First, a bit of context. We are on a really far away galaxy, but there are huge lot of humans everywhere, even entire factions, so we can assume that more ships arrived from Earth, and of course, we can see another players, but somehow, the "human" race feels... weak, i mean, we can of course make a huge ship, but we are a lonely army of one, the entire galaxy is full with dangers and we have to confront them alone or with a few friends... Have we? What i've been thinking since... when? Alpha 8? can't remember, it's a system where u can make an AI core, with its own docking pad, that could allow us to make "Ships" that would be controlled by the AI and help us in the battles. They way it could be balanced could be a very limited CPU, or a very limited block limit, only usable with SV (HV could be a mess and CV could be overpowered) but imagine it like i do... one circuit to activate the pads, when it's on, the ships disengage and follow the CV, and only attack when the CV recive damage and the objetives are in a range of 1km. when it's off, the ships go back to the docking pad. you have to "refill" the ammo of each ship. and each ship have a limited fuel. when it's near to 5% they go back to the CV, if they are in combat, and out of fuel, they will be defenseless and be destroyed, so u have to take care also of the "time" you can use them in combat. as a real commander. These ships can not have shields, warp or penta tank, and should be limtied to very small ships.. but this could make space battles something to be memorable. imagine 20 small ships fighting drone swarms, or using tactics to protect them using your CV as a shield... I really think that the A.I.C. could really change the game to good. first, it could give battles another dimension, second, you'll have to take care of the ships (if you warp and the ships are not docked, you lose them) third, it would give immersion to the game (Not feeling alone anymore and also making happy people who ask for settlements) fourth, you'll have the hard feeling of lose (as the ships are going to be destroyed in time) instead of "attack while i have shields, then go back to recharge and repeat" As last, i am really sorry if my english is not perfect, not my main language... i do my best. Be a commander, defend the future of the humand kind. support the A.I.C. Idea.
I actually would love the ability to have drones, (which is basically what you are suggesting here). I'm all for the ability to be a pet user in games. It also seems you have a pretty good idea on how to balance it fairly well in the limits of Empyrion. The only draw back I would see is the more pets you have the harder the PC would have to work and could tank your frame rate. I've seen the game go to frame rate of 5 to 6 on single player with Nvidia 3040 TI card when I was getting swarmed by enemies (10 to 20 baby spiders, 8 to 10 Zirax soldiers, half with flame throwers, and 5 to 6 Mech units) This was in a scenario as well. Part of that is because Empyrion isn't really good at optimization of the mesh and graphics in the game. In 1.8 it seems to have gotten better but I haven't had an instance of being "swarmed" by enemies currently. Still if they get the optimization done well it would be a great tool for a single player game. Heck if Zirax can have drones attack you and your base why can't you have them for defense and attack while exploring the galaxy.
That is one of the reason it have to be limited only to "very small SV" if it has a block count, you could still make some interesting ships while not overloading the game with polygons, 20 small ships in performance impact wouldn't be worse than a big cv. i have a 2060 integrated in my laptop And had really few lag spikes. (Have to say, i have 16gb ram and a huge fan attached to avoid the 100º degrees xD) it could even be limited in terms of quantity (Instead of 20, 5 small ships cap) As how i understand building (and have done it a lot) the AI itself doesn't overcharge this game, morelike, the number of polygons of each ship/creature it have. it's a matter on how resources are loaded and of course could be fixed in time (polygons are loaded in "lines" and every script "idle" while a huge thing is loading) an idea that throws my mind is, for example, is compress the textures while your ships are undocked.. anyway you won't notice "texture quality" when they are "flying outside your ship.
I almost always play with CPU off. Why? because I can only fly one ship at a time. CPU really doesn't make much sense in single player, as it limits how much one ship can do, forcing you to specialize. Well, that's GREAT... if there is some form of automation for the specialized ships. I'd love to be able to make a few small fighters and say "defend me". Or a big frieghter and say "follow me". Then, CPU makes sense: now I have smaller, specialized ships. But without the ability to remote control them, it doesn't make sense. I'd love the ability to have remote controlled ships. Then I might actually turn CPU *on* and play with specialized vessels. But for now, it stays off... :/
I am totally in support of this idea. I don't think that performance should really be a consideration as players who are experiencing framerate drops can just not use the feature in the first place. If necessary, I suppose it could be a setting in the options menu, letting players know that they may experience performance problems depending on what they build. It would go a long way toward balancing single player/multiplayer difficulty levels. For those of us with high end PCs, it could also make for some epic endgame legacy battles.
