you have enough in your cargobay. defaulf command is 'Protect me'.
* Collect Drones - you need a Transporter Device fitted to your ship, the drones are teleported aboard. If the drones are out of Transporter range (5km) they will stop, but you will have to get closer and use the hotkey again to collect them.
There are no messages issued by Launch Drones - if you have some aboard, you will see them around, if you have none - then run or jump. Either way you will be too busy to look at messages.
Collect Drones issues messages for success or failure, all are temporary, so they do not clog up your logbook,
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Uses:
Just scripts.
No Command slots, no text pages.
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Pack contents:
setup.bof.drones.......................Sets up the hotkeys.
bof.drones.launch......................Script to launch drones with hotkey.
bof.drones.collect.....................Script to collect drones via hotkey.
readme.txt.............................This file.
Tweaking the scripts
If you want to change the default number of drones launched, then edit 'bof.drones.launch.xml' line 4:-
004 $default = 10
change the 10 to your required number.
WARNING: Setting the default too high can seriously affect your frame rate.
Not much else to tweak on this script.
bof.drones.collect can be tweaked quite a bit.
If you have no Transporter Device, but want to use the hotkeys:-
- Comment out (press fullstop when the line is highlighted) lines 007 to 011.
If you don't like the 5km range limit of the transporter:-
- Change the 5000 in line 046 to something larger.
If you want the messages to appear in your logbook:-
- Change the [TRUE] in line 057 to [FALSE]
There is no point in changing the cargo space check, not much else to tweak..
Enjoy,
Boron - Ol Fh'art
.spk version
.zip version
