Decoy Buoys- Practical or a waste of time?

[Braidborn the Broken]

I was building a cargo ship, and decided to add some safety features, first thing was an escape pod (read detachable cockpit with it's own thrusters, power and O2 separate from the main unit) and the second was decoy buoys/mines small head rotors that had a battery, timer block, warhead, two decoys and an antenna (possibly some sensors too) and added some armor to make it look nice.

completed buoy https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1799401565

Deconstructed buoy https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1799401540

Escape pod https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1799401519

Would these features actually work/help or would they be a complete waste of resources?

[Mogz]

decoys do work, many ways you can incorporate them into designs, i think what you want is decoys you can jettison, ala chaff style, use that type of decoy construct myself and it works well for escaping and evading

[Dan2D3D]

Decoys get shot first so you will be in problems if you add warheads on those

In front of a Pirate ship / station =
Decoys will give the needed time to destroy the Pirate antenna and turrets, it's limited in combat to give you that window you need to take over.

You should try the "Learning to survive" scenario and succeeding without cheating, you will notice that using Decoys helps, it's good challenge to do to know what must be done on your Warship.


Edit

But there are other solutions to take over without damages done (almost no damage) ;)

[Braidborn the Broken]

Originally posted by Dan2D3D:

Decoys get shot first so you will be in problems if you add warheads on those :clang:

the idea is, the decoys aren't actually on, the timer block turns them on, both the decoys and then arms and starts the warhead countdown (30 second/1 minute have to test it), but it only activates the decoys after you jettison it, allowing you to escape, and if the decoys get destroyed and the warhead does as well, hopefully the explosion will fool the enemy into thinking your ship was the thing that exploded, (the cargo ship runs silent, no antenna beyond what is actually on the decoy) if the warhead isn't destroyed when the decoys are, the warhead eventually self detonates, acting as a mine (adding sensors to instantly blow up the warhead upon detecting the enemy would be ideal)

[Dan2D3D]

Create a new Easy start Earth creative mode with "All in" (Pirate Drones and Scripts) enabled from the world advanced settings, load and paste your ship in to test it.

[Karmaterrorᵁᴷ]

The one thing id change is make it a merge block and a decoy. Then you can have a projector and welder on the ship, they weld it up, merge releases and it can now be reloaded. For civy ships i like to rear mount the decoy launchers so i just leave a line of them behind me.

For combat ships i add a spaceball to that setup so i can have grav gens on the ship and "throw" the decoys infront of me as a screen for turret fire. Anything that uses rotors to detatch is a one and done thing.

Combat Decoy welder/launcher system
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=801366573

Cant find a pic of civvy one, but its same thing just rear mounted without the grav gens and spaceballs, so it just drops decoys behind you without pushing them forwards :)

[Shonnas]

Decoys are the basis for controlling your enemies auto targeting and firing turrets, i love a decoy printer, flood the area with decoys to control a battle.

[Shonnas]

i use a small block system on a large rotor to keep the size down , make sure you protect the launcher though and have multiple of them

[ShadedMJ]

Originally posted by Braidborn the Broken:

...the idea is, the decoys aren't actually on, the timer block turns them on, both the decoys and then arms and starts the warhead countdown ...

There's a problem with that. You may have compensated for it already.

The enemy turrets are going to shoot the timer blocks then, which you probably want to avoid.
I consider it this way: Enemy turrets will make a list of targets, which includes decoys AND any block that has a computer component. That list get sorted so decoys are at the front. If the decoys are off, then the timer blocks get shot, but if the decoys are on, the decoys get shot.