Microdrones detailed functionality Idea

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A quote from the stretchgoals page to have everyone up to date:

You can implement a micro-drone launch bay in your drone. These
microdrones are launched like a regular projectile weapon. However, if
you hit your enemy with it, you can take control of the micro-drone. It
has a welding armature and can get into the intestines of the enemy
drone and we are sorry for that poor enemy if he hasn’t taken any
precautions for parasitic weapons. Weld yourself through, all the way to
the system component, or just take out the next vital part that you can
find. Be aware that the enemy could have installed some defense
mechanisms, or could even oppose you with another micro-drone of his
own. All that happens while the game is taking place, in real-time,
effectively making the enemy drone an arena within the arena!


As I am unsure on how you would achieve this without your actual drone just floating without control, here is a lighter aproach on this:

*DISCLAIMER: All values and conditions (balance related) are examples and are not the topic of this discussion. Balancing is another step that comes afterwards.

Let's say with 1 launch you shoot 5 microdrones.* There is following factors that could cause not all of them meeting their target:

  • you miss
  • some get shot down

Now, for the sake of explaining let's say only 1 microdrone hits the opponent.

Instead of switching your view completely to steer the microdrone in FPV, you keep all your controls and you are able to fly and shoot* normally. On a successful hit like this a small UI element will pop up showing you in this case 1 of the enemies component type, cooling. If more than 1 microdrones hit, there will be one more type listed for each microdrone you hit in following order*:

  1. cooling
  2. energy
  3. shield
  4. movement
  5. Core

For each type in the UI there will be a seperate moving bar and a marked area. (Like in AC Unitys lockpicking mechanic as seen in the picture)

Image 33

When you press a key right when that bar is in the marked area you will nerf that component type in the enemies drone. Since there is multiple bars (1 for each system component type) they all move at a different speed and the marked areas are different aswell, so if you hit multiple microdrones and you time it right, you will nerf multiple systems of your opponent at once (with 1 click. All the microdrones will activate at once). If you miss all of these nothing will happen and you have to fight on normally and wait for another opportunity to shoot more microdrones.

If the enemy has prepared himself with countermeasuring, he might be able to kill the microdrones one by one. For example, he might have installed a >input cool coutermeasure component for microdrones name here< to kill 1 microdrone every 2 seconds* once they entered that drone. That would put pressure onto the attacking player.

I just came up with this, so if you have any doubts that this would be any fun or something, tell me in the comments. Also do you have something to add? Please share!

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    CobaltFlynt

    This sounds even worse than switching to the microdrone's perspective, as you would have to juggle between normal gameplay and the bar stopping minigame, which can't be integrated to be able to look at both at once. I would leave all controllability aside and have all the complexity before the battle: designing what your microdrones are outfitted with and maybe a really basic ai. To stop them for becoming too useful with very limited battery life (so you cant shoot one to a drone without countermeasures and slowly kill it without hope for recovery). That way their use is for mainly disabling specific parts.

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    Vellocx
    Quote from CobaltFlynt

    This sounds even worse than switching to the microdrone's perspective, as you would have to juggle between normal gameplay and the bar stopping minigame, which can't be integrated to be able to look at both at once. I would leave all controllability aside and have all the complexity before the battle: designing what your microdrones are outfitted with and maybe a really basic ai. To stop them for becoming too useful with very limited battery life (so you cant shoot one to a drone without countermeasures and slowly kill it without hope for recovery). That way their use is for mainly disabling specific parts.

    That indeed sounds really good. Just to clarify though I was saying you could see your normal view plus the microdrone HUD stuff at the same time. Like it is with the target info rn

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    CRWND

    This can easily cause the game to become way to complex I worry.
    The game is complicated as it is, and it'll get a bit more complicated whenever all drone build systems work correctly.

    Something simple here would work better here..