Camera Drones - What's The Point?
Myrm
Sweden Join Date: 2015-08-16 Member: 207210Members
Sweden Join Date: 2015-08-16 Member: 207210Members
KK, so I have made my vary first scanner room and have been testing out the drones. BUT!! They only have a range of 500m? What's the point? If I have to build a scanner room in any region that I want to use the drones to explore, then I may as well swim to the area and explore it myself.
The range of the drones really needs to increase dramatically. At the moment they are absolutely useless.
The range of the drones really needs to increase dramatically. At the moment they are absolutely useless.
Comments
That's good because from what I can tell the scanner room upgrades affect the range of the scan, not the range of the drones. Thing is it seems that the scan range emits not from the drones but from the scanner room itself. What is the point of that? It get, I think, a maximum scan range of 100m from the scanner room. But you can easily swim that area yourself and you probably have done by the time you build the scanner room.
The scanner room upgrades should give you an increase of drone range, say to a maximum of 1000m, or may even 2000m. Yes, it would be a lot better if you could control the drones from the Cyclops.
Anyway, here's me!!!!
My only attempt to use a drone to locate resources led me to cost me more time as a result of difficulty finding where the drone was and swimming to it.
Soooo true. I spent more time trying to find where I parked the drone than the drone survey. The point of a done is to survale an area that's too dangerous and physically come back when it's safer.
I upgraded the range to max made a HUD chip and tried to stack the range increase chips.
They did not stack. The HUD chip only highlighted resources and not the drone.
I built another scanner room at the outside edge of the drones range to see if it could be bounced... Nope.
Why bother with using a drone to locate resources. The Scanner Room HUD chip allows you to see any resource that is nearby. Build enough Scanner Rooms and you can see all the nearby resources at the same time. In fact, you can even use the Scanner Room to search for fragments. So build a temporary base near a wreck with a Power Supply and Scanner Room and the location of every single fragment in that wreck is shown.
Probably showing multiple copies that are duplicated and just not rendering but still costing resources. (No I don't know if that's happening. But it would explain why clearing CellsCache clears up stuttering and crashing.)
I see, this is some darn interference from those dastardly Precursors
I don't know if this will be something that stays, but I wouldn't mind if not and a cameo module is introduced to accommodate an observation mode.
So does Stone and Brick, Radio Waves are among the weakest waves in the electromagnetic spectrum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum
I know, but I would also assume they'd use something different in scifi land
The type of use discussion is something different. Like asking if it wouldn't be better to get this scanning into the cyclops. If a scanner room equipment would be inside the Cyclops, the range limit would be no problem at all. Drive to a location and scan and send out drones. But the time it takes to establish a temporary base for local scanning is too much and no fun at all with those limited ranges and the devs are forced to increase the ranges if they want to make the players actually use the scanner room and be happy about it.
So a comparison:
So low range scanning would be awesome for the Cyclops and make that slow submarine far more useful, while bases absolutely need far range scanning and drone ranges.
Maybe the devs think about the idea of an increased fun and usage for the Cyclops if it could integrate drones and scanning. I doubt players will like to be forced to a tedious setup of a network of small minibases for the scanner rooms. Or forced to do it like nomads with their tents.
Unless you're going to go full Trek, though, you have problems.
Water is notoriously...difficult (I'd use a stronger word) when it comes to any kind of transmission save one: acoustic. It'll transmit sound better than any other medium, but when dealing with any other type of transmission, it's a real bear. Light scatters quickly, so lasers are out. Radio waves lose power quickly due to molecular interaction, so they have an extremely short range. It's why modern subs use radio buoys to communicate and why we went to all the trouble to develop ELF communications; water sucks for technology, and not just when you drop your iPhone in the toilet. And upping the signal power doesn't help, either; for a tiny bit of depth penetration, you get much more distortion. Bad trade.
The problem with acoustic is that it has to be one-way. If you tried broadcasting instructions to your drone while simultaneously trying to receive data from it, you're going to get neither; the waves interact, constructive and destructive interference occurs, and you're left with a mash of sound that means nothing.
Short of saying "it uses a subspace radio" or "quantum entanglement communicators" (which would probably be the size of a truck, making them quite unsuitable for those little soccer ball drones), short-range is the most realistic.
That said...yeah, I was pretty disappointed in those drones, too.
Yes, I like that idea.
More likely it just needs to track the player position, AND track the drone position. If the drone goes too far, suddenly the player is in un-loaded territory, and would need a delay or loading screen to bring the world back in around the player.
And if it needs to put camera views from the drone on the wall, and the drone is in territory without the terrain loaded, it will probably look wonky.
300m for resource scanning
500m for camera drones
unknown if this will get expanded with range upgrade chips
My opinion:
It's getting already powerful enough. Tested with 300m range with the cameras that perfectly work up to that range. If the player needs a certain resource very much this will help him greatly! I think a big base set up permenantly might not find it very useful unless scanning includes incoming creatures that attack the base. But a few strategic harvesting bases might work with it.
The negative:
I can't think of much players that want to set up much mini scanning bases for harvesting like nomads set up tents. The process is still tedious and not much rewarding, so not so much fun.
Suggestions:
But all in all the new range extension now at least makes the scanner room useful again.
Some annoyances / bugs / suggestions for the cam drones:
Well, if you can teleport large objects over large distances with phasegates and teleporters, the obvious solution is to open a micro phasegate internally and teleport the 2-way signal to and from the receptor.
Perhaps the drones can act as relays for each other. So, you could take one drone out to the limit of its 500m range and then it would act as a relay station for a second drone who could then use the first drone as its signal booster and allow it to go another 500m, so you get a 1000m range in effect with the second drone. You could then add a third drone and a fourth, and so on. Eventually you could over many places covered with the drone CCTV.
Or, alternatively. perhaps the devs could create relay transmitters that can be 'planted' and they act as a relay to extend the signal range of the drones.
Yes they do in experimental
You'd want to set the repeater at full signal strength distance, if you wanted to be realistic (just like a wifi extender - you want it at the edge of where you're still getting full signal). Otherwise, you'd barely get anything at all. (Yes, I know this from personal experience. Repeaters (this was just one) at the edge of available signal barely function at all, and only when the weather's nice, lol.)
Only issue seems to be increased odds of large deposit resources falling through the world when you drill them, and a few resource normal nodes spawning in walls. Then again they may have been like that before and we just never noticed.
Stop being such a nerd!
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