Tackle Drone manageability

[keith.lamothe]

Just had an idea for making tackle drone launchers a bit more manageable to use in defensive situations (some people like them as-is some people don't like flinging enemies that far out) :

Add a rule where if a tackle drone is tractoring something that detonates a mine, the tackle drone immediately explodes (doing its normal aoe).

So you could set up a buffer of mines "behind" the wormhole to catch the enemy ships, at least up to a certain quantity.


Anyway, posting here to ask if this would actually improve things or just be annoying

[Draco18s]

Might be a little tricky to manage....but....
Would it be possible for tackle drones to go "hey, minefield, fweee!"?

That way, rather than having to line a good swath of area with mines to catch the drones, they'd automatically seek out a nearby field.

[keith.lamothe]

Tackle drones always fly in a straight line from the launcher to where the target enemy is (at the time the drone is launched, so if target moves...), so they can't really seek a minefield after catching the enemy.  And having them go for a minefield before catching an enemy would be a little strange

[Cinth]

Sounds like it would help the people who use mines. Throw up some behind a wormhole and watch the fireworks 

[Draco18s]

Tackle drones always fly in a straight line from the launcher to where the target enemy is (at the time the drone is launched, so if target moves...), so they can't really seek a minefield after catching the enemy.  And having them go for a minefield before catching an enemy would be a little strange

Yeah.  I know they do.  I was thinking more "minor course correction" than "turn around and fly the other way."

[keith.lamothe]

Sounds like it would help the people who use mines. Throw up some behind a wormhole and watch the fireworks 

If you aren't at least using the always-unlocked mines (which are really cheap in m+c) you're not trying hard enough   Though I suppose some people don't want to spend the time setting them up.  Or are concerned they might slow an already-sluggish 16 HW game down further.

[Hearteater]

Sadly, this would prevent me from stacking multiple lines of mines behind worm holes and pushing ships through all of them.  Not sure how effective that tactic really is...but it is funny.

[keith.lamothe]

Sadly, this would prevent me from stacking multiple lines of mines behind worm holes and pushing ships through all of them.  Not sure how effective that tactic really is...but it is funny.

Well, I thought that currently the ships being tractored would not trigger mines, which I would change in this case.  Basically the tackle drone would be intentionally adjusting the beam to slam the target into a mine.

Or are they already being triggered by tractored ships?

[Cinth]

Sounds like it would help the people who use mines. Throw up some behind a wormhole and watch the fireworks 

If you aren't at least using the always-unlocked mines (which are really cheap in m+c) you're not trying hard enough   Though I suppose some people don't want to spend the time setting them up.  Or are concerned they might slow an already-sluggish 16 HW game down further.

I usually have enough fire power to clean up waves in reasonable AIP ranges. Where I'm lacking is for efficient means against the biggest and baddest the AI can throw at you.

And I've used mines. All 3 varieties. They can add to where I am good, but have issues dealing with the same stuff I really want dealt with. And sometimes you don't have room between wormholes to lay out a bunch of mines

[rabican]

I love the idea of tackle drones but i generally just want them to fling things as far as possible. Or at least into the waiting grasp of my reclaimers.
Couple of other things about the drone launchers need some attention though.

Drones have FF immunity, but stuff under blue FFs can't be tractored, so the drones just fly past them. Unless they get shot down , then they explode and damage stuff under the FF.  Don't see FF immunity serving any purpose here.

The damage of explosions is pretty big, and i'm unsure of how many targets they are affecting. I recently lost ~300ish turret ball  sitting under forcefield of super fortress to handfull of these things. That is pretty awesome for unintended colleteral damage.

They are still OP , probably more so than the botnet. Full caps of MK I-III can shut down ~800 ship wave. With mark IVs you could probably shut down as many ships as ai had. Versus almost any fleet ship,  SBSS mk V aren't really any harder to handle than mk I laser gatlings. Number of possible tractor targets could be more than halved and it would still be great shiptype.

[keith.lamothe]

The damage of explosions is pretty big, and i'm unsure of how many targets they are affecting. I recently lost ~300ish turret ball  sitting under forcefield of super fortress to handfull of these things. That is pretty awesome for unintended colleteral damage.

They hit 5*mk targets with their explosion.  How many is a handful, and what mk were they?

[rabican]

Ah silly me , it shows up in tooltip.

They were mk II-III mostly mk III , maybe 12ish. Didn't really realise what was happening untill after it was over so can't give exact figures.

I can give basic math though!

One mk III drone does 792000 damage so thats around 4 dead turrets per shot. 7 second reload or there abouts. Bit over 45 seconds to kill 300 turets for 12 MK III tackle launchers. Seems bit destructive for extreme range , FF bypassing attack.

Dunno, high tractor rate and double scaling of the damage with the marks  just makes these bit much. Flat 5x tractor /damage is enough for them to still be awesome. Halves the tractor rate for full 3 marks and more than halves damage. Which is fine, the damage in player hands is almost fortress class.