[SCRIPT] Dedicated Assistant Drones (DAD) V4.7 [03.05.2009]

pelador · Post by **pelador** » Thu, 8. Oct 09, 11:25

Well repair drones use the vanilla freight drone as their ware, so they wouldn't appear on the DAD drones factories in the first place. You need to obtain them from freight drone factories or stations that stock them.

The supply method is randomly seeded for a NPC DAD station, it will fluctuate to simulate a pseudo market. I did this rather than applying NPC jobs and sales point to have an AI market. That has changed in the DDTC model where I introduced a new tech tree to supply the drones. But that involves changes to the galaxy and special methods of placing them in the game for the player.

The DAD fabs were not really designed for player ownership and are all implemented by design as NPC ones. I left coverage code in however that if a player did use another 3rd party process to take ownership of a factory that it would be dependant on credits being on the factory to cover the cost of the pseudo production process which charges for the supply which has a slight positive trend to it. Otherwise players would have recieved them for free.

Dependant on what gets made and timings associated with them you will need to cover the supply. And reductions would have added credits into the process. So in principal if you have taken over the station you wont get something for nothing and will have to supply the fab with credits to utilise the drones. And it will be consistantly in need of supply as you need to use them as a result of the slight positive skew towards production.

Adalast · Post by **Adalast** » Sat, 10. Oct 09, 06:46

ok, that last problem fixed itself somehow... but now i can't deploy a large weapons platform. i am loving the mediums, but i have the funds to get the larges. i have 16 constructor drones on my ship, but it keeps saying that i don't have sufficient materials to deploy a large platform. if i read your help file right, it should cost 16... or does it cost 32? you know, is it 4x the cost of a small or 4x the cost of a medium?

this is being a very strange problem. otherwise i'm loving this.

one thing i wouldn't mind seeing though would be the ability to assign drones to drop pickup and dropoff at stations. i use FDN to manage all of my materials and it would be really nice to be able to have mining drones mine in the sector and drop off there, then pickup from the massive stockpile of energy cells i usually have sitting around. just a wish list item.

pelador · Post by **pelador** » Sat, 10. Oct 09, 12:10

Thanks for the feedback.

Your spot on with the numbers for resources for the drones themselves. But you still need the construction equipment in addition to the drones that they use to do their job.

So if you have 16 drones you also need to have 16 Construction equipment also. The page for the constructors does have a line for this but seems its not very clear so I'll make adjustments so its a little more obvious for clarity.

I'll think about a Supply drone. Or extension to Mining drone AI. Currently focussing on DDTC but the suggestion does interest me, just getting to it.

Adalast · Post by **Adalast** » Sun, 11. Oct 09, 04:12

thanks, the construction equipment was the problem. now it's time to have some fun with my "warp to target" script and my new death sta...er... large OWP. too bad those things can't equip every weapon in the game. someone should really make one that can. seems kinda pointless to me to not have it that way.

Retiredman · Post by **Retiredman** » Fri, 18. Dec 09, 15:22

Fantastic construction drones script.

Took a TL and Super F. to Black Hole Sun. Dropped two build drones and within 5 mins had two fully equipted and powered LOWP's over the Xenon gate.

I was buying my OWPs from the Argon Shipyard , but no more..
and cheaper to build, than buy.

Love the auto deploy from a distance on lasertowers(turrent drones). My S-B losom was docked and I sent 4 turrents dones several sectors away to BHS. 2 at the gate and one each at the LOWPs I described above.

Should help my rating with the Argon.

pelador · Post by **pelador** » Fri, 18. Dec 09, 15:45

Thanks for the encouraging words.

The drones have the capability of giving you an "edge" if you understand how best to utilise them.

Retiredman · Post by **Retiredman** » Tue, 29. Dec 09, 13:24

Oh btw:

my loadouts for the LOWP..
I send a scout with a full comp of goodies (internal sentry lasers, bestbuy...)
that is transfered to the LOWP. Ship get sent back to be reconfigured or is assigned to the TL placing the LOWP.

LOWP - Large OWP

Build Done x 1
Freight Drone x 16
Adv. Nav Satallites x 160
Computer Components x 640
Microchips x 224
Quantum Tubes x 160
Teladianium x 1600

LOWP - Heavy Loadout

48 Concussion Impulse Generators (CIG)
500 Hornet or Hammerhead
3000 Wasp.
Missles load with Wasp. (It swithes to the Heavier missle for Cap ships!
Don't know how, but it does for me)

LOWP for Fighters, Freighter, Corvettes.

10 CIG
10 PAC (Particle Accelerator Cannon)
10 PRG (Phased Repeator Gun)
10 ID (Ion Disruptor)
8 HEPT (High Eneergy Plasma Thrower)

Turrent Grouping

T1:
1 CIG
1 PAC
1 PRG
1 ID

T2 same as T1

Turrent 3, 4 , 5 & 6 in this order

CIG
PAC
PRG
HEPT
ID
ID
HEPT
PRG
PAC
CIG

5000 Wasp
************

100% Missle Fire

Tried to use Freight drones to go get a missle reload but it didn't work for me.
Placed a Falcon Vanguard in one and use CDS, but the OWP is a ship and not a station.

Maybe a drone that goes to a predertimed place, retrieves and refills your LOWP with a specfic number of missles.
A LOWP servant?

Do you know that an Atomo. Lifter has the capability to build 5 LOWP's and armed them? Need a SF or 2 for the rest of the missles.
Makes a great deployment platform?
Compliments a task force when driving out the locals.

(Gonna have to try the ARAN or MRS)

Not going to mess with the smaller ones.. LOWP is the way to protect.

Cheers!

AtomicDryad · Post by **AtomicDryad** » Mon, 15. Mar 10, 13:32

N-N-NECROBUMP!

Is this still being maintained?

Retiredman · Post by **Retiredman** » Mon, 15. Mar 10, 13:39

I still use it. Not all the drone types but a number of them sure comes in handy.

Adverts dones is nothing but free money.

AtomicDryad · Post by **AtomicDryad** » Tue, 16. Mar 10, 22:34

I've started to modify this but have ended up replacing everything in the code for the drones I am changing and creating. Given the 'cannot use in your mod' statement I'll need to write from scratch if I intend to release, which means most of these drones will be dropped (as I don't make use of them).

My system still makes use of on-ship assembly but uses more common components and a new UI, and will likely make multifunction drones;
fighter drone + adv sat = camera drone that does intel (shadow, privateer, spy, etc)
fighter mk2 + adv sat + m/a mine + cargo shielding = un-owned fightermk2 that shadows. When a signal is received it will explode when a certain distance from target.
The latter is proving to be real fun but apparently mines dont do damage oos?

Locksley · Post by **Locksley** » Fri, 16. Apr 10, 20:12

To those who has tested out a few of the drones, a question.

1. I got the materials for making Mining Drones, all well and done.
2. I deployed a couple of them.
3. They mine fine.
4. Using recall drones make em into ordinary Recon Drones again and loss of the Mining laser.
5. Letting them mine their share and on automatic return they turn into ordinary Recon Drones and loss of the mining laser.

Q1: Aren't they supposed to become Mining Drones and stay that way?
Q2: Do all recallable Drones change back with loss of materials?

Otherwise great mod.

EDIT: Actually it is better that you loose the mining laser; you ought to loose the Recon Drone too. The command could be seen as a last resort to collect valuable data/resources from drones before they are destroyed by enemy activity. But a question still stands - what DAD are collectable and still remain DAD function? END EDIT

Cheers!

Sk_2013 · Post by **Sk_2013** » Wed, 9. Jun 10, 18:48

Ok, I had this working until 2.7 came out. Then it killed my XEMP mod and DAD drones.

Everything else is working fine, but the factories that make the drones only have Construction materials. Is it possible that the MARS mod's tware is booting out DAD drones', but I didn't see one in my emp TWares...

A little help here?

Idea · Post by **Idea** » Wed, 9. Jun 10, 19:11

Unfortunately Pelador has been absent for severel months.Frankly I don't know if he is gona continue his work on drones

@SK_2013

The problem is probably in EMP mod.It isen't updated in this script to a version that's compatible with 2.7 patch.

Sk_2013 · Post by **Sk_2013** » Wed, 9. Jun 10, 19:21

Ah. Installed the New EMPX mod. Works fine now. Tkx.

Alexfighter · Post by **Alexfighter** » Mon, 5. Jul 10, 18:42

It would be cool if someone could update this to fix it with the latest Plugin Manager's EMP.

Wish I knew enough about X modding to know what to do.

Sk_2013 · Post by **Sk_2013** » Mon, 5. Jul 10, 23:15

I should be able to, as well as update it for 2.7.1

I'd have to get the Moderators and or Pelador to agree to. I haven't heard from Pelador in weeks, and I'm hesitant to go to the mods. Either way, I'll see if I can get a working version before I try to get anyone to go along with it.

Glimpse · Post by **Glimpse** » Tue, 6. Jul 10, 12:09

Interesting that every drone runs follow command on an object to accomplish the mission always goes to avoid collision infinite loop.Only way to make them do their mission is to set them to ignore collision.While I only use a handful of drones (mining and analyse) they all require that magic touch to work.I wonder if it's me or there's some other trick to that?

Jaga_Telesin · Post by **Jaga_Telesin** » Thu, 29. Jul 10, 05:36

Anyone else using this with 2.7.1 successfully? When adding to a game in progress, I lookup one of the stations and it only has partial wares listed. The others are all "ZA_EMP_BLANK_WARE..." etc etc. I'm using the latest version of EMP-X, and made sure to have it overwrite any files that could be older.

Vayde · Post by **Vayde** » Thu, 29. Jul 10, 10:16

@Jaga_Telesin

The DDTC mod has the drones as part of it's structure and 2.7.1 caught us out. However, Deadly made the correct fixes to 4 of the scripts and all of the drone tech was sorted.

I'm not sure if the fixes will work on the stand alone version but just incase here's the link for the hotfix.

http://www.flatrock.org.nz/wolf/images/ ... Hotfix.rar

Jaga_Telesin · Post by **Jaga_Telesin** » Fri, 30. Jul 10, 00:30

Thank you for the link Vayde, unfortunately it does not resolve the ware problems. Still getting a mess of unnamed entries, both "blank_ware_" and "mod_only_" types.

It's a shame too, this mod looked fun. Won't be able to run it with 2.7 or higher until someone takes it up and fixes it.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

[SCRIPT] Dedicated Assistant Drones (DAD) V4.7 [03.05.2009]