Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Let's face it, drones can be boring and slightly annoying. You launch them, and if they're set to aggressive they just start doing their thing. But sometimes, their "thing" isn't always the smartest thing for them to be doing.

For example, if you get pointed and then jammed, you might want your drones to start attacking one of those ships instead of your last target.

Therefore, I think it's time to introduce "Programmable" Drone AI!

***The Guts***

Basically, drones would be given an AI menu that lets you teach it how you want it to prioritize targets.

Here's an example of a combat drone's AI:

DroneAI:Combat
Priority 1
-Incoming Warp Disruption
-Incoming ECM Jamming
-Incoming Webifier
Priority 2
-Is attacking drones
Priority 3
-Battlecruiser
-Cruiser
-Destroyer
-Frigate
Priority 4
-Highest incoming DPS

The drones would simply run down the list until it found a valid target.

In this AI example, the drones would attack a ship that's pointing you before they would defend themselves.

If you're not being EW'd and the drones aren't being attacked, the drones would then attack any BCs, then any cruisers, and so on.

If nothing fits the first 3 categories, the drones would just attack whatever's doing the most damage to your ship.

And here's one for a logistics drone:

DroneAI:Logi
Priority 1
-Self when (Shield/Armor) is < 75%
Priority 2
-Ship on watchlist when (shield/armor) is < 50%


This example's kind of skimpy because I don't logi much, but you get the idea.

Of course at all times the AI can be overridden by using the F key. The override would last until the current target is destroyed or the F key is pressed again (same target disables override, new target changes override).

**The Balance**

Of course, just slapping this into the game as is would just result in a cookie cutter layout for each drone type that no one would ever deviate from, and would also have no real effect on fitting.

We can't have a new feature without new consequences.

Discussion within my corp has led to various suggestions to make this fun and variable. Using a mix of these options would lead to the best outcome, IMO. Since this is just the initial brainstorm, I don't have any concrete numbers.

**1. A new module**

The new drone AI requires some extra processing power, more than the drones could ever produce on their own, so the answer to that is a new ship module, the Drone AI Augmentor.

One suggestion from my corp was to limit this module to larger ships (similar to MJDs and stasis grapplers), mostly to prevent AFK VNIs from being able to defend themselves.

**2. New skills**

This drone AI is some really fancy schmancy kerfluffle. It's going to take time to learn how to figure it out. Two choices for this were tossed around:

* Drone AI Programming - Adds two AI setting slots per level

OR

* Drone AI Programming - Adds one AI setting slot per level

* Drone AI Hierarchy - Adds one AI priority tier per level

Either way would give you 10 slots in the end. It just depends on if we would want a tiered list (like fleets) or a plain flat list.

**3. Increased Bandwidth Requirements**

Now that the drones are smarter, they need more bandwidth to continue to talk to your ship effectively.

This one I'm personally not feeling, but the suggestion was that each size drone would require an additional amount of bandwidth to use the smart AI mode. For example, a light dumb drone uses 5 Mb/s. Make a light smart drone use 7.5 Mb/s (if decimal bandwidths are possible). Medium would be 10/15 and heavy 25/35.

This would definitely require a rebalance pass to all ships to give them more bandwidth, but we don't want to let certain ships *cough cough* become more OP than they are now with drones. Again, I'm personally not feeling this option but I wanted to put it out here.

**4. AI Can't be Freely Swapped**

Fiddling with drone AI is a delicate operation! You need to be in a quiet area to swap out their brains.

Basically, you can't change a drone's AI settings unless you're docked or using a depot.

**5. Create a new drone type that is slightly worse on paper**

Legacy drones just can't handle this new hardware, so we've designed some new ones that sacrifice some of their speed/dps/shield/armor to make room for the new hardware.

Create a new drone that is perhaps 90% as good as the original drones as far as straight numbers go, but with the proper AI can squeeze out ahead. This already has precedent with the webifier drones (they're slower and much easier to kill than their normal counterparts).

It would also add ~8 new blueprints to the game to sink industry into.

This is a huge amount of complexity when you can just micro manage your drones with skill and the best pilot wins.

Programming them is going to be tedious as hell. And different fleets may require new settings. Different fits may require different settings.

Finally, automation is bad. It kills the game. Whilst semi autonomy is already here, it's not good gameplay and we didn't realise that when it was made. Bit by bit its been phased out. This is a step in the wrong direction.

P.s. Logi drones cannot be set on 'self'.

It is a workable concept to have some say in how your drone AI is configured. Realistically it may be a more complicated task to implement depending to how much Legacy code remains to drones.

So it could work as a scripted control module to reduce the amount of coding variables. A high slot Drone module with 3 variants coding protocols should cover your augmented needs.

Keep in mind, fiddling with AI scripting code could do very bad things to the client and really irk off the coders at CCP. A Red Bull Plex Drive may be required if this ever makes the list.

Apparently P!ss gets scripted out? Is Captain America moderating now?

press F1 to continue...you enter a tavern. Loading...

Drones can be hard to learn for some pilots. It would be at best a written explanation on what drone will do when used.

Exactly, imagine me (not a programmer and often break my own overview) having to program ai everytime i want to undock? And if i don't im at a disadvantage.

Exciting.