Automated Fighter Drone for your Carrier - Space Engineers Automatons Tutorial

[@moos3h212]

Full automated drones was a concept that made me fall in love with SE! Only to not have the tools to actually do it until now!

[@bigolbearthejammydodger6527]

mooseh budy... there have been scripted solutions for years, im sorry you didnt know! its great that this is all vanilla/server friendly now though. Im looking forward to combining this tech with scripting (when i can find the time). make a full on drone carrier system thats multiplayer server friendly.

[@Splitsie]

The scripted versions have been nice but it's even more nice for the autopilot system to finally work for more than the most basic of things 🙂

[@allenking8678]

​@@Splitsie especially nice for xbox:)

[@damienchapron8606]

Time to make 200 of these, chuck them on a carrier and every time a hostile approache, release absolute chaos and destruction

[@Shadowknght949]

I immediately heard Nicholas Cage "Not the bees!" After reading this.

[@Splitsie]

For those wondering about the event controller bugs, at present they don't work properly with the AI blocks. Keen is aware of the bugs so hopefully they'll be fixed 🙂

[@octavius32a64]

Looking forward to the missile tutorial, I'm currently trying make long range missiles using GPS, remote blocks and the ai warfare blocks :)

[@Leo-go4nf]

Would be cool to see more videos on what if experimentation, ie. 1) What happens if beacon gets renamed during use by AI. 1a) Can another beacon with same name interfere / hijack a friendly drone especially if the original is destroyed? 1b) If renaming beacon can be used to trigger different AI blocks? For different behaviour ie combat orders/return command? 2) Can drones have there behaviour altered based on certain separate beacons being activated?( especially if renaming beacons doesn't work ) ie if beacon(DEF) active the drones swarm around your ship in a defensive bubble, If beacon(FDEF) all drones take up a far forward position to your ship to intercept attacks, beacon(LongATK) makes the drones attack enemy ships at maximum range? 3) If beacon is on a rotor and drone is set to stay at a GPS point and the beacon slowly rotates does the GPS point move and drone follow the rotation? 3a) If above works can you set drones to travel X kilometres outside the beacons range by setting the mobile GPS point outside of beacon range and use the beacon as a directional targeter to send waves of drone towards targets far outside of your range without extending the beacon and giving away your position in space? 4) How do drones act once there beacon disappears? & setting up ramming order if beacon disappears. 5) Any problems with drones following a beacon on another drone acting as wing commander or maybe acting as a beacon extension so enemies can't directly see your carrier position directly or simply so you only need to give commands to a few drones and those drones drag there group of drones with them in formation, so wing commanders are given GPS to travel to and the group take up a formation GPS position around the wing commander drone? 6) also I hear that a defensive ai block allows customers turrets lock on at 2.5km by ticking the something in its menu does it work with drone too? 7) Can/do drones/missiles engage targets beyond there range if they are equipped with a antenna and a friendly ship detects the enemy so extending sensor range? Looking back at what I've written I guess lack of sleep + curiosity == long winded rant, lol. Thank for all the fantastic SE content.

[@JulianSkies]

Do you mean they just... Fail to work, period, or do they have some weird behaviours?

[@Splitsie]

It's mostly fail to trigger when looking for something done by an AI blocks

[@JulianSkies]

@@Splitsie Aha, good to know. I'll keep that in mind for now.

[@abraxis260482]

One useful thing I've found (for drones and small manned ships) is to have an EC set to switch the engines on/off, any tanks to stockpile on/off, and the batteries to discharge/charge based on whether or not the connector is connected. That way you don't get those awkward moments of taking off in a parked ship, only for it to fall like a brick and explode the moment you disconnect because you forgot to take the batteries off of recharge first . . . again. It has the added bonus of safeguarding the ship/drone if the connector gets damaged (or some idiot presses 'P'), cutting the grid loose unexpectedly. You can even set this up so that if the cockpit is unoccupied when this happens, it triggers the 'Follow Home' behaviour, so even if your little miner gets blown off mid-combat, it'll still at least try and keep up with the fleeing mothership if it's still intact, giving you at least the chance of recovering it . . . or just serve as an extra decoy for the attacking ship.

[@dscrafted]

Doing this can cause other problems though, if you want to pick something up using said connector you'll then fall into the ground and get confused 😂

[@slwgekte]

EC?

[@dscrafted]

@@slwgekte event controller

[@slwgekte]

@DSCrafted thanks! As this may have given away i am new to this game. Havent played more than 35 hours yet, and have not yet left the first planet i landed on

[@CrodleMon]

I've had this happen more often than not, especially the battery thing. But there is a visual queue on the battery that shows what state it's in. Green=Auto, Orange=Recharge and Red=Discharge. Just make sure the lights on the battery can easily be seen. I find this a bit easier to notice if I forget.

[@swag-trap0123]

Anyone else love the idea of Splisie, explaining all this again for TFE and Capac. I can hear the moans and head scratching from the 2 amigos. And Splitsies hysterical laughter paired with frustrated noises. Good Luck.

[@Splitsie]

lol This might be why I'm planning on being the pilot of the carrier and letting the other two directly fly their ships :D

[@swag-trap0123]

@@Splitsie You should all know how to atleast launch a decoy drone / a cheap drone to run distraction while the carrier jumps out.

[@DanielSmith-z6e]

Would be funny if made scenario where have the gang approach a station that opens up and sends like drones after drone automatically like set the setup with timer blocked build ships that are drone swarm ships each holding 50 swarms and once you approach it will send and you could set up where admin controls whole scenario from control room like announcer and commentary like o the gang has found the stash they activated the o no what ever shall they do

[@DanielSmith-z6e]

Or have it like spin the wheel to press the buttons like a chaos mode ty for this info by the way helps load trying not to have ai ram it self wanted to make ai walkers

[@DanielSmith-z6e]

Also trying to make police chase rovers but they spin like beyblades

[@genesisviper1159]

One thing that i have found having a recorder to take off and one to launch prevents collision entirely, also makes a great way of having fighter drones launch from carrier hangar bays with ease and dock with ease

[@Splitsie]

Yeah having an extra one for safety on launch isn't a bad idea, this was already getting pretty complex so I thought it best to cut out anything that wasn't strictly necessary 🙂

[@erichtofen2992]

i find it difficult to do the docking with a hanger door that requires the fighter to only dock facing the right way with right ship orientation. the ai recorder doesn't record the orientation that the fighter ship was in during the docking stage. so when the hanger door is small it will stuck. is there anything to solve that? or deal with the problems?@@Splitsie

[@SarahSchlongfeel]

@@erichtofen2992 I'm still fairly new to this game, but is it possible to use two AI recorders per grid, one on the front and one in the back for example, and then your grid would be forced to align between those two points of reference?

[@bobc2636]

We are lucky to have a content creator like you looking out for us. Thank you. Keen is making this game into something special with this update, and you and others like you are making it accessible for all of us. Now... time to make some fist shaped missiles to beat those space pirates back to the stone age!

[@bigolbearthejammydodger6527]

another solid tutorial splitsie, will recommend and share as always pal. A thought occurs: If we can store waypoints and transfer waypoints via scripts we can now make a full docking autopilot. just request your docking waypoints from the station your wanting to dock at and feed it into the system on your ship. I wonder keen realizes this... with a bit more work they have a full autopilot system. What that means is that they can have NPC ships docking and undocking and traveling the system all by them selves (even in sight of a player). which means they can make an actual live economy.

[@armastat]

You could set up a static system like that with different controllers/recorders for different landing positions/approach patterns.

[@knewminex2818]

I’d love to see stuff like this used in a series, it could have so much potential

[@Splitsie]

I figured if I can make it a tutorial then I can make it in a giant purple carrier 😉

[@knewminex2818]

@@Splitsie Crashpac already has enough collisions with ASSERT.. I’m not sure how much more the paprika can take lol

[@unusefull]

@@knewminex2818 which paprika # ? :D

[@DC2022]

@@unusefull if you use Star Wars way to name clones, that would be Paprikaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[@armastat]

@@Splitsie Great vid. One addition. spaced guns can miss targets since the spacing of guns allows only one to hit at a time. Saw a cool vid where man mounted the guns on a gimbal ( horz only hinge) and used controller and camera mounted on the gun to swivel them so both widely spaced guns (wing mounted) swiveled a few degrees to aim at same spot. This may be a cool idea to incorporate. if they also have a few degrees of vertical movement then you can let the guns aim themselves and all you need to do is maintain a decent point with your ship. (not that YOU have any issues with keeping that target caret on target, hehe).

[@CSP-YTG]

Best and almost so little space engineers KZbinrs 😢

[@michaelkinzer5529]

I've watched your vids for years, especially when I find myself in a jam. Thanks Bro, keep it up.

[@TheMNWolf]

For those comfortable setting up scripts, you can replace pretty much every timer block with a single programmable block running easy automation 2, or even just scripting it yourself.

[@TimM-kz1vl]

Dude this is so simple to follow! Thank you so much for posting this!

[@Vessekx]

Splitsie was in true form. Even during a tutorial he’s killing trees. 🤣

[@Orbeus2]

Thanks so much. This is exactly what I want to work on. I know all the pieces, but you making into a recipe is sooo nice

[@arielmoonsoo9219]

One corner condition that I'm seeing with the current setup is the situation where the drone is out of targets, but not low on power or ammunition. The ideal behavior would be to resume its patrolling, but it feels like it would remain in the 'search for targets' mode until one of the return conditions is triggered.

[@Splitsie]

Yup, but until they fix the event controllers interacting with the AI blocks there's little that can be done. A clunky solution would be a timer block the periodically turns the offensive block off, defensive and basic block on to restart the cycle, but that would be problematic mid combat

[@armastat]

@@Splitsie Mmmmm What we need is a detectable mode that reveals - targets sensed (whether locked yet or not) and no targets. then we could trigger a block to reset the config.

[@DFPercush]

@@armastat Programmable blocks can read those properties, if you can use them. Feel free to try this code, but just be aware this is off the top of my head, it's not tested at all // config string TimerBlockToActivate = "Timer Block Combat Ended"; int TimeoutInSeconds = 60; //code List offensiveAiBlocks = new List(); DateTime LastAcquired = DateTime.Now - TimeSpan.FromYears(1); bool triggered = true; public Program() {} public void Save() {} public void Main(string arg, UpdateType upd) { Runtime.UpdateFrequency = UpdateFrequency.Update100; GridTerminalSystem.GetBlockOfType(offensiveAiBlocks); for (var ai in offsensiveAiBlocks) { if (ai.SearchEnemyComponent.FoundEnemyId != null) { LastAcquired = DateTime.Now; break; triggered = false; //LastTrigger = LastAcquired; } } if (LastAcquired < DateTime.Now - TimeSpan.FromSeconds(TimeoutInSeconds) && !triggered) { var tb = G.GetBlockWithName(TimerBlockToActivate); if (tb != null) { tb.TriggerNow(); } triggered = true; } }

[@mandyspence1599]

Um... Your little cartoon pictures that you use in these tutorials are so adorable, do you think you could make a brief story using them?

[@Splitsie]

Lol I don't know if I've got the patience to do anything more than a few seconds with them 😂

[@kevinspyrle5538]

Love the little animation and Blammo

[@engelheselton]

Aahhh. Better than ASMR is listening to Splitsie Drone. 😀

[@shahbazfawbush]

Need Splitsie and Capac voice options for digital assistants and GPS directions. There's plenty of youtube footage to train the AI voice model on.

[@mitchweber9455]

I think the Defensive AI and Intercept timer block can be removed. If a target is detected within 2500m, the Offensive AI stops any active Task AI functions until there are no more targets remaining, then turns them back on.

[@Deltaprimus]

can you confirm this please? If this is true I was going to put the defensive block into flee when taking damage. and run in packs of 2 or 3 so that one can evade whilst the rest are putting the hurt on?

[@TheMNWolf]

I personally like using an event controller for docking as well. If you set it up to detect can connect or connected, then you can be certain that you're not going to drop your drone out of the sky by turning off the engines at the wrong time. You can also use the negative condition to turn everything back on again.

[@Splitsie]

Yeah, that's another alternative. Since I was using timers for most other things I figured I'd use them more than event controllers since the latter don't take proper inputs from AI blocks right now

[@jeremygyles3492]

You know its a splitsie video with tree slaughtering.

[@armastat]

Beginning to think its a requirement in the contract.

[@deadlyangel6668]

Your channel is an absolute goldmine to understand space engineers, picked up the game 3 days ago on PlayStation and your content has helped me heaps. Watched majority of your content over the last couple weeks 😅

[@Splitsie]

Thanks, hope you're enjoying the game so far :)

[@deadlyangel6668]

@Splitsie I am, just having minor issues figuring out which buttons to press on console to do some of the actions like you do on pc. The controls are quite a handful with limited buttons compared to keyboard and mouse :)

[@Splitsie]

Yeah that can be a challenge. If you've got a cheap USB keyboard and mouse lying around it can be helpful for at least the menus. From memory there's also a list of the controls accessible on the Xbox controller by start then y, so the PlayStation controls should have an equivalent shortcut

[@deadlyangel6668]

@Splitsie hmm can't quite find what you're referring to. Did find a radial menu with a bunch of controller shortcut layouts which helped a ton. Do you happen to remember how to turn on share inertia? Cuz I can only turn off intertia tension or whatever its called exactly but that doesn't quite help.. accidentally bumped a spaceship I was building in space and had one hell of a time trying to finish it and fly it back to the space station 🤣

[@BNETT21]

When enabling the AI on any Task, Combat, or Move block, it will automatically turn off the AI behavior on all other blocks of that same type. Example, Turning off defensive to turn on combat or turning off a Basic task block for wandering to turn on(and play) a Recorder. I used to turn off things first and I found that to many actions on the AI blocks can bug it out. I've even had to go as far as adding a 2 second timer (detailed below) to switch from one Move block over to another for docking because I was also switching a lot of other things at the same time. My wandering base defense drone is heavy armor and has a 25 minute flight time. Creating the need for 3 of them for 100% coverage. So I added a reactor to extend it's flight time greatly. It has 6 event controllers, 2 basic tasks, 1 defensive, 1 combat, 2 flight, 2 recorders, 3 timers. And that's not even monitoring block damage or ammo capacity yet. When I setup block damage it's going to send it to the scrapyard instead of docking so that's another recorder and/or basic task block... I've got about 200 hours in this single drone design and a lot of that were ate up by working around bugs and (maybe)dumb decisions keen made about limiting action bar choice for certain things. Flight Blocks 2 Recorders: One to dock and 1 to undock. Docking turns on an Event Controller that locks the connector and puts everything into charge mode. Undock has a different path and turns on the undock Timer(see below) once it's clear of the base. 2 Basic Task blocks: 1 to go home safely when a return condition is met. 1 to enable wandering around the base while out and about. Turn off wandering to save power but the block is still needed to keep the drone close to home. 2 Flight blocks to get around a dumb(IMO) issue. Align to P-gravity doesn't allow the Recorder blocks to remember their orientation of the recorded waypoints so I turn it off for docking/undocking. Plus it's nice having a single block change vs turning on/off Collision Avoidance, on/off P-gravity alignment (which is an on/off function...UGH), Changing max speed, Min altitude, etc. Event Controllers 2 for a reactor on and off function. Latch mechanism so that it doesn't spam the reactor on/off constantly. Turns it on at 40% battery capacity and off at 95%. This increases flight time. I tried having a reactor just to extend flight but the power got wonky. I had to make sure I had enough reactor to charge the batteries vs just extending the flight time a bit. It would just eat the uranium without extending the flight time. 1 for when the batteries are at 100% to launch the drone 1 for when the batteries are at 30% to end combat and send the drone home. Usually takes 5% battery to get home but if it's out fighting it can take quite a bit more. 1 for an emergency battery function at 15%. This was added to counter a bug I was having due to many things switching. I've since fixed it in the logic by splitting up some actions and adding a delay. 1 for locking the connector when it's in range, Putting batteries on recharge, turning itself off etc. Gotta turn it off so you can undock. The game thinks the blue state on a connector is ready to lock... Timers: 2 timers are triggered when switching over from the Go Home Task block and general use Flight block to the Docking recorder and Docking Flight block. I find that a delay between the two removed a bug that was causing it to trigger random other things on the grid that were not in the logic path at all... 1 timer is used at the end of the undock flight recorder to trigger the General Flight block, Turn on the Wandering Basic task block, Turn on Combat. Pro Tip: AND gate very important when monitoring more than one battery. For some reason SE likes to discharge one faster than the other so if you are monitoring both batteries you can have a situation where one battery will be triggering the low condition at 30% while the other battery is still at 95%. That same battery having just triggered the launch since the batteries were "at 100%" Collision Avoidance Bug: For some reason collision avoidance will just bug out and hang the grid when nothing is near it. Due to this I've had to use a sensor set to 30 meters to turn on/off avoidance Frustration Note to Keen: Keen, Please make the Task Recorder override the P-Gravity function for orientation or at the very least give us an on and off function. But, I did find that the thing that bugged my grid out the most was when I was switching p-gravity alignment on/off on the fly for docking. So maybe just the override? I'm pretty sure it would help people build ships better because You don't have to worry about the recorders position if it uses the orientation to it's reference beacon(or global GPS) These are my experiences with my drone. I hope that it helps somebody troubleshoot theirs because wow what a headache at times... This stuff is complicated enough without having to work around bugs.

[@shahbazfawbush]

Great share, thank you.

[@ChristopherMocko]

Fantastic tutorial. Very well explained and more importantly, very easy to follow. Thanks Splits, keep doing what you do.

[@dusk1947]

Thank you. Though I play Space Engineers rather infrequently. It's the one game I don't think I can play without guides. The level of automation and programing has hit a phenomenal point in this game. But it's a level I'd be hard pressed to understand fully on my own. Something like this fighter is a great example of an object I'd love to create and really don't know where to start, due to it's complexity. I'd also like to do the same thing with a ground version, such as a heavily armed tank (mostly for fun). And this should enable that as well. Thank you

[@zachlandis8728]

If you have multiple drones that you want to launch with one hotbar key, you can use a block group of the launch timers, and if you dont want them colliding, set the launch timer blocks to different times and the hotbar key to start instead of trigger immediately

[@CrodleMon]

I've started playing this a few days ago on a friends shared library. I've clocked over 100 hours and I'm slowly getting addicted to a game I don't even own 😭

[@martinvho]

A different option of turning your engines off at landing is to put the battery on recharge, with an added benefit that... well... the battery charges.

[@Splitsie]

That won't stop the thrusters as they'll be receiving power from the base grid, but as an additional step it's a good idea

[@TheSharpy1012]

Just watch out that multiple drones dont have the same "Grouped Name" to turn the thrusters on/off for eg. otherwise when connecting to your base and triggering that command, it will also change other same grouped names connected to your base grid etc... found that out the hard way on my Main channels Survival 😂

[@litle.entertainer]

Thank you. You make best tutorials of this game!

[@Dagonius.]

Great breakdown Splitsie!

[@Foga001]

Finally, the best tutorial series up to date! Almost :-)

[@Splitsie]

Yup, once I've done the missiles it's time for me to go back to the start and refresh the beginners videos 🙂

[@Foga001]

Thank you! Its very helpful for beginners, or someones like me, who not played since economy update, and started a new world, not too long ago! There are many videos online, but your tutorials are the go-to! Good job!

[@scelonferdi]

One thing that's help is, if we could configure several behaviours for AI blocks and trigger them separately. This way we could have say 9 different "virtual" AI or timer blocks within a single "physical" one. A technical way to achieve this may actually be creating such virtual blocks for grid management, leaving the interface a bit cleaner. Basically if set up a timer block to trigger example recorder 5 it wakes up the single recorder block in the grid as recorder block 5. The same could also be done with example recorder 7, where it wakes up with the behaviour configured for that recorder.

[@barrylopes]

Even during a tutorial Splitsie doesn't spare the trees!😅

[@TheUrit]

There's another reason to turn your thrusters off as well rather than just turning off dampeners for connected grids: if you're using grids attached to a larger carrier, in planetary gravity, there's a bug with the calculation of subgrid mass fighting force. If you have a subgrid (say, on a connector) attached to your main grid, and you turn off the subgrid's damps, you'll start to slowly sink, as the main grid doesn't compensate for the mass. If you turn off thrusters instead, the main grid properly takes the load and doesn't sink.

[@Splitsie]

Huh, hadn't noticed that behaving differently, good to know

[@armastat]

Well that explains a lot of weird things I do to myself. lol

[@Nerevarim]

very good Guide .. as always 😉 did some testing .. the altitude setting on move block will determen the distance to the surface when moving around .. if you record the path for returning it will override that setting .. so you can set it to like 50m to move around savely and it will still land on a connector with 5m height

[@jasonnuhfer827]

Amazing job splitsie. As always so informative and broken down to a level that someone like myself which hasn't played se can understand and comprehend. You make it so easy that I could probably jump in an actually do and set this all up. Keep up the amazing work.

[@Splitsie]

Thanks Jason 🙂

[@armastat]

Yep he does Yeomen work for us. I have the game but no time to play again with it yet, so I am soaking up all these lessons for now.

[@AsilarWindsailor]

These are some very interesting blocks to work with. I'll have to try my own hand at them some time

[@twyxelmyumi]

Have not set up drones yet but i have used event blocks for some of my ships to manage the thrusters, battery and hydrogen tanks when attached to a connector. Event blocks work as an if statement : if connector is connected turn off thrusters, switch to stockpile and recharge. If not connected turn on thrusters, turn off stockpile and turn battries to auto. Has worked flawlessly and i think this feature can make flying vessels a bit more capac proof seeing he forgets to turn the batteries to auto before he takes off from the connector.

[@Splitsie]

Sadly they can't... Yet. There are bugs in the interaction between the AI blocks and event controllers that keen are aware of and which have come up many times during my testing (it's why it took me so long to get this tutorial out)

[@timothyloveridge4051]

I'm loving the event controllers, but currently, they are pretty buggy. Sometimes, they work consistently, other times they just stop working all together, it's good to know that Keen is aware of the issues and is working to fix them. Love your content, Splitsie keep up the good work.

[@twyxelmyumi]

@Splitsie but that's only with the ai blocks, right? Im not using any ai blocks on my atmospheric miner, which is a manned craft.. Just the event blocks are present. I just use them for select behavior i want when i connect up to my base or outpost. Have yet to do any automation with the ai blocks, so i have not come across any problems.

[@TheClaw47]

Love the animations you add in.

[@Splitsie]

Thanks, I hope they're less distracting than moving about my camera while sometimes providing clearer examples of what I'm talking about :)

[@robert_the_great2842]

Thank you splitsie for the great video and as always very educational as well. And thank you for your time on making the videos.

[@Splitsie]

Thanks 😊

[@robert_the_great2842]

@@Splitsie your welcome 👍

[@BlackRedDead1943]

you just answered a question i had in mind when i firstly redesigned Red1 to be a carrier - way back in Beta! xD

[@Valenorious]

"It's not going to pay attention to trees though." Hey, give it a break. It was created by a guy named Splitsie.

[@CyberMage42]

Missed it by a year, but now I wanna set up an automated factory run only by drones now and this oddly enough tells me everything I didn’t understand about ai systems :D

[@overcome_za8024]

In the future can you plz do a miner video for mobile and static platforms plz , love your content splits keep it up man

[@denielalain5701]

Hello! The problem is not with event blocks, the problem is that either groups are recognized by name, and not a unique ID, or the same unique IDs are applied to the groups with the same name when you are copy-pasting a ship. Anyway you supposed to be able to "save" the state of things even if the event is happening once instead of continously. The way you save is that you just give it the behaviour - it is worth mentioning that my insight is rather shallow in this entire topic. I am just curious to answers

[@MrKanibaal]

It took me a while to get this right with my ADHD😂. Finally I can impress my (NOOB) friend😂. Had him watch your tutorial videos after I bought him the game. ( Honestly it feels like I have my own version of Capac...he died 4 times trying to get an unknown single)😂

[@ukaszanioowski9722]

wouldn't the offensive block just override the patrol of the basic block when detecting an enemy?

[@ErlanMomonov]

So... Will there be a new guides? That was pretty good

[@theunknowngvs9833]

This made my desire for an automated miner without programmable block increases. Would it be possible for you to test whether or not the new AI blocks can operate a miner?

[@Splitsie]

A practical miner? No, they can't. Something that mines on a path you've already set for them? maybe, but it wouldn't be very useful :/

[@callmebighead14th]

I want to see if I can get this to work with a Star Wars Venator class Star Destroyer and just have a ton of drones flood out of the main hanger bay

[@HairyHillman]

Looking forward to seeing 4 wasabi drones being built on the carrier, whilst the boys run around helping…

[@alexanderafonin1688]

great like for the point about the power!

[@andyblondyn1898]

Hmm what I miss here is: 1) that you can add one more event block which detects the replenished power (safer than ammo I assume) and launch the drone? 2) add condition with ammo replenish or power to switch the battery to charge? Am I missing something usefull? :D Cheers!

[@fredpryde8555]

i going to bed and dream about blocks tonight

[@khamseen]

As somebody who has probably spent a lot of time testing out the combat capabilities of Automatons, how do you find they stack up against script based drones? Looking at MES drones in particular, need a defense other than custom turrets and a prayer haha. So far most of my Automaton stuff has been limited to cargo drones.

[@jgtully]

Stumbled onto this tutorial recently (Great job, Splitsie!) and wanted to give drones a good ol' "College Try". Following your instructions, I get to the step where I'm supposed to implement a set of waypoints back to a docking connector on a Mobile Grid... and test having the drone retrace those steps. No matter what I tried, I could not get the drone to retrace the steps. Went back thru, checked my settings, proceeded with the rest of the Drone configuration as per your instructions. I now have a 'finished drone' that refuses to return back and dock. I can launch it, it'll go out on patrol, and once it hits low battery status the event controller fires off trying to send it back home. Instead it just *stops* and hangs there in the sky until it runs out of power and goes dead. Help? Any advice?

[@xorvious]

Do you have a preferred method to reload the drone when it lands? I didnt know if it has to be done with an inventory manager script or if there is another way. Thanks for the great tutorial!

[@Splitsie]

I'd either use a script or just use a sorter to pull in ammo 🙂

[@0Morey]

Is there a way to make the drone move faster? Like, accelerate and decelerate quicker, circle targets faster, etc.? Will just doubling the amount of thrusters make this possible? 🤔

[@lionllew6601]

missile controller video when? Also you could do a blueprint one? Enjoyed this series a lot!

[@benvalkeners9718]

Just what I needed, nice

[@Zenas521]

Not sure turning off align to p-gravity is wanted when getting the drone to land on the connector. Their could be a situation when the drone is upside down and attempting to land on the connector, rare, but a possibility non-the less. Nice tutorial.

[@Splitsie]

The drone will align itself as per the recorded waypoints if you turn off align to gravity, so unless your carrier is sideways or upside down it shouldn't be an issue and tbh if your carrier is in that state, you've probably got bigger worries :D

[@purewater782]

Question, after the drone destroys an enemy, I didn't see any setup for "after behavior" if it even exists. So after it downs an enemy, will the combat ai stay on until power runs low?

[@tainuisept9155]

@19:30 - Flashbacks of ED209's first movie scene in the 1987 Robocop movie.

[@dirty_beggar6277]

great video, really good explanations :D

[@billneuman2278]

Have you been able to get the AI blocks to engage a static grid (such as a base) ? I can get a kamikaze drone (missile) to do this against a flying target, but if the target is touching the ground (so... targets a base, or a flying target which has crashed) the AI offensive/Defensive blocks seem to ignore it, at least with the "intercept" behavior. Turret AI will target a static grid though, so I guess if the drone isnt a missile you could still use the AI blocks to maintain intercept position and let the turret do its thing.

[@AeRoSiKTh]

Is it possible to make a fleet of welder drones that will weld up a huge structure using this?

[@stormycatmink]

Is there a way to change the power priority to the drone controllers to be even higher than thrusters?

[@Splitsie]

None that I'm aware of

[@armastat]

You could mod it yes.

[@mdmaniac301]

We going to get more of these tutorials for advanced players? The new player tutorial series is nice but these advanced topics are useful.

[@Splitsie]

My plan is to continue to do a bit of both, with the current beginners ones evolving into more complex topics as the beginner ones have been covered :)

[@grandadgamernz]

Howdy, ok so my drone works as per you great vid until i get to the part where i turn of the collision avoidance and align to grav then she just wont do it. Keeps saying basic task block disabled?? help please

[@XxShadow101xX]

I'm having an issue with a space drone. The AI Task Recorder is in line with the connector, but it doesn't seem to want to turn around and it keeps hovering somewhat distantly from the connector despite my reversing into it with the drone connector turned off. What do I do?

[@icesharkk6399]

it would have been cool if the drone controller blocks could have been located on the carrier and simply remote control the drones.

[@Konfektionery]

I've just finished watching your tutorial series up to this point and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Learned a lot in a reasonable amount of time. That being said, do you think you can do more videos like these focusing on specific advanced builds from scratch? Role specific vehicles such as fighters, frigates/cruisers, dropships/pods surface rover miners, combat rovers/tanks for example. I myself am trying to work on a hydrogen powered starfighter that can work on Earth-like planets, I'm learning how to manage fuel and related conveyers on vehicles, fixed weapons and ammo management, and how they can all come together in a build. I have some bomber/fighter builds in creative going that work great in space but I can't seem to quiet get it to maneuver well in-atmosphere, I've gone through maybe 4~6 generations trying to get it to work, which is fun tinkering but time consuming and frustrating to get it to move the way I want it to. Maybe my build is just impractical?

[@mailleweaver]

Does the recorder block record at least the up orientation in relation to the beacon grid? This seems like it would be important for aligning grids in space where there's no common gravity reference.

[@AspenBrightsoul]

From my testing, it seems to set the waypoints posisioned to the beacon. Imagine the beacon as a 3d grid with the top of the becon being y and the front being x.

[@Splitsie]

I believe it does record orientation relative to the parent beacon

[@armastat]

@@Splitsie in space would having the gravity option set make use of the artificial gravity orientation of a ship? or base?

[@Expression2.0]

Just listening to the conditions put on the drone, I reckon if it finds and destroys a target but doesn’t run out of ammo while doing so, it will just sit there till it’s battery is low instead of going back to patrolling or back home?

[@Splitsie]

Pretty much, there's a bit of movement that happens with the offensive block but sadly we can't interface event controllers with the AI blocks and their targeting right now (bugs) so it was a limitation I decided to just roll with

[@drewbear_07]

One question I have is that if you have multiple connectors for multiple drones on the same grid will the record sequence stay the same for each individual connector or if I record the sequence for one connector will all the drones try to connect to that one connector or will they try to connect to their own individual connectors?

[@andyblondyn1898]

I can answer that - they will, as the reference point is a beacon on that grid so the waypoints for each connector are different :)

[@Der-du2pu]

i nid this for my ship, thank you.

[@MANU-dw9dh]

I know it's a stupid question but should the beacon be on? I want to make this drone but I don't want to transmit the location of the base either.

[@deanstoller2000]

i got mine to work for a bit, when i introduced the timer block to do the return sequence the drone will not land now, it gets within a meter or two of way point zero and just sits akwardly

[@Tobiasfowler]

You’ve got a rogue drone that can seek a target all on its own

[@armastat]

yes and your point? All SOP here.

[@krazyivan007]

How do the waypoints work? Aren't they tied to a GPS coordinate? So if you are moving that rover, the Waypoints won't be in the same place in relation to the rover anymore?

[@Splitsie]

Waypoints can be global or tied relative to a beacon if set that way before their creation

[@SinnerD2010]

I'm curious, does the relative waypoints require the beacon to be on during setup and/or operations? Also does the drone and its relative waypoints list need to be within broadcasting range of the origin beacon?

[@Splitsie]

I don't think so, I think the beacon just needs to exist, but I don't recall specifically checking that

[@SinnerD2010]

@@Splitsie This gives me so many ideas. Turducken drone system activated. 🤣

[@MoongladeDruid]

oooh oooohhhh Mr Splitsie sir a question. So would it be possible to create say 10 missiles/torpedoes that connect to a main command ship (torpedo sized as well) and at a flick of a switch all detatch and attack a target? just thinking you could use all the torpedoes thrust to power the 'Fasciculum Torpedus' and then fly back re dock with a carrier print new torpedoes? Also do these block work with ground vehicles? Many thanks for any input

[@Splitsie]

Yup, that's totally possible 🙂

[@dominicballinger6536]

Hey, I am kinda confused on some matters regarding the Xbox version of Space Engineers. For one thing, I cant seem to be able to remove any items from my basic assembler via the conveyer system, at least not without the build planner. Also, I am starting to make my whole system more confusing than it needs, as I see some items not moving in the system, such as ore from my ship into my base's storage system, without sorters. Am I overthinking something?

[@crazyfrogit04]

Possibly a container or machine rotated wrong for the connection, and if on a small grid, items like steel plates will not pass through the small conveyors. If it's a large grid, it's probably a machine port not lining up somewhere along the line. Happens more than most veteran players would like to admit. Edit: I am however rather rusty as I haven't played SE for nearly a year

[@dominicballinger6536]

@Crazy Frogit04 I think I solved one problem, at least with not pulling stuff out of my assembler. I didn't realize there was more to the inventory section on the machines, and kept trying to pull from the production screen. Also, I think I just had a surplus of one material, cobalt, that backed up my basic assembler and refinery.

[@jan6470]

Is it possible to send AI commands or waypoints remotely (via antenna or something)? Then you could also do the target selection on the home base and send the drone to an enemy. That way the drone could react faster if an enemy comes into range of the home base while the drone is on the other side if its patrol area.

[@Splitsie]

As far as I'm aware, no it's not possible to send them waypoints remotely. There are mods that let you create remote GPS markers, as in ones at a thing you're looking at which you could then directly add as a destination though

[@BonesYTTV]

Good video, but what if the drone complexly destroys the target. Will it turn off the Offensive block and go back to Defensive block? I'm trying to build a station that has drones that are always patrolling until they run out of ammo or fuel. Once they return and fill back up they leave again to continue patrolling. This way I can run 3 drones off of one connector. I just don't understand how to make it s return to patrol, turn off the offensive block and turn back on the defensive block. Any help?

[@Splitsie]

I couldn't work out a reliable way to turn off the offensive block and for most purposes it wouldn't matter since the offensive block would switch to a new target if it destroyed its first one anyway, but yeah it's a bit of an oversight that I probably should have mentioned in the video but forgot. One possible way would be to have a timer periodically resetting the state of all the AI blocks to be back to 'patrol' so that when the target dies, that timer would send it back, and if the target wasn't dead yet the drone would immediately switch back to fighting it until the next triggering of that timer block

[@BonesYTTV]

@@Splitsie Great idea on the timer block. I think that would work and I have room to fit it on the ship. I appreciate the response.

[@BonesYTTV]

I did get this working. I created a Timer Block called "Reset" and every 3 minutes. The reset timer will kick back on the Patrol block which turns off the Offensive block and the defensive block back on. I also have the The Reset Timer block turning off all of my Event Controllers and the Patrol block turns them back. Reason for this, is if for some reason the event controllers get messed it up it will eventually trigger it to return for fuel/ammo.@@Splitsie

[@azurebliss152]

imagine having these patrolling your capital ship, recieving resources mined from planets all around the system from bases that can send transport probes to it so you can build more of them just in case. i've always been in love with the idea of having a capital ship surrounded by a HUGE swarm of automated drones that cost near nothing to make in bulks, survivability being key for the mothership, not for the swarm. another alternative is to have mining bases do the swarm-making and send drones to the mothership, but this could be counter-productive if you run out of drones for whatever reason and can't warp back home. placing "leeches" on planets for long-distance harvesting seems like a better idea, but this got me wondering... is there a way to give resources to an AI bot, send them somewhere, and let them do THE WHOLE JOB of setting up a set of machines that somehow organize themselves to make the whole mining base with probe-launching mechanisms from zero? i know for sure this is ridiculously complicated, but it would be extremely interesting to have a system like that.

[@chriswoodend2036]

I don't remember who it is that keeps track of it, but do those 5 trees count?

[@mikep2504]

you forgot to add battery recharge functions to the sequence. if it comes back because of low charge, it needs to change to recharge or you will have to wait a long time while it is on auto.

[@knightmanspread6522]

Is it possible to make a drone warp from one base to another on a different planet? I'm a noob and still trying to not make brick ships.

[@casualsleepingdragon8501]

For some reason it won't move away from the connector when collision avoidance is on but will when it's off

[@DemTacs]

XD I like the Capointac.

[@robinhood5627]

So what happens when the hostile target is destroyed? how does the drone know to disengage and resume normal patrol? As of now my drone, following your guide here, once the dummy target I setup is completely destroyed, just hovers there firing everything it has until it runs out of ammo. Just firing at nothing.

[@Splitsie]

The way I set it up here that's pretty much working as intended. I didn't really look into making it return though I probably should have.

[@ichcool91]

Heyo, nice vid as always :) Is there a planned date for the Rocket tutorial already?

[@Splitsie]

I'll have to give it another try after the next update and see if they've fixed the bugs that prevented me from doing it before

[@Boldro92]

I'm having an issue with an automated drone. When either of the event controllers that monitor ammo and battery charge triggers, instead of sending the "play" signal to the return recorder it just disables the Basic AI and the drone freezes in place. The Return recorder is set up properly, because if I connect to the drone and press play manually it correctly returns home and docks. The problem appears to be in the signal sent by the controller. Is this the bug you mentioned in another comment? That was 8 months ago, is it still not solved?

[@jarrettallen2559]

Still not it seems. Have your event controllers call a "return" timer block and the timer set to play the recording block

[@Boldro92]

@@jarrettallen2559 I tried that as well, but it doesn't change anything. I've sent a ticket to keen, with a video of the issue and the savefile of the world, but I've received no answer yet

[@justplainzero5286]

Is the position of the connector block important? 99% of my builds have connectors at the rear, I see most tutorials have connectors at the bottom

[@Splitsie]

Nope, just need to keep it inline with the AI recorder block 🙂

[@kamikazelookinheads3494]

How do you Get it to actually pull the ammo though

[@systemxgaming6592]

After engagement the drone just sits there after the enemy is destroyed. Seems the AI basic task wont turn on, not even manually. Any ideas on a fix as a fighter drone is useless if it just sits there after the enemy is destroyed. Thanks

[@Splitsie]

I was tempted to make a timer that runs while in flight where every 5 minutes it resets the state to the launch state. Would have that timer be turned off when you start the return part

[@TheApawcalypseCats]

im struggling to get my drone to land, itll get to waypoint 2 and then just give up and stop.. im not sure what im doing wrong

[@beerkegbob6952]

Leave it to keen to create a update that makes setup /config more difficult. Some of these actions were easier set up with a remote block.

[@Splitsie]

Some were, many were impossible though and definitely less reliable. It's a long way from perfect but it is a genuine improvement