Programmer guide for dummies.

[joemama1512]

Is there any guide on how to get started as a Programmer? Even after learning some logic, I suspect many find full automation to be daunting and full of missteps. Having some high level inspiration would be really beneficial.

For example, I have zero clue how one would automate picking up something with a magnet and going back to base.

Even just starting with blow stuff up missions, having a ship that goes right all the time can run into lots of issues right away. How to mine and get any cash? Not getting stuck is a big one.

There were a few OLD youtubes but they aren't hugely helpful as far as tutorial goes... many just showing off.

[joemama1512]

Ok, well I will take a shot at this myself to get the ball rolling. I wanted to go through my thought process as just stealing a drone from the mods section is generally hard to understand and is overwhelming.



THere are a few things to know when starting out as programmer:

1) You get wireless resources transfer just like an engineer. Very important.

2) You SEEMINGLY start with only 1 gun type. However if you go to the weapons factory you can click NEW and create a new weapon and name it and apply up to 3 mods. You start with the 20% off energy cost for free and can unlock various items in the tree. You will get lots of unlocks from doing missions too.
I recommend getting the -80% energy cost option as soon as possible because it is so strong... even with kind of unlimited batteries more or less.

3) You can ignore several mission types and stick to the "kill stuff" variety and still make progress. So don't hurt your brain trying to figure out how to haul toxic barrels at first!

4) you can restart a mission with no penalty... no additional THREAT generated by doing this.

5) There is no launch costs. Yellow stuff is used for weapon unlocks. Red for the usual stuff.

6) Focus on Stealth at the garage as the other items are far less useful.

7) You Start with factories which are extremely strong.

8) You can leave your drone core in the container. Its generally best to just let it float above the container with a factory cranking out whatever drones you wish.

[joemama1512]

Getting Started:
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You will need to come up with some kind of high level strategy for your drone. A few ideas:

1) A giant spinner works decently for some missions. Use several VTOL engines pointed to the mission objective for movement. Do not overdo it... you will be digging most likely so no need to have tons of engines. start with 4. Use 4 directional thrusters to make the ship spin quickly... this spreads out your firepower nicely for diggign and shooting and keeps you from getting stuck.

You simply need a button with a Q command to provide a constant input and you set your guns to be fixed, fire on Q, resources always going,

Speaking of which, I recommend using flamethrowers. Get the dig mods and the energy reduction and stick to kinetic so you don't freeze/fry yourself. Have 3 of them facing in every direction set to Q autofire. You might use the wider-focus if desired which can help if the drone gets stuck or stops spinning.

Also, add 4 resource collectors to the spinner and be sure to make a resource tank with a decoupler set to immediately fire using Q. That will also store all your fuel tanks and batteries. Make sure the resoruce tank will actually FIT into the basket though!

You can use a long impulse generator in your resource pile with a rest time of 30 seconds and an active time of say 3 seconds and then add a couple of Jump Drives to your drone. What this does is every 30 seconds it charges up the 2 drives and will provide a boost. This is basically anti-stuck insurance. If you stop spinning and get stuck, the harsh impulse from these engines is your best way to get unstuck.

Add a shield module to each corner so your ship is well protected since it gets up close and personal.

Finally, add a Camera Control to your spinner and set it to your fixed Q constant On command. you only need this IF you leave your drone core in the basket. For this drone, there is really no need, but you can if desired.

[joemama1512]

2) The above is good but runs into issues quickly when you have to deal with freeze/fry zones, lava, blow-up fireflies, etc. We either need range or redundancy.

So our next idea is a replicating roving drone of some kind. You keep the core at the base and add a proximity sensor to the container/ground which fires up thrusters. use the usual tilt sensor with thrusters to keep the ship upright and factory underneath. Basically you drop your package of batteries,resource tank right away but then the drone core and factory float above the container spamming roving drones that scour the planet.


Attached to your factory is one (or several) drones that will be printed and decoupled ASAP with your constant Q input. Be sure to add a CAMERA MODULE with Q to each one! This will get a bit tricky when you have multiple on planet but its way better than zero visibility.

One option is to just replicate spinners like in (1). For something different build a lunar lander type ship with a tilt sensor holding it upright and let it have a constant slow-ish Go Right thruster. Easiest way to do it is add a proximity sensor that detects pretty much anything. When detected it thrusts upwards AND blasts away with a fairly low recoil weapon such as blasters, flamers, whatever. I like blasters on this one. Range will be poor so no need for rangeboosters or long range guns.

I built 3 of these attached to my factory to be spawned at once as they get stuck, attacked,etc. You can spam smaller ones more often though, or have a large one. They will slowly descend further and further down as they shoot up the terrain although quite slowly.

MAKE SURE to have a logic-splitter attached to your factory right before this ship(s) to avoid confusion. Otherwise ALL ships will thrust and fire when ONE detects anything! This is bad. That means each ship will need its own Constant Q On input locally.

[joemama1512]

3) Another method is to incorporate subdrones using a factory onboard your roving ships. Using the above example lets say you add a factory to your roving drones that get generated.
Build the following seeking-missile:

2 vtol engine set to Nearest Enemy/Gravity as primary/secondary. Gravity ensures that the bombs drop to earth if nothing is detected right away instead of flying off into the sky. Set VTOL to constant Q.
Add a proximity sensor with small radius that fires on detection of anything solid. Add 2 TNT that fire on the sensor. Camera is optional.
On the main ship, add an Impulse Generator that fires the same detection key after 10 seconds. This blows up the entire thing after 10 seconds in case it gets stuck. Tune this value so its smaller than your factory generates a new one! You don't want logic-confusion where the old drone blows up your newly spawned drone.

I recommend keep the radius for TNT small for nearest enemy so it doesnt blow up YOUR drone! You might also have a launcher set for Mission Objective with a huge radius so it can better dig through dirt or better kill potential since these generally don't blow up on top of you.

IF you make multiple launchers, make sure to use DIFFERENT KEYS for the proximity sensor AND a new kill impulse driver. You can also make a sequencer that will fire drones one at a time in short succession rather than spawning a bunch at once. See my Beginner tips thread for how to do this.

[joemama1512]

4) Finally lets talk turrets. I create one gigantic drone instead of spamming multiple smaller ones.
In the back, I had 6 launchers as per above. 2 went after mission objective. 2 went after nearest enemy. 1 made a small miner-spinner that rolls away from the ship trying to mine anything exposed. Last was a small drill/miner that digs into the ground and tries to mine.

In front, I had several auto-turrets that would blast away at bad guys.
There are several types of turrets:

a) Spinning blaster: Use a logic disconnector, then Q constant On button, then a NAND gate (Q,W,E). Attach something heavy to that like a round ball. Then make a motorized hinge and add 3 parallel max distance sensors that fire W on detection. Have the hinge rotate right on E. Add fixed guns that fire on W.

This makes a constantly spinning turret that stops and fires when it detects anything. Speeds under 100 work best as the lag tends to make them overshoot the target otherwise.

b) The above with no logic at all and constant ON is an option too. This can be useful for a few flamethrowers (with enhanced particle speed and duration for max range) that will remove any specks of terrain that might get you stuck.

c) Aimed longrange blaster. Use same logic disconnector, then heavy ball, then a motorized hinge. Add a Tilt Sensor to that hinge that detects nearest enemy with 1,2 for tilt left right. Set the motorized hinge to turn left/right based on that 1,2. You can add parallel distance sensors to add fire trigger OR just let them constant-fire. This allows you to use long range lasers (with no recoil) to 'snipe' at far away targets without the 100 range limitation (from the sensors). Watch energy usage though.


d) use a free hinge and a vtol engine set to nearest enemy. You can either have the engine up front, or in the rear of the target (with vtol mode inversed). The engine will push the turret so it always faces nearest foe. Add the usual sensor(s) for firing. This one can tend to push your ship around some however so only good for big drones.

[joemama1512]

Final thoughts:

Adding an altitude control for 50% (firing upward thrusters) or so works pretty well for keeping your drone from diving into the planet core for the roving type drones when terrain is missing or been blown up.

Adding distance sensors facing DOWN and FRONT and FRONT-DOWN that detect terrain and thrust you upwards are good for navigating the surface of a planet.

With big ships, you need to enhance stability. The main thing to remember is this: Set it so your parts are anchored to NOT the previous part, but TWO PARTS BACK. i.e.

12345 are 5 parts. Have part 3 anchored to part 1. 4 to 2. 5 to 3. This tends to bond the parts together a lot better than having a normal chain where 5 goes to 4, 4 to 3, 3 to 2, 2 to 1 like you
'd expect. This can be confusing when reworking a ship though but its worth getting used to for programmer mode.


You can add the constant signal Q to any large drone created instead of it being in the container and have your primary factory generate a large ship upon a signal. With one NOT Q gate it would create the large ship. This way if your main ship got destroyed enough such that its constant Q signal was gone, your main factory would generate a new ship!
This can backfire in several ways.. mainly if you lost the Q signal somehow but large chunks of the main ship still existed. Or, if ship gets stuck without actually blowing up the Q signal button. But it might be better than nothing...

[Blake]

Thanks for taking the time to write this

[Meister]

Originally posted by joemama1512:

Final thoughts:

Adding an altitude control for 50% (firing upward thrusters) or so works pretty well for keeping your drone from diving into the planet core for the roving type drones when terrain is missing or been blown up.

Adding distance sensors facing DOWN and FRONT and FRONT-DOWN that detect terrain and thrust you upwards are good for navigating the surface of a planet.

With big ships, you need to enhance stability. The main thing to remember is this: Set it so your parts are anchored to NOT the previous part, but TWO PARTS BACK. i.e.

12345 are 5 parts. Have part 3 anchored to part 1. 4 to 2. 5 to 3. This tends to bond the parts together a lot better than having a normal chain where 5 goes to 4, 4 to 3, 3 to 2, 2 to 1 like you
'd expect. This can be confusing when reworking a ship though but its worth getting used to for programmer mode.


You can add the constant signal Q to any large drone created instead of it being in the container and have your primary factory generate a large ship upon a signal. With one NOT Q gate it would create the large ship. This way if your main ship got destroyed enough such that its constant Q signal was gone, your main factory would generate a new ship!
This can backfire in several ways.. mainly if you lost the Q signal somehow but large chunks of the main ship still existed. Or, if ship gets stuck without actually blowing up the Q signal button. But it might be better than nothing...

can you help me i want to make my fuel and bateries orbit al plannet

[joemama1512]

Yes. All you need to do is add your fuel and energy in a big block above your ship with a decoupler.

Add a few VTOL engines that are set to Gravity, in Inverse mode so they go up instead of down. Have their trigger set to some constant output such as a button thatt outputs the GO tag. This is all connected to your ship or whatever by a decoupler which is also set to GO button.

This way at the very beginning the fuel/energy will disconnect and rise upward slowly, hit the nimbatus ship and slowly work its way into orbit, safely out of the way.

You can also add a top-facing FACTORY part which can constantly print out MORE of these blocks of energy/fuel/VTOLs so that you gain more and more energy/fuel over time. This can cause lag though so I would only do this if you are using factories to spam out other spinners or attack craft that themselves neeed power/fuel.
Like if you had a high flying bomber that just flies around creating enemy-seeking spinner doodads, or guided bombs or whatever.

[1ue999]

could you help me with the retrieve truster wormhole?