New Railgun AI Drones Are Devastating - Space Engineers

New Railgun AI Drones are Devastating. The new update automatons has allowed players to build some super powerful weapons. Today we are looking at building a long range loitering mini railgun drone.
3x3 Railgun Drone : steamcommunity.com/sharedfile...
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[@kerbalairforce8802]

Imagine a custom turret on a large ship that you can cut loose, and it becomes a drone.

[@Dynioglowy1986]

Your idea + nanobot mod gonna give my Battleship without a hangar a drone launching system . I know how to 3d print my turrets so this is possible thx !

[@Dynioglowy1986]

and now im thinking of detaching my side main engines and turn them in to mini frigates

[@badblinco]

Been tethering a drone to a ship to to make longer range turrets

[@rooxon7344]

If we can talk mods, the laser shields would work for a while. At least long enough for you to depoly a counter-offensive. Non-modded, maybe you need to build a custom railgun turret with like at least 6 actual railguns on it so you can fire them consecutively while you wait on each previous to reload, which you best pilot manually. Your own targeting will probably be superior to the AI targeting - you'll stop them sooner than they'll destroy your base.

[@aceprograms3]

i was thinking of a ship that could split into multiple parts and act as shields for the cockpit or turrets

[@daniellclary]

I like the fact that it really hinges how well something is designed and programed that allows a ship to have a superior edge or not. So often its just bigger ship always wins.

[@party4lifedude]

I was really hoping that this would mix up the meta. I think it's boring when we have everything figured out and there is only one way everyone does things. We need new challenges to engineer around and diversify the battlefield and tactics. Of course you can afford to be a lot more creative PvE than PvP, so it will be interesting to see how people work with these new option in their single player or co-op survival against Assert or the reavers.

[@smokecrash2147]

@Mark Mowadeeb I think that's because the drones haven't been set up correctly. Their targeting is likely set to "default" (firing at basically any functional block) instead of "weapons"

[@sethdrake7551]

definitely, especially when looking at these glass-cannon type builds it really seems to come down to which drones have the better targeting, coordination, and evasion

[@spacetoastgaming2006]

I find that small large grid artillery drones are the most effective, faster load time, decently cheap ammo and still cheap to produce, only real way to fight it is with your own defensive drones or incredible aim

[@LastStandGamers]

Agreed, I hope we can come up with some more effective ways to counter them.

[@ssnope181]

would be real cool if there was a directional amp to disable ships with only a small energy supply. then you could make a defensive grid with them

[@roberine7241]

@@ssnope181 sounds like something op to mount on a bunch of drones. just disable all ships in a group while a second group of drones takes it out. disabling ships sounds op.

[@spacetoastgaming2006]

@@ssnope181 definitely would be a bit buggy, as well as not allowed on some servers, but if that one target dummy glitch still works, might be able to use that in a similar way

[@DukeVictory]

@@ssnope181 you could make it so it lowers energy output of reactors hit with it, have a "shielding component" that's heavy enough so it's not realistic to use it on a drone as small as that and still have it float (just brainstorming)

[@ethanwright7111]

I'll be perfectly honest, I've been waiting for something like this for a long time. I'm a bit of a solo player, and the biggest problem I've always had is my inability to have multiple ships on my side. I like using swarm tactics, but that's been impossible for me until now. I have always dreamed of vast swarms of drones on my single carrier to multiply my firepower, and now it is a possibility. I really hope servers don't start banning these kind of weapons, as they add a whole new level of combat to the game. As for countering them, I think a new class of ship will be developed, a fighter sized vessel with much heavier cockpit protection and several gatling turrets. My guess is that the fighters in this scenario did so badly because of primarily missile based weaponry and no turrets. A ship with 4 or more gatlings would be more than capable of ripping these small drones apart.

[@little_lord_tam]

More than capable is wrong. ECM is, as of now, hillariously Op. Luckily people in SE are still traditional, even using outdated nautic terms. However I wouldnt depend on enemies using outdated assault tactics. Multilayerd combat is since the update the strongest, we are just lucky engineers arent strategists so they understand that concept rather slow, however sooner or later it will be standart among PvP players. Btw I have no idea how to defeat ECM and it makes fighting small grid drones near impossible.

[@mustafao09008]

@@little_lord_tam These drones actually make small grid, player controlled fighters viable. Like you would need them to take these out.

[@little_lord_tam]

@@mustafao09008 TV Guided missiles and high mobility remote controlled minigun fighters are now Indeed your best bet at taking out drones

[@mustafao09008]

@@little_lord_tam Man I love this update. The introduction of these drones will really spice up combat, which was very stagnant for a while.

[@little_lord_tam]

@@mustafao09008 I love it

[@onenerdyboi]

If you put an ai block and a gyroscope on a custom turret instead of the custom turret block you can have 2000m automated railgun turrets. You just need to balence the center of mass so the gyroscope can rotate it. I made a large grid one, and a small grid ball turret with the railguns opperating accurately at maximum range. Same goes for artillary and every other +800m weapon. Its stupidly easy to make work and would offer a perfect defence for these types of strategies

[@onenerdyboi]

Also, you can make the ai blocks track players instead of grids and it will snipe whatever controll seat player ships are opperating from

[@Thiloyeah]

Can't imagine this but sounds a little overpowered.

[@fellysmarts4576]

Combat blocks work on unmanned stations too. Shoot those drones down before they get into range.

[@party4lifedude]

You can use the defense blocks on your base to trigger events when they detect a ship within 2 kilometers. Like sounding the red alert and retracting the solar array and activating the turrets. I think you could even have 3 different defense blocks to activate 3 different protocols depending on if it detects characters or small grids or large grids, so the response can be threat-specific.

[@ericevans9186]

AI radar using a 2.5k intercept with groups of standard assault cannon turrets or custom turrets with other long range weapons could in theory blow them to hell as the drones get into the engagement area.

[@LastStandGamers]

Its import to remember that these drones back away from attackers to maintain there 1400 distance. But I agree turrets and custom turrets on ships is the way to take them down fast if you get close enough.

[@Nurhaal]

@@LastStandGamers I think he'd refering to the AI Radar build that uses the event controller as a RADAR Fire Control / Director. You can automate interceptors or long range custom turrets with such a system and shoot at the drones well before they come within 1.4k distance.

[@wesleynetcher5369]

@@LastStandGamers I agree with Eric and Nurhaal. The AI radar build can find enemy at 2.5km and can launch a swarm of small gattling armed drones

[@CommanderManMan]

A big problem with se is speed caps. It makes good acceleration only marginally worse then great acceleration

[@Max-nd1kv]

​@@CommanderManMan there is a mod for that

[@Zero747_]

Counter with railgun turrets of your own for defense. In a pitched battle, high speed drones with machine guns is probably what you want, if not your own railgun drones. Given that the railgun drones are tiny squishy things with next to no armor, they'd be crippled by cheap machinegun fire As for defense, people already like burying their bases underground/in asteroids, so aside from exterior defenses, you can still have a turret gauntlet with strictly controlled engagement range (or there's the safe zone shields)

[@roberine7241]

high speed drones with machineguns sounds like a good idea given how well the hydrogen powered fighters avoided railgun fire.

[@blak4831]

I've also seen people using the defense AI to provide turrets with a target lock well outside the normal 800m. Remote artillery/anti-air emplacements space about 1-2km from your base (with early warning beacons to boot) would, if nothing else, keep these at a distance long enough for interceptors to engage

[@brilobox2]

Purely static defenses is always a bad idea anyway. Need patrols or a fence is useless.

[@Haywilly]

The early warning beacons have a range of 2.5 km so if we want to maximize this we’d place it 2.5 km from the base and at these “lighthouses” they can launch drones of there own. Assuming everyone is moving at 100 m/s those drones would take 12.5 seconds to intercept (not including launch time and assuming offensive force is moving at 100 m/s) and even if there were no defensive drones and the attacking force didn’t stop to take out the lighthouse, it would give the defending base 50 seconds of early warning which can be very useful in a fight and give enough time to launch defensive fighters

[@georgea5991]

I basically make a box with six fixed gatlings and call it a drone. Fast as hell, looks like the perfect decoys in this situation.

[@user-vp9lc9up6v]

I don't play SE but I have been following it recently, something to balance this new "meta" out would be the integration of electronic warfare, sensors, and of course a rework of countermeasures which has the potential to really make this game interesting beyond who can print drones the fastest

[@Runix1]

From The Depths does sensors and countermeasures really well. Something along those lines would be awesome to see in SE.

[@VincentHermes]

Im looking forward to SE2

[@blak4831]

@@Runix1 I hope they go for this, the current attack behaviors do feel very FtD so if that was an inspiration for them I expect we'll get sensor/aimpoint mechanics soon enough

[@yetanother9127]

A sensors and signals update would be awesome. I'd love to be able to switch off my radar and rely on passive sensors to avoid detection, or broadcast fake IFF signals to make me seem like a member of another faction, or build fighters with radar warning receivers so they can tell if an enemy radar has locked onto them, or stuff like that.

[@no3ironman11100]

@@Runix1 Unexpected but welcome from the depths reference. FTD is much more combat focused though so it'd be hard to push for so much into SE.

[@Jalbesbe]

Underground decoy rings stop this from being an issue. You space the rings out just a bit from the base and the railgun drones will target them instead as it is a closer target. Railguns are also pretty bad at breaking voxels making it hard for them to even hit the decoys underground. So a very good bullet sponge stopping basically all AI based combat, forcing any player attacking you to have to take manual control.

[@steeldarling5116]

And now I'm imagining Orion's Arm style autowars in Space Engineers. Imagine an autonomous mining/printing drone that just flies around, mining minerals and printing these things off.

[@Agora2021]

Don't know about how effective the AI can be, watching that fight at the end, but it makes some pretty awesome cinematic battles for the background.

[@TehNoobiness]

tbh I think the last example went way better for the fighters than should be expected, given the numbers advantage and that the actual objective was to damage the towers most of those fighters made it through their first bombing run, so you could optimize their payload for that

[@Comicsluvr]

I can see some huge changes in tactics. Imagine if the first couple of drones are just decoys? They can be set to circle at extreme range to draw off enemy fire while the next wave come straight in to attack. If you mix in some missile/suicide drones and make them all look the same, it would be crazy confusing!

[@lunettesfumees1312]

Equivalent of stellaris' torpedo corvette spam

[@mindlessmrawesome]

I just saw a video on how to autonomously launch defense drones, should be a fairly effective way to counter this

[@LastStandGamers]

That sounds like it could be a cool counter my only fear would be the rail gun drones getting to the defence drones first.

[@mindlessmrawesome]

​@@LastStandGamers very true, however I'm not so sure if railgun drones will be all too effective at hitting small moving targets. Might be worth an investigation to see what a good counterneasure might be, especially since these little sniper drones are proving to be quite powerful

[@nobodx]

@@LastStandGamers if it's the same i watched, then the drones were backed up by a radar - basically a fixed "drone" that rotate on a axis (like radars do) with a single thruster that tries to fly towards a target, when the radar points there - and an eventcontroller, that triggers once the thruster fires

[@OmegaUberDeathbot]

I was under the impression that you couldn't use a railgun with the AI Offensive block. I couldn't get it to recognize the static weapon.

[@LastStandGamers]

I have had similar issues some times the grid is bugged and requires a repaste or the AI needs a restart.

[@OmegaUberDeathbot]

@@LastStandGamers huh…. Yeah. The AI blocks don’t play well together either. Still. An AI missile or two on standby would fix the rain gun issue. They have a large detection range.

[@ethanspaziani1070]

At last the potential of drone combat is reaching its fullest yet it is beautiful I had thought about stuff like this for a very long time to see it actually realized it's something else honestly this game has so much potential I just wish it was better optimized for larger structures

[@calebslusher62]

It seems more and more with this video that the best way to beat a sniper-style craft is to have as small a cross-section as possible, and be nimble. Useful info for designing ships, that's for certain.

[@cinfdef]

Well we should’ve saw this coming tbh Something new to adapt to I guess 🤷‍♂️

[@longwingdetrain3183]

Woaaaaahhhh. This video got recommended to me by random, and I havent watched Soace Engineers in years. Last time I watched it was with you, Sage, and Tazoo in Joint Survival! (Like 7 years ago). Awesome to see you still making content! Cool video man!

[@owholypwner3548]

having a stronger aphastrike increases your offensive capabilities so much, so making an automatic response drones that are fast and nimble to engage the railgunner further from the base. yes, i'm a noob stellaris player so this is so relatabl :D

[@IgnisVertex]

I mean, I've built a series of gunboats using on this concept since the workshop launched, to great fun, the advent of AI blocks were only going to escalate the situation. :D That said, hinge turrets with small grid railguns are an excellent long range point defense option. If you do engage with fighters and don't have a means of making rockets home, probably better to stick with autocannons.

[@TheVallin]

I personally love the Fly By Wire script for rockets. Where ever the turret points, so to does the rocket. =D

[@pekaman4712]

Nice command and conquer refrence near the begining with the GLA base and scudstorm

[@flyingtaco7643]

maybe fighter drones on patrol or maybe missile drones that are supposed to target the attacking one? Maybe you can use an early warning system to tell when there are drones approaching your base.

[@flyingtaco7643]

Or maybe have your turrets hiddin away so that way they cant get shot from so far away

[@LastStandGamers]

These sound like great ideas and relatively easy to implement we might have to do a follow up video testing some of the community's ideas.

[@party4lifedude]

You could have drones that sit in specific areas of space away from your base just as monitor probes that act as an early warning, and set them up with the defense blocks so when they detect an enemy they will rush back to base with an alarm and flashing lights. You could even put a custom sound in the sound block so the drone rushes back shouting "the British are coming! the British are coming!"

[@FearlessSon]

Something I was thinking of for a defense is "send a drone to fight a drone." Or rather, you send a mix of drones, some of which are equipped with Gatling cannons and some of which are equipped with decoys. The decoys will draw the railgun's fire, which will give the Gatling drones more opportunity to close the distance. To further improve survivability, put some timer blocks on the drones which are set to give the drone some brief lateral thrust in a different direction on a frequent repetition. This will give the drones the effect of "jinking", which will help throw off the targeting of the railgun drones. They may be accurate and hit hard, but with their low rate of fire they can't correct quickly to something which is programmed for evasive maneuvers.

[@Th3505]

Nice to see my old faction base being used as a punching bag

[@honeyy79]

Under ground bases. With a long tunnel and a trapdoor that engages and opens for turrets when they are above it :D

[@gamerelite3989]

little issue is railguns penetrate ground to a certain lenght youll need to burrow more than you think for voxel to stop the bullet o.O

[@stokesseegers5012]

I love the way this game has evolved. I remember playing it when it first came out in beta and all you could do was build a basic ship. I do miss the way things would explode, I remember when a ship would break up and every piece we just fly off in every direction.

[@randominternetguy7426]

Has there been a way discovered to universally control drones? Like press a button on your carrier to make all active drones retreat?

[@Daddy_Damo]

Finally my 3x3 railgun drone has a practical purpose lol

[@CM-NightDK]

Well Small and quick PD drones could do a number on them, best way to counter artillery strike craft is with Air superiority ones Either that or just make super cheap Kinectic Missiles to intercept the drones. or if you want to get fancy you can use actual warheads but unneeded (Small grid of course)

[@ShamblerDK]

So Space Engineers wars are going to be fought by drones? Art imitates life, I guess.

[@C4MG1RL]

Ideas to counter it: -Patrols both long and short range, could intercept the drones or at least warn you of their approach -Your own railgun turrets around the base -Watch towers and defenses away from the base as a forward defense -Faster drones to intercept from a longer range. They back up but if your drone moves faster than they reverse and you have more than they can reliably recycle to shoot at then GGs. This really just seems like a serious problem for poorly defended bases though very useful for someone solo to turn their ship essentially into an Arsenal Bird. You could probably cut down on their size with that method of having a "mothership"

[@garwynrosser8907]

Having OP weapons is a great way to introduce diplomacy in some games. Don't nerf weapons, it's a great motivator to negotiate a peaceful outcome.

[@MarioTheLiopleurodon]

Sounds like a great way to defend your base. Have a swarm of these "angry bee" drones around your "hive" and any enemy ships/drones would get shredded before coming into range to become a threat

[@7hart2]

I would like to see a mix of electronic warfare/style drones in the mix: fast, with redundancies and that block(s) that attract automated attacks.

[@dragonmaster1500]

One way to defend a position from these long range micro artillery platforms is to have outpost towers spread out around the main compound. They give early warning of the drone attacks since they will probably be targeted first, or they can shoot down the drones as they move past to attack the main base. Alternatively, having a fleet of micro-drones equipped with Gatling guns on a patrol flight specifically for intercepting these artillery drone incursions is another option.

[@gigaus0]

This is effectively what real world combat is becoming. It's the exact reason why Drones are such a big hit, and at the same time a massive concern, since it's no longer about who can build big, but who can build small. And thus, games that end up with features like this tend to have....major problems keeping people either playing or modding these out. People can't reasonably fight a computer cranked up to 20, and en mass in line with zerg swarm.

[@AlrunesYT]

I'm using a drone with 9 assault cannons bunched together, they can stay at 1200-1400 range and pelt enemies faster than railguns. and that drone is so damn hard to hit from that distance, its absolutely nasty. A medium cargo container can hold a bit over 100 rounds, its less than railgun rounds, but makes the drone far cheaper as you don't need a reactor or a ton of batteries to power the railgun.

[@maxdejong4203]

I believe the key to taking those rail gun drones out is to get to them before they get to you while have a solid defense, Players are going to need shield generators for their large ships and bases, and a fast yet highly maneuverable interceptor to close the distance, and a good number of them that are cheap to build.

[@quinncykaluzniak7231]

decoy scramblers and some AI drones with gatling turrets might work

[@seekererebus255]

Been saying it for a while now: SE combat should heavily involve homing missiles and defending against homing missiles. Gatling turrets should be minimally effective as anti-ship weapons, but extremely effective against said missiles. Countering drones that lack turret defenses will be extremely easy when you can deploy a cheap missile and shoot it down at 3000m, so drone-swarm strategies will require defensive drone assist or more complicated drones; this strategy would be hard-countered. Ship-to-ship combat will be about bringing heavy armament and good missile defense, or about overwhelming defenses with missile swarms. One thing is certain: without the ability to effectively target railgun bearing enemy drones automatically beyond their attack range, bases are done in SE; homing missiles with long range are the best way to do that.

[@lplayerjohnny9778]

lSG: Introcuces railgun drones. Me: Introducing: The proximity-fuze nuclear ICBM, now designated as surface-to-air-missile. But drone update is fire

[@lordguardian8088]

For all the RTS lovers out there, this drone is a standard artillery unit. In large numbers, it will have the DPS necessary to take out practically anything in its path. In other games, base defenses are a stop gap, not meant as the sole means of defense; usually you would use light scout units to intercept and take out artillery units. These particular units use atmospheric thrusters, which means you can probably beat them in an altitude battle by stalling out their engines. Any underground or mountain base gains an advantage because most weapons in SE don't break ground well; when finding a new spot for a base, look for a narrow valley that will restrict drone movement. This will hinder your own units, but it would give an advantage to your stationary defenses. Based off this video, any gattling weapon should be effective; I would recommend building a drone that flies erratically, anything that flies on a fixed line will be an easier target.

[@wolfe8035]

Funny thing is I already considered an idea like this. Taking an idea from someone else, I'm putting together settings for a SE server... utilizing a point system as well as "weapon mounts." A fighter class, or a small grid between 100-2,000 PCU would have say 6 mounts, but like 5/6 points, and make a Railgun require 10 points to be used. Or an exception would be a player operated craft that can only be operated by a player.

[@Defathomize]

These are nuts

[@NNextremNN]

Looks pretty good even almost some sense ob balance where you could set big gun drones to attack large grids and small gun drones as interceptors.

[@shadowlordalpha]

I feel like you need some decoy drones as well as some kinetic drones

[@party4lifedude]

Decoy drones seem like a good distraction for AI turrets. If we are talking PvE fighting Assert bases, throwing loose decoys ahead of your bombs to distract the turrets so they don't take out the payload is already sometimes pretty effective, but you have to get the timing and the arch just right so they don't get destroyed too soon. If you have decoys that can just buzz around the base like bees, it gives you room to snipe out the turrets with a cannon or railgun or send warheads in. Drones that are just meant to be a distraction can be cheap and printed and launched in mass like missiles. Of course they always change the behavior of decoys, so I'm not sure if putting actual decoys on decoy drones would make much of a difference. They are still going to be targeted as long as they are closer to the turrets than you are.

[@gabrielbisbey]

I would suggest other small drones, either designed for ramming or close quaters circling with machine gun/rocket fire might work as a counter, or hidden drones/turret positions further out, potentially under voxels with mining attachments. It would be one off, but may provide enough extra fire that it would protect at least once or twice

[@matthewcozon4686]

My only gripe with railgun drones is how expensive the ammo is. I’ve had a blast with wee Gatling brick drones. Will have to try these next.

[@catbert7]

This is what made the game Reassembly so amazing; creating ships, in detail, and then testing them in all sorts of AI-controlled battles.

[@mastere6115]

Something interesting I found recently, and I know I'm late to it, but if you slap 9 autocannons in a square on a hinge aboard a ship, you can have a forward facing cutting beam. It takes time cutting through heavy, but light it is very good. So, perhaps you could implement that into a drone to have a highly maneuverable cutting drone. (on my point about the cutting meab, I tested it by taking a starship made from the workshop and literally cut the thing in half, it took a while but damn it looked cool)

[@parlertrick]

Seems like we need to start designing specialized point defense ships. Railguns are much more effective lower interception rates more amor piercing capacity and higher ammo capacity. The range is also a challenge.

[@doubt3430]

the drone carrier meta begins now

[@papyrusspaghetti9376]

I don't have space engineers sadly, but my first idea to respond to such a thing would be to launch slightly larger, but super fast (some engine spam required) and slightly erratic moving drones with light armaments to at least try to distract these drones or even take a few out. One could then maybe launch small gunships to arrive slightly after the interceptors to deal with the bulk of them, as they seem to have a hard time prioritizing targets...

[@christopherg2347]

As Airplanes can not carry relevant armor, their trick to survive is redundancy: Be able to fly with half your engines taken out. Have two pilots on board (so a emergency or secondary AI). Have 2 networks of pipes, 2 or more reactor rooms, etc. The fighters main issues here was when they were flying straight at the drones. That was the moment they got hit. Lateral movement is where the railgun drone fails. It will miss a dozen shots if the fighter isn't comming straight at them frontal course. Otherwise the only hit happens if a railgun outflanks the fighter, that is focussed on another railgun. That moment they could get a 90° shot to the side. Maybe orbit mode would work better for interceptors?

[@manemperorofmankind8119]

I need to get into this game but it’s pretty intimidating to learn by yourself

[@seerai-42]

i dont play this game, but the idea of having a skeletal carrier ship filled to the brim with these drones and then just launching them all and watching them swarm and chew apart enemy ships is very cool to think about

[@LuNa-tw3el]

this was my first idea after I heard about the AI update, I have yet to build it But I just might after you showing it!

[@LastStandGamers]

Get it built !!!

[@LuNa-tw3el]

@@LastStandGamers I have to build a small fighter craft to hold it first!

[@MurseSamson]

I've never played this game but my solution would be realistic: 1) Medium altitude missiles that drop MIRV-like, highly maneuverable, independently targeting rockets/rocklets at the drones 2) Bases that can sally-port several armored, high speed ground vehicles (preferably tracked or hovercraft), to be able to get below the angle of attack and surround hovering drones with multiple fire lines of their own railguns. 3) like option 2, but as with option 1, the sally-port vehicles would fire high speed rockets or a "MIRV-Rocket missile" at the drone clusters 4) ECM them to death 5) Screw with their targeting systems using green lasers, or just high speed sand, and focus on their camera system or altitude adjustments. 6) Hologram false images towards them, like their own friendly drones or the sky, that cause their independent targeting to miss due to a lack of proper Ai visual confirmations. 7) Broadcasting a Captcha of a Cat and a 'Cats!' performer, requiring that they figure out which ones they can feed cat food to before they can fire their weapons. 😅 8) Having a ton of small fighters or short range base missiles: this is the last resort as it is not the cost effective option. Great video btw! I'll have to check out the game!

[@imglidinhere]

Wait is that planet for the second fight Salos!? :D Hell yeah!

[@mattstorm360]

You are a space engineer, solve this problem! How am i supposed to stop some rail gun drone from ripping me a structurally superfluous new behind from a kilometer away? The answers... interceptor drones, defenses placed at a longer distance from the base, AI radar beacons/SHART alarm timer, patrols, etc.

[@zano187]

Fighters with gatling turrets is by far the best response, keeping on the move while the turrets constantly shred. Now I'm more interested on rail drones vs capital ships.

[@d.thieud.1056]

Suggestion to counter it: fight the drones with drones Build 4-6 small drones armed with a large number of gatling turrets that just slowly takes turns recharging and circling around your base. Maybe add a system that, if one of the drones detects something it sends out a signal that makes all drones take off and patrol.

[@NovaEngineer69]

I really like these railgun drones. Honestly, it looks like artillery, and i like artillery.

[@hadesdogs4366]

Not to mention the fact that rail guns have high levels of penetration in which on small and light blocks, it would pass through them like a hot knife through butfer

[@draggidoo]

This begs Eve Online style space combat tactics. A small interceptor/ brawler to take aggro, then main force primaries DPS onto larger targets. For smaller player / solo defense if you don't have your own horde, a small VERY fast ship with turrets could maintain a nice orbital velocity and broadside the drone without ever having to line up. I like it. If drones are your bag, you now have a force multiplier. If you like to fight, you know have an easily exploitable AI system to reduce to scrap. Even with prior knowledge tho, effective use of these drones could be thru ambushes. Honestly, if you could encourage the rail drones to keep their own orbital velocity around a stationary target like a base while keeping guns trained (like a helicopter doing a strafe) they would be so much harder to deal with

[@stefanknauer7180]

First thing I experimented with was an automated guided missile system... That seemed to be pretty, good for defending a base.

[@redstonemage9085]

One of my favorite parts of scifi (and irl) is when a new weapon is introduced making old tactics obsolete. A pvp server where all factions had access to these might be more hide and seek with bunkers and planet-wide searches. Maybe a political neutral ground is made with dune esque intrigue and bargaining.

[@randymotter51]

you can do some trickery with the Defensive AI block to effectively detect enemy ships and perform automation in response, say launching your own rail drones. Even better if the response is performed from the inside of a base with automation to turn on a safe zone to protect you from damage while the attack drones are killed. Luca the Guide has a video on doing this and they even improved the block on release by reducing the trigger interval from like half a minute during the beta branch to just 5 seconds. Defensive automation is the answer to offensive automation. They increased lock on and detection range to 2.5km as well, so enemies can't just snipe you from the range limit with impunity.

[@mz00956]

What we need is a scanner block and calculator block (or use pb) that can scan a enemy ship. Maybe 15s targeting and then it can tell you the selected scanning target. Like scan for Thrusters, that information could then be used to calculate if the ship can still fly and if not chose another target to engage. This would prevent the AI from firing at a ship that is already crashing.

[@hadesdogs4366]

I’d personally suggest a mix between either rail gun and auto cannon or rail and Gatling cannon as a means to fight at close to mid range targets, where the rail guns deal with enemy turrets, whilst the fat or auto cannons deal with any close to medium targets

[@bwserknight8952]

If you know your under attack then you can send your own drone/ships out. The max range for AI targeting is 2500m that also works for you. You could also have your own base hooked up to an Ai controller (if possible I haven’t tested it yet) to allow 2.5km targeting, it’s a 2 way street. If it was me I’d make my own railgun defence drone army, press a button and have them rise up, patrol around the base by 20-50m and have them target anything within 2.5km, then return after a set time or if there are no more targets.

[@dmarshall.dev.]

For defence, use artillery turrets or assault turrets. Then on base grid, have a combat AI block. It will constantly scan for targets. Then set an event controller to focus fire at a range of 1400 or lesser. Then base will fire turrerts, without needing a player to manually lock. Also build base of heavy armor. Also can build SAM missiles or counter drones. Trigger launch with same method

[@TheDovensian]

Essentially, the best way, I found to counteract a swarm of drones like this. It’s funny enough, another swarm of drones. Essentially you have a patrol wing of fighter drones, that act as air superiority fighters around your base, have them set up to come back to base to recharge and put together defensive actions for your base. The best thing you can do is have the fighters target these drones by setting up their combat range to be roughly 3 km or so from your base if you’re using vanilla range mechanics. That way no matter where the enemy deploys this drone swarm. You will always be able to have a few fighters engage the enemy drones. If the enemy drones are set up with only railguns, they will have a harder time shooting down your drones due to accuracy, concerns, and the timers for recharge. I have found that the best loadout for air superiority drones is often a single Gatling turret along with fixed Gatling or assault cannons. Not both. The idea being that the fixed weapons are what do most of the damage, turret keeps constant damage going at the enemy drones. As far as flight pattern, and attack pattern. You can either have a hit and run style attack to keep the drones focusing in multiple directions so they are less likely to hit vital areas with the railguns, or you can have them follow the drones for more consistent damage. It really depends on the defensive situation and where the base is located, defensive and offensive drones have a place in space engineers, it’s just something we have to learn to work with.

[@rayanderson5797]

I'd think the best counter to these would be some sort of explosive or shotgun type weapon. A flak cannon, or maybe multi-barreled turret. Something to put a screen of lead into the air to keep them from dodging.

[@frenchgenix8537]

Imagine being able to launch an emp wave to disable those drones

[@Peekofwar]

Defense solution: Have AI custom railgun turrets that engage... Assuming the Custom turret controllers can lock onto them at that range. Or you could even have an event block that automatically deploys AI fighters when damage is detected.

[@0bsidianPrime]

I imagine a laser wall doing a disco levels of spin while aiming in the general direction would be enough to counter XD

[@xendordawnburst9969]

Part of me wants to try again with Space Engineers, but I'm already so packed! I've had a dream about my own AI Drone faction for years, but can't make the effort to put it together. Still, it's awesome to see what people are building in this game!

[@malaficus]

Looks like underground bunkers are a must.

[@lemonlefleur6236]

I like to imagine that the natural defense against drone guns is drone shields. Just toss out a bunch of flying chunks of armor that surround a main ship so it can approach and destroy the enemy ships or supply stations that restock the attack drones.

[@thaelindarkfyre4112]

Well, the AI defense block can be used to lock on at long ranges (2500m) allowing turrets to shoot as lock on overrides the default 600m turret AI. so Custom rail turrets and large turrets with range may be able to counter if the base has such AI built into it

[@acetraker1988]

If only SE AI could predict better these vees would be nuts. GetBrocked explained the limitations of targeting in a vid for more info.

[@kylemarullo9552]

Has anyone tested launching decoy blocks out at these things. I believe they shoot the closest target. small but very fast decoys while you take them out with railguns. I havent played SE in awhile but with the AI update im probably gunna start playing again.

[@PrimordialNightmare]

son in the big drone vs drone battle in thelatter half, I wonder what the resources spent up against each other were. Maybe it's interesting to look at the small hydrogen drones and, for the purpose of fighting the railgun drones, rather than making bombing runs on some large target, rearm them with weapons that are cheap, and shoot cheap ammo. the uranium, platin gold and whatnot used for railguns and missiles seem a little costly. Being able to basically trade effectivley, because you're just sacrificing abit of steel, nickel, cobalt and magnesium would be interesting, compared to all that AND gold for super conductors and uranium for ammo. Though I guess that only makes sense in a scenario of actually limited resources.

[@Chareidos]

Could you build these drifters with custom turrets with railguns mounted on them, utilizing rotors and giving each turret an individual offensive AI? That would be interesting, if not OP!

[@CrystallineFoxCF]

Best counter I can think of, some sort of automated system that you use that when it detects enemy drones, it starts launching AI missiles (not rockets) to hunt down and destroy the drones

[@vampyerion6804]

I wont lie though, watching those bolts flying through the sky before they impact a base or whatever looks really cool

[@kerbalairforce8802]

If you have a stationary base, but critical items under ground.

[@mutantsheepofdoom]

I'd probably make gatling turret limpets with parachutes to saturate the area they are operating in. Drop from 2K above them in big clusters with decoys mixed in. You don't have to completely destroy them, just knock enough necessary components off of them.

[@SirLANsalot]

In pure vanilla servers, yes this is quite OP and the issue behind that is that in Keens incredible stupidity, they never increased the max targeting range of turrets to match the max range of the gun. That is, turreted Autocannons/Cannons would be able to shoot back, if the targeting range was further then 800m. There are mods that fix this discrepancy and allow turrets to auto target out to the max range of the weapon in question.

[@alpacaofthemountain8760]

A large swarm of cheap flack drones (maybe with a autocannon turret) could help capital ships and carriers intercept these snipers. Great video! Also, could you make drones follow other drones, kinda like an escort?

[@Lokiawa]

I'm just glad I prefer playing/building by myself, or in the past, rarely play with friends on their own server.

[@kieranmilner1295]

id love to see some ai bombers too just coming in and bombing the bases as the drones fight it out

[@DerpsWithWolves]

This is very much on-par with some hard sci-fi I've been writing recently... The effective range of a ship's guns in space is a comparative of the weapon's muzzle velocity to the enemy's Time to Displace (TtD), or how long it takes a given ship to displace their entire bulk at least one ship width / length / beam in an evasive maneuver, and thus not be struck by an unguided projectile aiming at that location. Mostly this is done laterally, but a ship can also accelerate or decelerate to achieve the same result - at the cost of messing with acceleration gravity (Which matters more with a crew, of course). Thus, smaller ships like frigates, fighters, and drones can afford to get in closer to railgun equipped foes, because they're in a better position to dodge. This leads to a bit of an arms race tangent to put rail and coil guns on smaller and smaller craft, to live in the 'sweet spot' where you can fire at an enemy ship with impunity, and they can't return fire. Of course, nothing is without a counterpoint, so as such vessels get smaller their point defence options grow more limited, and they need to rely on the railguns themselves to intercept missiles, but the true death knell for them is a combination of four things: - Directed energy weapons (UV lasers, mostly, sometimes particle accelerators); - Other drones and small picket ships, which can match them on even ground; - Bursting fragmentation railgun rounds (which cut both ways, but favour larger ships with more projectile volume) - And larger-caliber railguns on capital ships which are able to fire guided interceptor missiles, in addition to standard railgun projectiles - hampering the ability of smaller ships to dodge the impact. For Space Engineers, at least insofar as the vanilla railguns, either other drones or modded lasers / missiles I figure are the most practical solutions to engage them before they reach optimal firing ranges. Klang help us if the drones learn how to use UNSC MACs at their full range potential, nowhere will be safe.

[@CallumCBG]

the railguns are very good at attacking but when defending against a large amount of fast fighters, they dont seem to perfom as well although still quite effective so a mixture of fighters, that can fill different roles like railguns for long range attacks and then a fighter that can take a few hits to soak up a bit of damage and hopefully deal some aswell since its easier to rebuild the drone than part of your base, especially if its an important part

[@operatornaut8534]

yeah these are very easy to counter, already seen some of this happen. on the flip side, it gives solo's an advantage over large groups with many players. so this is a win win tbh. Since drones are becoming the big thing, you can expect many to own their own to counter these, OR have a system in place to counter it. custom railgun turrets, small grid ofc typically handle these well. its the same thing, minus the need to fly. put a few towers around with the turrets on them and boom, you got yourself a anti-long range drone system.

[@thehiredgun2443]

I built a large grid triple railgun drone. Expensive to build but my gawd they wrecked everything on the server