Collision detection and multiple drones

[goodandtasty1988]

Hey, I've spent the last 25 hours or so feverishly figuring out automatons and drone printing. I've been mostly successful until now.

I recently adjusted the basic task for my drones to follow a frigate I made. They all bunched up at a point near it so I figured I'd enable idle movement on some to spread them out a bit. Within about a minute one of the drones had flown straight into the frigate so hard it blew apart. I only noticed cause of the sudden debris field.

Why?
Every block that needs specific facing (recorders, flight move, remote controls) has been tested and is working.
My combat/patrol movement block is set to a high max speed so they can fight but collision detection is on.
Every grid has active antennas and beacons where needed so nothing should be invisible or whatever.
The task block itself is set to 100 m minimum anyway, how did it manage to not only breach that distance but hit the follow target so hard it shattered?

Docking/liftoff is fine, I have decent waypoints that get them far enough away before activating any routines. Sometimes they run into solar panels on subgrids but thats mostly a waypoint issue.

This is combat though, and can't be solved with waypoints that I can think off. Does collision detection just suck or am I doing it wrong?

[Dan2D3D]

Hi, collision avoidance + percision mode always gave me problems so I test without first and will find and use a solution/setup where those options are not needed.

+
Keep in mind the SE Programmers told the community to send them all the "Not working" setup we find, and adding to a Portal Bug report will give you a SE Programmer testing your world save and be able to chat with you.

[Dan2D3D]

In case you don't know, the report links are in the pinned green messages but I will paste in the one where a SE Programmer can chat with you.

Click "Submit Bug" on their Support Portal :

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/pc
(create "Bug report" or "Request help"(Private) or "Feedback"(Petition) on the Portal)

[goodandtasty1988]

Hey Dan, thanks for the reply
So I currently have 2 movement blocks in all my drones, one for docking and one for combat
the docking move block has low max speed, collision detection off, and precision mode on
the combat move block has high max speed, collision detection on, and precision mode off

combat movement was enabled when this happened, with collision detection on and precision mode off, so I'm still not sure what went wrong. idk if its a bug yet cause I'm still learning, but wondering if anyone else has seen awful collision detection behavior like this and if they've been able to fix it.

I'm currently thinking I can just put sensors on all of them for 50 m out searching for friendlies and just have that trigger a low speed mode until they're clear, but it would be cool if collision detection just worked too lol

I also did adjust the max speed thru a mod (225 for small craft) and set the max speed for ai move block to that. I didn't think it would be an issue because I have not ever once seen them hit even 100 m/s let alone 225, but this is the first time I've enabled idle movement so maybe it did something really stupid.

I will do some more testing and see if its report worthy

[Dan2D3D]

Playing modified can be hard to find "normal" solution, you should do your engineer testing in a new creative mode world without any Workshop Mods.

I never tried to setup lets say 4 Drones following me but I think I would add a Beacon on all Drones and set the second Drone to "Follow home"/ follow the first Drone Beacon, and so on for all the other Drones so Drone #3 set to follow Beacon of Drone #2 ...

Edit
+ Drone #4 set to follow Drone #3.

[Dan2D3D]

I will add :

The 4 Drones will collide when setting all Drones to follow your Mothership for example, and why I would try the setup in my previous post first.

[Dan2D3D]

More details :

The Follow Home option always places the Drone above my Rover when set at 0 range :
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3028221694
They will all want to positon at the same spot having 4 Drones doing the same Job and my setup should prevent Drone colliding problem.

Engineer testing needed ;)

[goodandtasty1988]

Yea I have my larger grids daisy chained like that though I haven't tested it in depth, my mothership is more of a factory that can move slightly right now lol so I've just been in one spot

I'm thinking of doing some sensor stuff and combining that with a timer loop to only have idle movement on for like 5 seconds at a time or so.

those two combined should fix I think, or at least prevent complete blowouts like I'm seeing.

the design is probly not helping, basically just a cargo container with missile launchers, thrusters, brains on top and front armor lol. it's fragile but its a starting point.

my more direct combat drones usually just lose their assault cannon but these missile drones just fall to pieces

[Dan2D3D]

I try to find the setup that need less blocks as possible to do the Job so I would try to find a solution wihtout adding sensors but go for it because we become better the more different setups we try

[goodandtasty1988]

Yea true honestly, after grinding my head against this for the past few hours I've come up with the perfect solution

forget small grid combat drones, I'm gonna start making large grid autonomous weapons platforms instead

learned a lot tho, automatons are pretty cool

[Dan2D3D]

Gives use more playing time / new Engineer testing to do and it's the part I like the most in this game, I go in to find the best working solutions :)

(I don't play survival much)