Make sure you are deleting the drones.dat file in the planet's playfield folder every time you make any changes to the drone base. That resets the drone spawning and the check if the drone base has been taken out yet. To delete the file successfully, be sure to unload the playfield, maybe restart the server itself just to be safe.
While testing, I was resetting the entire save. (Deleting game and difficulties dats, Playfields, Shared and Players folder.) It was best to leave nothing to chance.
I was just about to look into doing this myself, glad i read this thread first. I do hope they get this one working as it keeps the game more interesting if there are always drones.
Just went through every drone base and replaced the core with AlienAdmin, then found this thread after Akua wouldn't load on a fresh save... Why is this not a possible thing???
We're not sure, but it is a frustration. We are waiting on Eleon for this issue to be investigated. I have been assured it will be resolved.
were they powered at all? i used the replaceblocjs console command and switched a spaceport base to admin then back. nothing was working until i dropped some fuel in the tank.
Yeah, they were all powered, they just didn't do ****. What I did: Took all stock drone bases to creative, replaced the core (manually) with AlienAdmin, then put the blueprints back into the Prefabs folder. As soon as Akua tried to load (fresh save), I got the "pfserver error, playfield akua failed (corrupted)" message and the couldn't login. So, I put all the original drone bases with normal Alien cores back and it fired up just fine... SO, I went to the poi and manually switched the core to AlienAdmin. This worked in that the game didn't crash when I tried to load the planet. It didn't work in that the base just sat there and did nothing - and it also stopped spawning waves. Switching it back and getting rid of drones.dat in my Akua Saves folder had no effect. The only way I was able to get drones coming again was to wipe the planet... refreshing POIs didn't even work
When you saved the new blueprint, did you double click on the blueprint to assign the groupname? If you don't, Empyrion won't find the blueprint and give you a failed message. When you changed the core, did you remove the old core and place a new core? If you did that, the playfield updates saying the Dronebase is inactive. Adding a new core will not undo this action.
No, I didn't update the blueprint group name, as I wasn't even aware this was a thing. I'll do that now and try again. And, yes, I did it just like that. But, I also unleaded the playfield and deleted drones.dat from the akua folder, which should have reset that behavior.
Deleting the drone.dat doesn't work as you would expect. (I know from experience.) It doesn't wipe the drones to restart, it just wipes all the drones from the playfield. It makes sense, it's just not what we want.
So, setting the group, elevation & flatten land settings for the blueprints in question totally fixed the problem, and I now have indestructible drone bases with infinite waves. I'm about as happy as a pig in ****, right now. One of the things I really didn't like about this game is how positively bland the wipe-safe experience is. An always-on, always-pissed drone base will go a long ways towards fixing that ^^
You guys can add extra CVs to the planet to help combat that also, and if you replace the standard CVs they use as default you can put ships in that don't have them red super fast turrets and its fairer for players stuck on the ground. In the planets YAML down the bottom when you add a new entry for a CV in the atmosphere don't forget to set different co-ords where it spawns in and moves to, or funkiness will follow.
Akua: Code: DroneBaseSetup: # PresetStyle: # -> 0 = no drone attack base, # 1 = day + 2 triggers, # 2 = night + 2 triggers, # 3 = at once + 2 triggers, # 4 = night + turret trigger # Extra: # -> 0 = default # 1 = Attacking base # 2 = Troop transport # 3 = Ground troop Random: - GroupName: DroneBaseAkua DronesMinMax: [ 2, 3 ] # Range of number of drones that defend drone base ReserveCount: 3 # Number of drones that will be replaced when defending drones got killed DroneProb: 1.0 # Probability that drones will defend drone base Difficulty: 6 # 0..4 -> 0 = no drone attack base ... 4 = max difficulty level (5, 6, 7 = low, medium, high difficulty but with infinite drone waves) PresetStyle: 2 # 0..4 -> see comment above # BaseAttack: DroneSmallAttackBase Stock: - Name: DroneSmallFast01Rocket # Name of drone Amount: Infinite # Amount of drones in stock Extra: 0 # Type of drone 0..3 -> see comment above - Name: DroneSmallFast01Minigun Amount: Infinite Extra: 0 - Name: DroneSmallSlow01Cannon Amount: Infinite Extra: 0 - Name: DroneSmallAttackBase # Base attack drones Amount: Infinite Extra: 1 - Name: DroneTroopsTransport Amount: Infinite Extra: 2 - Name: ZiraxMale Amount: Infinite Extra: 3 - Name: ZiraxRocket Amount: Infinite Extra: 3 - Name: Crawler Amount: Infinite Extra: 3 - Name: AlienAssassinGrey Amount: Infinite Extra: 3 PlanetVesselBase: Name: BA_PlanetVessel # GroupName or prefab name Position3D: [ 0, 102, 0] BaseType: PlanetVesselBase KeyId: 0 # Unique Key Id PlanetVessel: - Name: Patrol-XS-Medium # GroupName Mission: PlanetPatrol FixedMaxSpeed: 5 # Max speed of a freighter in m/sec RangePatrolCenter: [ 1000, 0 ] RangePatrolRadius: 500 RangePatrolAltitude: 25 # Patrol drones on whole planet # Type determined by stock of drone base DroneSpawning: Random: - DronesMinMax: [ 8, 12 ] # Range of number of drones that patrol CenterX: -2500 # Center of circle around which drones patrol (radius 1500m) - DronesMinMax: [ 8, 12 ] CenterX: 2500 [//code]
