Possible Idea For Combat Drones

[Killer_Rabbit]

Dunno if it should be in this thread but here it goes. I don't think it should be/is possible to create completely autonomous combat drones certainly not fighters (even with/if cameras are in the game) but what you could have is say a targeting station a bit like a turret (maybe even with weapons linked to it) with a rangefinder attached to it so if the person moves the turret the rangefinder points where the operator is aiming then this information is sent to a fancy Yolol computer which then relays it into a transmitter which is then sent to a drone(s). Then since receivers know the range and direction of a signal they can use this to correctly orientate however the computer tells them to (probably on a pre-selected pattern of deployment by the operator) attack the vessel (probably medium to large ship or a far away fighter). All this would off course be done by the drones being told what to do by a large computer on the mother-ship and flying and fighting in relation to the mother-ship. The drones therefore would act more as bombers or TORPEDO BOATS rather than fighters. However in all honesty I have no idea of the systems and complex Yolol needed to pull this off. Please do shout at me in the comments if you think this is terrible or offer feedback if you think its not entirely faulty.

 

[Killer_Rabbit]

Another thing is having the drone move orbiting around a set point if its put in a fixed position or move in a spiral because the great thing is in theory the drones could be better at humans at maintaining a "Weapons Lock" while moving. Also the drone could have a rangefinder off its own so the Operator knows the drone is on target or at least has something in its sights

 

[PopeUrban]

If you were to try and build a drone, the problems you would face are:

Your drone's brain can not update any of its internal variables more often than ten times a second. (0.2 second YOLOL speed limit) This makes any kind of high speed operation extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Rangefinders have a very short range. You can't use rangefinders for long distance rangefinding, and your drone's rangefinders would only give it informations about its immediate surroundings. Similarly, if you wanted to use rangefinders to give it commands, you would have to be extremely close to the thing you wanted to target.

YOLOL only functions within a small range of players. This would mean your Drone would need to be "dumb fired" at the target as it could only run code to change its heading until it leaves range of you, at which point it would be stuck on a straight trajectory with thrusters on a constant vector until it was in range of another player. You could theoretically have some success with this method, but only if used either at very close range or against very large and slow targets. This would mean a constant rate of acceleration relative to the target, Which would mean your drone would need over half a second to slow down once it got in range of the target. .2 seconds to react to a rangefinder finding something in its path, .2 seconds to read its current speed (because that speed will vary based on how far it travelled with no speed control on thrusters) .2 seconds to cut or modify thruster speed, at a total of .6 seconds before it has a chance to attempt to think about turning or firing weapons.

Thrusters might not even work outside YOLOL range. I'm not sure about this but given the intentional limits on YOLOL I wouldn't be surprised if Thrusters automatically shut off if outside that range as well to prevent 'zombie thrusters' from eating system resources, for example parts of a destroyed ship with thrusters attached to fuel lines that just keep flying for a long time. if this is the case you couldn't use a drone that didn't start its operation within YOLOL execution range of a player, and all your target would need to do to counter it is move out of YOLOL range, at which point all code and thrusters would stop working and it would just become a space paperweight.

Limited information accessible to YOLOL. Rangefinders can not tell the difference between objects. This means the only targeting data your drone can use is whether or not something is nearby, but not what it is. To your drone, a weapon system, armor panel, friendly ship, enemy ship, space station, debris from a destroyed ship, and asteroid are the same thing. This means your only usable "ship" targeting system would be its antennae. This would mean your drone can only really target the antennae itself if you want to have control over what it fires at, and its success rate would be determined by where the Antennae were located on the ship. If your drone is set up this way your target could just turn off the transponder and once again be indistinguishable from space junk, and if you wanted to shoot something that isn't an antenna you wouldn't be able to target anything specific other than "solid object near this antenna" which could be the target, or it could be the rock they parked next to or a friendly boarding ship, another drone, etc.

Stuff where a drone could be useful:

Mining:
Since rocks are generally stationary and you can park your ship close to them you could just say "mine anything these rangefinders hit that s between these two ranges" to set up a "mining grid" that prevented the drone form also mining your ship. As long as the mining grid was within YOLOL range the drone could take its time running the scripts required to orient itself and break up rocks while you did something else, or even went AFK.

Cargo trains/armor drones:
Since all such a drone would need to know is where you are, and not to run in to anything you could pretty easily operate one or more "box with a brain" drones to follow your ship around. Just tell it to follow a specific transponder, and use some rangefinders and thruster code to prevent it from running in to anything. You could even design a ship speficially for this with extender arms and multiple radio antenna to pack the largest number of drone boxes within YOLOL range from the pilot seat.

 

[Killer_Rabbit]

Well as I pointed out acting as a fighter would be lets say impossible for a drone however I pointed out it would act more like a missile/torpedo (maybe rail cannon) deployment platform and so would not be moving particularly fast which as I said it would probably be used to shoot slower moving targets. Secondly I don't know if I conveyed this very well but the drones will be in visual range of the player but it is possible even then that it is too far so YOLOL/thrusters won't work. Well ideally the player aiming the range finder would know what they are aiming at and as such if the YOLOL systems for aiming the drone are correct then the drone should be accurate too, the range finder on the drone should be just to help the player know if the drone is correctly aimed.I apologise for my lack of clarity regarding this but I wouldn't be using range finders for transmitting commands it would be transmitters and receivers. Finally since there are no public set values for how long a range finder can work for it is possible it could be very limited and as such the system would't work.

 

[PopeUrban]

What you're missing is that rangefinders can't rangefind far enough for it to be practical, as I stated above. We have been told they have extremely short ranges (if I remember correctly something like 30 meters max)as they are primarily used for automating close range elements like factory arms, mining lasers or docking systems and are not intended to be used for navigation.

The master/slave turret system that likely gave you this idea isn't using a rangefinder to target with. The slave turrets are simply copying the rotation values and firing state of the master turret and adding an offset.

You wouldn't be able to point a rangefinder at a distant target and triangulate the thing you were pointing at because the rangefinder beam doesn't extend far enough to do it basically. The only data you would get back would be "there is nothing within 30m of this rangefinder" You can't aim for a distant drone because your rangefinder doesn't reach far enough to do it. At best you could tell the distant drone a direction to fly in relative to you and another transmission (say the enemy vessel) but without the ability to rangefind at long ranges you wouldn't be able to say "I'm pointing at this part of the ship shoot there" unless it had a transmitter on it. Rangefinders don't understand vectors, only distance, which means you'd be responsible for supplying vector data somehow.

Furthermore, even if the rangefinder DID reach that far, You'd need at least two rangefinders and two transmitters somewhere behind your target to successfully create a 3 dimensional coordinate system to operate with AND you'd have to update that coordinate system constantly. This means your drone as designed could only successfully operate in an area which contained some kind of navigation satellite system already. This shouldn't be a huge deal in occupied space with station transponders or other people's navigational beacons around, but your drone couldn't function in the cold depths of unexplored space without giving it some extra transmitters first. You'd need to place those ahead of time or have nearby existing options available.
Calculating that coordinate system would add even more lag to your control scheme, at the very least an additional .2 seconds per instruction if not more depending on how YOLOL handles arrays.

Your drone WOULD have the ability to be remotely controlled, at least in theory, but it would take .6 seconds per command so you'd be trying to remotely pilot it at a rate of less than 2 instructions per second. .2 seconds to send the command, .2 seconds to receive it, and .2 seconds to carry out the instruction per thruster and weapon.

This would require either a very sluggish drone as each thruster and weapon command were executed in sequence, or a drone and corresponding command platform with a separate transmitter/receiver combo PER THRUSTER AND WEAPON system that can still only do any action twice a second, and would likely be extremely easy to disable due to all of those separate electronic devices.

At best you'd either have a self adjusting drone with very bad aim, or a directly remote controlled drone that feels like playing a racing game with a ton of lag.

TBH I don't think it would be more effective than just shooting the target yourself in either case. I'd love to be proven wrong, but YOLOL and its associated systems seem purposely designed specifically to prevent this kind of thing from being easy, or even practical to do.

 

[Killer_Rabbit]

I would be interested to know where you got your 30 m from becuase the devs have stated certainly mining drones would be possible and seem keen for similar automated systems to be made and the drones would be operating knowing that the target was at a certain distance from the transmitter and I would not be surprised if there was various yolol fields that say the rotation and direction of the turret thats tracking the target

 

[dusty]

Keep in mind, receivers don't pinpoint the source of their signal. They have a detection angle (45 deg, as I recall) within which signals can be detected, but signal strength is a constant inside that range. You might be able to set up two receivers with a very slight overlap to be able to determine its actual position, though.

As far as rangefinders: they have a thousand meter range, but setting up any sort of automated navigation would be a particularly intense thing. I don't think drones are technically impossible, but they'd be very sluggish and easy to beat in terms of detection. Even a mining drone seems like it'd be a waste, considering that a mining laser destroys the ore it touches.

Even something as conceptually simple as 'locking on' to a target.. well, isn't.

 

[[QS] Combustible]

Since rocks are generally stationary

I would hope so.
Other than that, seems like a plausible idea, but might not see much use. Could be a passion project or something.

 

[PopeUrban]

Keep in mind, receivers don't pinpoint the source of their signal. They have a detection angle (45 deg, as I recall) within which signals can be detected, but signal strength is a constant inside that range. You might be able to set up two receivers with a very slight overlap to be able to determine its actual position, though.

As far as rangefinders: they have a thousand meter range, but setting up any sort of automated navigation would be a particularly intense thing. I don't think drones are technically impossible, but they'd be very sluggish and easy to beat in terms of detection. Even a mining drone seems like it'd be a waste, considering that a mining laser destroys the ore it touches.

Even something as conceptually simple as 'locking on' to a target.. well, isn't.

1000m range is significantly longer than I thought, which is great, but yeah, as I broke down above even an unlimited range rangefinder is going to need multiple other data inputs to even establish a viable coordinate system for automated navigation sufficient to engage a target in combat.

Mining drones with the setup I mentioned above seem useful within that context though. Less efficient than you doing it yourself, but that implies an either/or option. In reality any automated system is additive. Even if your drone can only earn 20% of what you can in a given time, you're not choosing between 100% and 20% of your income in an hour. You're choosing between 100% and 120%. As long as it can execute YOLOL your drone could be mining WHILE you are also mining, or you could build the drone specifically just to break up and transport rocks and you can strip them down with manual tools while the drone goes and breaks up more rocks for you, Or just run more drones and sell the rocks straight up.

Granted this is a fragile and expensive system that would definitely require more maintainence than just building a mining ship, but I could see the rewards potentially being worth the build effort. Especially if you consider the implications of a fleet of such vessels, with players spaced out specifically to maximize YOLOL execution range. You could potentially have an exponential effect on drone viability the larger your potential execution field is. while 1 ship with an execution influence range of 5k may be able to support one drone, If you sit ten people at strategic points in the field you might be able to drastically increase the number of drones.

 

[dusty]

Hmm. I think you'd still have trouble with a mining drone, really, even if you could get a drone to accurately position itself near the rock. The mining laser has a short range of (I think) five meters, and also destroys the parts of the asteroid that it touches. Since the valuable ore inside isn't necessarily placed as a uniform blob in the center, you'd also need some way of 'scanning' to make sure you got the entire asteroid, and didn't just tunnel past the good stuff.

I do see a use in a sort of automated wheelbarrow, though, ferrying the mined ore back to the ship and allowing the miner to continue meanwhile.

 

[PopeUrban]

Hmm. I think you'd still have trouble with a mining drone, really, even if you could get a drone to accurately position itself near the rock. The mining laser has a short range of (I think) five meters, and also destroys the parts of the asteroid that it touches. Since the valuable ore inside isn't necessarily placed as a uniform blob in the center, you'd also need some way of 'scanning' to make sure you got the entire asteroid, and didn't just tunnel past the good stuff.

I do see a use in a sort of automated wheelbarrow, though, ferrying the mined ore back to the ship and allowing the miner to continue meanwhile.

I wouldn't even attempt to build something to "scan" for the ore. You run in to the same problems as combat drones. This implementation of a mining drone isn't really "mining" in the same way your typical mining drone is. Its basically just a giant jackhammer that turns big rocks in to smaller rocks and scoops the result. Its a blunt instrument. That simply feels for solid objects with rangefinders, ignores objects too close to programmed no fly zones (like your ship or other transponders) and fires a series of thruster patterns to do a 360 degree sweep if it doesn't find anything. if it does a full rotational sweep with no results, it picks a random thrust vector and activates those thrusters for a set amount of time, say 20 seconds, and repeats the process.

Very simple program, like a space Roomba in a sense, only its looking for things to "run in to" on purpose.

It would also attempt to laser ships without transponders and space debris but hey, nobody said all robots were smart.

You basically have an array of fixed rangefinders attached directly to its hull for "detection" and a number of robot arms with their own rangefinders that do a shorter range version of this. The idea is that it just pulverizes any rocks nearby until they're small enough to get scooped, and the scooper does its automatic work. let somebody else buy the rocks off of you and make their profit off of mineral purity, you're walmart, not gucci.

Strip mining rather than panning for gold, essentially.

 

[Bloodlance]

thinking about the logic of the code and how this game works i will be able to do this. (with delay in the performance tho).

 

[CalenLoki]

A lot of you for some reason assume that drone need to be autonomous. But drone only states that there is nobody in it.
OP clearly described his drones as semi-manually, remotely controlled. More like detached slaved turrets orbiting mothership.
Or in case of mining drones, manually point at desired asteroid to be chopped or hauled to mothership.

No fancy sensors needed.

All that shouldn't be too hard to make, if receiver can accurately detect transmitter or transponder's possition. And only slightly more complex if it doesn't.

 

[Killer_Rabbit]

Yes thank you very much the idea is that a person aims where the drone attacks then if it moves it is only in a set patrol/pattern of movements in relation to the ship

 

[Bloodlance]

it will work easily if the target is still.

if the target moves, then you need to A) know its movement and use preset yolol B) use estimated yolol with 33% hit chance.

if you wanna do it more advanced, then it will most likely counter the whole purpose with its complicity.

 

[Verbatos]

The only drones you could maybe build are ones that are directly tied to permanent immovable structures like stations, since there aren't many scanning devices and YOLOL is not complex (or fast) enough to make complex decisions like positioning, alignment and navigation on it's own. You'd have to pre-program paths and actions to have a working unmanned device, so stations are useful because they don't move and a drone can just follow preset paths.

 

[Bloodlance]

The only drones you could maybe build are ones that are directly tied to permanent immovable structures like stations, since there aren't many scanning devices and YOLOL is not complex (or fast) enough to make complex decisions like positioning, alignment and navigation on it's own. You'd have to pre-program paths and actions to have a working unmanned device, so stations are useful because they don't move and a drone can just follow preset paths.

not true about the only drones you can build are tied to stationary objects.

you can program ship movement AND drone movement to sync.

ships do not need a pilot, if you program the path or flying pattern to it.