Author Topic: Buoys, Drones, and Mines  (Read 2783 times)

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Offline Barkhorn (OP)

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Buoys, Drones, and Mines
« on: May 27, 2017, 07:52:22 PM »
I know this is the Bureau of Ship Design, but missiles are basically really tiny ships.   ;)

I am trying out buoys and drones in my current game, and I had some questions.

Do mine-laying and/or drone-launching ships need a missile fire control to dispense their payload?

How can I tell how many geo scan points my geological scanning buoy will accrue?

Do mines need an active sensor to "paint" the target for their submunitions?

Do mines and buoys last forever, assuming no one shoots them?
 

Offline Michael Sandy

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Re: Buoys, Drones, and Mines
« Reply #1 on: May 27, 2017, 07:59:58 PM »
Yes, you need a fire control, but a .1 HS fire control is sufficient.

Geo survey buoys will indicate how many survey points they generate per hour, and how many hours of endurance they have,  (Pretty sure Geo survey buoys need an actual station keeping drive, not sure though)

Mines can target with their own thermal, EM or active sensors.
 

Offline Barkhorn (OP)

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Re: Buoys, Drones, and Mines
« Reply #2 on: May 27, 2017, 09:20:23 PM »
I have some more questions.

Do I need to be within fire control range to launch a geosurvey buoy at a body?

If I launch from a distance, does the transit time subtract from how long my geosurvey buoy can scan?

Is it worth it to make a 2-stage missile with the geosurvey buoy in the final stage, consisting of the smallest, most fuel efficient engine I can make, and a big sensor?

How do I know how many survey points I'll need to scan a body?

Do mines and EM/Th sensor buoys stay on station indefinitely, or do their batteries die or something?
 

Offline Michael Sandy

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Re: Buoys, Drones, and Mines
« Reply #3 on: May 27, 2017, 09:40:45 PM »
You just need a fire control, it doesn't need the range.  I have fired probes billions of km with a FC that had a max range of a few million km.

It costs more research points to build a two stage, but you can make the overall design smaller, as you need less space for fuel.  An issue is that it is very difficult to build a missile that is good for both surveying asteroids and also planets.  The best case for geosurvey is distance comets that are far from any other surveyable object.

And the worst is large moon systems, or clustered asteroids.

There is a show geo survey points option on the system map display, which should say how many geo survey points you need to survey it.  From memory, Venus is about 800.  Most asteroids are 1-10 or so.
 

Offline Michael Sandy

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Re: Buoys, Drones, and Mines
« Reply #4 on: May 27, 2017, 09:41:55 PM »
And sensor platforms seem to last indefinitely, but I was told a while ago that geo survey needs a drive.  Not necessarily a drive that can actually move the drone at 1km/s, but a drive.
 
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Offline Barkhorn (OP)

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Re: Buoys, Drones, and Mines
« Reply #5 on: May 27, 2017, 10:01:29 PM »
hmm, ok.

I was hoping to use geo probes to scan planets while the mothership hides near the jump point, but if a planet the size of Venus takes ~800 points, then that seems out of the question.  I can't come anywhere near that in a reasonable-sized probe.  I guess it makes sense though, I'm now imagining the little probe droid from Empire Strikes Back scanning an entire planet.
 

Offline Barkhorn (OP)

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Re: Buoys, Drones, and Mines
« Reply #6 on: May 30, 2017, 11:04:00 AM »
How exactly do I aim a geo-probe at a body?

I tried setting waypoints on some asteroids, and launching the drones at them, but when the drones arrived they just sat there.  They never started scanning.
 

Offline Michael Sandy

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Re: Buoys, Drones, and Mines
« Reply #7 on: May 30, 2017, 02:53:18 PM »
be sure to have a ZERO separation distance for 2-stage geo survey missiles.

Other than that, I couldn't say.  I liked the idea of survey missiles, but the time cost of creating waypoints, firing missiles at them was far greater than simply sending a survey ship on automatic.

They may have their uses for surveying really distant B-component worlds, ones you think might have ruins or anomalies, but that is about it.
 

Offline Barkhorn (OP)

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Re: Buoys, Drones, and Mines
« Reply #8 on: May 30, 2017, 04:28:29 PM »
I got it to work.  I don't think I actually changed anything, but they're scanning now.  So all's well that ends well.

I like using the geoscanning probes to survey a system from safety.  I enter the system with my engines basically off, so as to not have a thermal signature, spend a few hours launching probes at interesting destinations, and then I leave back out the jump point.  If any probes get shot down, then I know something mean is in the system and I should come back with warships.

Setting the waypoints isn't too bad; you can use the "add waypoint to SB" button on the system map to add a waypoint to the currently selected system body.  I just wish there was a way to queue up more than one launch like there is for dropping buoys.