Last night I was working on a CV and glanced over my shoulder to see a PV barrelling towards me. I thought an expletive and ran into the ship to remove the generator and core to try and keep the ship safe... and then I woke up.
Tried the Drone base. The one that's a bit like a 12-sided dice sculpture. Has 4ea of the red & green turrets. Mine happened to be part of the whole Radar/Mainframe cluster. Has fairly open routes to two sides. Other two are basically covered by Fortifications. Came in over water and Cannons started working. Lots of incoming as I'd come in on a 45. Let it play out a bit then started a bit of dodging. Noticed that Cannons weren't engaging the nearest turrets. Backed off out of range and came in more 'side-on'. Cannons seemed to concentrate on the turrets better. Lost one Cannon but finished off the 2 reds & 2 greens on that side. Tried to get a head on approach to other 180 side, but got within range of a couple other pois. Split the difference and managed to take down 1 red & 1 green, but the Cannons didn't seem to want to target the last two large outside turrets. I think the Cannons were working on the numerous Sentry turrets inside the dome. Lost 3 more Cannons so called it. Should note that the entire engagment was continuous; didn't retreat & repair as I would have 'normally'. Back at base checked her over. Suprising. 95% health. Lost the four lower-forward Cannons and the front Spotlight. Those were the only blocks totally destroyed. Even the two T1 genies I'd intentionally put far forward weren't hit {they're directly behind the orange blocks right at the nose}. All in all it went suprising well I think. Flew her some, but more 'stationary dodging', not strafing runs. More talented flying would have reduced damage, and a retreat to repair could have prevented turret losses. Also, if the Drone base had been all alone, well, then I'd say it would be a readily winnable engagement. Biggest take aways were: 1, the enemy AI -did- target the forward mounted Cannons, basically leaving the rest of the ship alone. and 2, the Cannons are willing, but a bit 'stupid' so you have to fly an inbound vector that results in them targeting what you need them to. If they get distracted (oooh, shiny!), just back off and try a different angle. Six of them focused on just one or even two enemy turrets is best of course, but even the full side-on I was forced to take, meaning four enemy turrets for the Cannons to target, worked out. And before I forget again; the 'turrets forward' idea came from a pic (or vid?) of one of @Kassonnade 's ships. Thanks Kass! Apologies if everyone already knew all this and y'all are just being polite
So after numerous attempts to make one of the plethora of gorgeous workshop SVs work for my crap pilot skills, I broke down and built one more for what I need from it. Double hull (hardened over regular steel) entirely at a minimum Dual cockpit (cuz, y'know) Tons of thrust in every direction (at least for one of my builds) but with an Eco-mode to "save" fuel. Though turning off the RCS saves a crap ton more fuel than thrusters. Who knew? Weapons tucked away somewhat. So while it still has all the battle capability I could throw at it for an early(ish) build, it does still come with all the comforts of a warp drive, 2x constructors, O2 station, armor locker along with a ton of labelled storage. So after a long reprieve from building, I humbly submit to you, the IJS-SV-Bulldog
I am sorry to break it to you my friend but, this still happens. It was one of the first things I tested and the drones spawned right on top of my base upon returning as usual. One drone actually spawned inside the main building and I had to go inside to kill it before it finished "drilling" through the building in the direction of the core. Finding and repairing all the internal damaged blocks was quite a chore and there's still a few in there that I cannot find or get to. I turned off drone base attacks again for the time being. I hope they can fix this before public release, like making the drones spawn just beyond engagement range instead of right on top of your base. The "drones already there waiting to pounce" issue along with no R2T for bases is a combination that fuels quite a bit of frustration.
Today I tried something I've been wanting to do for a very long time: Making a good looking hover mech that doesn't look completely stupid when moving. And I actually sort of did it! I made it a mining HV because I don't really have any of those, and it works well enough after I added some artificial mass to make nosediving into the ground easier. I made the bottom sort of look like hover tank tracks, with a rotating part connecting to the main body, so it looks convincing as a hover mech. In the back I made sort of a jetpack with the hover boosters, that allows it to jetpack out of the holes you dig.
Thanks @Its Just Steve , really like that SV bruiser there Yeah, then they've still got work to do . I've tried to break this but no luck. How did you test it? ------ Congrats @zztong
I just slapped down my base and then timed how long it takes for drones to get there. Once I got another drone attack warning, I left and stayed away from the base (but still on the same planet) until enough time elapsed, giving extra time over and above the time it takes the drones to get there, and then returned to the base to find the drones right on top of it. I also put down a series of small bunkers as a frontier between my territory and the drone base but these had no effect in stopping the drones. This is on the default Akua-Omicron scenario, playing SP and using console commands at the start to get everything back up and running. The only manual file editing I've done is to re-enable POI regen. It seems to be a tricky one for Eleon to fix. I will retest again this evening just to be sure.
I came up for a name with my mech: The T4-Terra, and it's now up on the workshop after I did some more detailing bits. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1404208786 I hope you like it.
only issue i see with this build is the drills are to far back they need to be forward more but other then that very cool
Wondering when, though sometimes it feels like I should ask if, they will fix the SI issue with spawning large bases. Do I just teach myself to play with SI off? Or is every bigger BA supposed to be a space station? I haven't posted those videos I took wandering through my bases, mostly WIP, because after doing them I began pondering whether I should scrap some of the larger bases and just do something a bit smaller. But if I do that, then I will want to shrink some of my CV to fit. I would still have a few large CV. The large ones are supposed to the exception in my "fleets", so a smaller scale for the bases would mean shrinking the scale of some of my planned CV, which includes one WIP and even one completed and posted on the workshop. I really want a base with a 50 x 70 pad attached to it. I really wanted two of those to be space stations and two to be ground bases (my four collections), but at the moment I am struggling with trying to go for four space stations. I really didn't want them to all be in space. And I am struggling with shrinking them as I am really fond of the Star Cruiser (refit in progress I think looks far better than the workshop version) but that would require something bigger than the SI seems to handle properly for a base spawned from the factory. And I am fond of the Archon (WIP) with the interesting thruster arrangement--I don't think I personally could pull off the thruster arrangement in the smaller size I was considering (33 x 45 blocks for the CV). But I also don't want to add a whole new group of four bases to have something in between my bases with 21 x 35 pads (two are WIP) and the bases with 50 x 70 pads. I feel I already have too many planned BP. If do go with partially shrunk "large" bases to try and get under the SI issue, then I will shrink most of my CV to comply. I think this would be a lot easier if I just played my survival and creative games without SI. But I do like to play with SI on.... This whole SI problem with larger bases, well, it is a contributing factor on why I don't have more bases on the workshop. And I am having problems with 50 x 70 blocks? Actually a little more when you add attached hangar, small terminal, and a tower but I was still under 90 blocks. And after discovering the issue I tried many things, even trimming it down to barely more than the pad and still most times the bug with SI haunted me--as in perhaps only one in ten spawns the base was nearly rendered with proper SI. There are some beautiful bases on the workshop that are much larger and also the potential for 250 x 250 blocks. I really do like the idea of SI. I might question some of the numbers for what is sound SI, but having it completely break when spawning a larger base really grinds on my acceptance of SI. My large bases don't even seem that big.... I haven't played Alpha 8 experimental. By some change, does that fix some of this issue? Unfortunately, I don't expect it to. Fixing SI is something I don't expect them to fix anytime soon. But as long as I play with it on, I have to decide how I work around this. I really don't want to hand craft such a large base in survival. Isn't that the point of creative and blueprints? So someone like myself doesn't have to hand craft everything. My apologies for my rambling. I thought just letting this out here might help me decide where I go from here. Ultimately the choice is mine. Do I break with my habit and starting playing without SI? Do I just accept that these will all have to be space stations? Once I have invested in making them space stations, I won't be converting any to ground bases once they fix SI. For me, it would be a one way trip, and a sad one. Or do I keep a couple ground bases by shrinking what was going to be my standard large bases? But as I wrote, this would require shrinking some CV to comply. These are the questions I am pondering. Not sure what my answer will be yet, but at least I feel a little at peace right now after having gotten this "off my chest".
Thanks for the info @Dragon , that makes sense. Not sure if I can copy that now though. I haven't cored the drone base, but I set up a base about 1.3km from it preparing for the cv test. My first base is about 10km from drone base, so time enough to move off, if the drones ever attack it again. Mention that as it seemed in the past that drones attacked just one base, and it was never clear to me how that was decided. ---- @T431 , that's a nice industrial look & feel you captured. Textures & colors make it look like it's been well used and no longer factory shiny. Very cool {ha! @The Tactician[ Λ ] beat me to it }
