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Some thoughts on Camera Drones
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EdwardNardella
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#1 - 2014-12-24 17:40:21 UTC
First some references:
CAMERA DRONES (LORE) on EVElopedia
CAMERA DRONES (CHRONICLE)
THE JOVIAN WETGRAVE

There is an inconsistency between the Jovian Wetgrave and the other two links. The Jovian Wetgrave indicates that camera drones were invented by Jovians before the capsule technology was sold to the Caldari. A minor inconsistency but one that could do with a fix.

Camera Drones are supposedly moved around by electro magnets inside the ship supporting them. I see a few problems with this:
First is that camera drones have to be able to move extremely fast. AIUI the farthest a camera drone is situated from its host ship is about 975KM it can rotate around the ship in an instant with a gradual deceleration near the end. If we measure distance of a ~2KM circle around a ship in light seconds we get ~0.01 light seconds. This means that the drone is able to travel at near the speed of light without any distortions or other negative effects on the image during this movement.

This would bring up two big issues IMO, the first being the massive power requirements for magnets performing this function and second being the massive size requirements of magnets performing this function. If there are magnets powerful enough on a ship to perform this function then one could presume that these magnets could also be used to affect other things in the environment (enemy camera drones, ammunition rounds, missiles, turrets and such).

All in all I never liked the idea of using magnets to power the movement of and manipulate the position of camera drones.

My solution would be to instead have a camera drone be moved about by the warp drive of the host ship. The camera drones would have their own tiny warp drive (which in and of itself is useless without a host warp drive to power it and control it) this warp drive would be configured to operate at a specific and unique configuration that can't be known without opening it thus preventing it from being interfered with by enemy warp drives. This would mean that a ships warp drive cannot be used to control things without a warp drive in them thus eliminating the issue of the camera drone system being able to do other things besides operate the camera drone. It would also better explain why a camera drone is able to move so quickly and with such precision. Finally it would not require additional expensive and resource consuming equipment on a ship to support the camera drone.
Alar Yazria
#2 - 2014-12-27 13:16:47 UTC
I personaly wouldn't mind if camera drones were dropped from canon alltogether. They seem as a massively impractical idea. You have a tiny, positively destructible little thingy orbiting your ship at insanely high speeds, accelerating and deccelerating almost instantly. And this thing is the eyes of the capsuleer. It's not a matter of "this is the far future, we have the technology - we can do it". There will always be a chance that this thing will be destroyed, mulfunction, or be lost, rendering the pilot blind untill another one is launched. And if the above weren't issues for the camera drone, this would mean that it would be a ludicrously cutting edge and way too expensive piece of equipment for no good reason.

On the other hand having the ship covered in little cameras all over its hull, some pointing outwards in every direction and others looking at the ships surface, giving visual information on hull condition and then having the ships computer make a composite 3d visualisation from all the camera input. That way you can have a failsafe redundancy of cameras (3 of the m get blown up, there's another 10 a bit further down the hull) while keeping costs relatively low.
Kiandoshia
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#3 - 2015-01-04 04:05:43 UTC
Camera drones are silly. If you can move objects around your ship that quickly, why bother having guns at all? Just launch balls of metal and camera drone electro magnet them into your target =p
Jennifer Maxwell
Crimson Serpent Syndicate
#4 - 2015-01-09 22:55:33 UTC
Here's how I see it.

So the lore page says that there are two of these drones out at a time, giving steroscopic sight. But I prefer, personally, to imagine there's a hell of a lot more of these little things out there. Say, 20-40. Just floating around the ship in different orbits. The speed at which you see your camera zooming along isn't so much them traveling at high speeds. Instead, the ship's computer creates an almost seamless image as it transitions from one camera to another. You are recieving visual telemetry about your ship constantly, but your "eyes" are only in one place at a time because reasons.

Same kinda goes for zooming way out. The computer is taking in tons and tons of telemetry about the area constantly, and while it might not be feasable to actually fling a drone way out there, your ship kinda already knows the location and look of pretty much everything on the battlefield, so it renders an artificial mockup of what it would look like to be x hundred kilometers away.

Also, because there are so many of these things, they're everywhere and losing some isnt a problem. Anywhere capsuleers go, there's likely to be hundreds or thousands of these things floating around doing nothing, either abandoned or deactivated due to a ship being lost. So, baselines go out in their little ships and collect a ton of these and sell them back to capsuleers for super cheap cause the market is already inundated with them.

Thats how I see it.