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Depending on how later vehicles look, it would be trivial to describe a vehicle as artificially intelligent, with no new art required. However, unless computers are a tech captured intact, then I don't feel right about having drones in the 70's, even though we're talking about 70's guys with laser and plasma weapon.

Personally, I think vehicle crews and pilots should gain experience, and that drones shouldn't be bothered with. I think the crew stats should be fixed to the particular vehicles, in order to avoid crew management. I also feel like computer tech is the one thing which shouldn't get super advanced.

I can see its pace accelerating, but not exceeding what we have now, unless they capture intact alien computers, and reverse engineer all of their functions. In that case, it would remain almost a black box device, where you know and can predict the inputs and outputs, but have no idea of the intermediary operations. At that point they could jury rig human computers using alien parts. Maybe the Research screen art would change, the reel to reel storage would disappear, leaving the one mainframe computer, and the dumb console would gain a holographic crystal slot beside the screen? The practical effect of integrating alien computers might be fly by wire for advanced aircraft and weapons.

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The ones I added as a test I put as salvaged and repaired enemy drones.

Capture one relatively intact from the battlefield and get it working again.

You would need a drone corpse to use when manufacturing them.

Replace the weapons with human ones and you have a shiny new toy.

As for AI vehicles and drones I would have thought it would be more likely that they would be human controlled from range.

Advances in transmission and sensors would make that easier.

Pull the AI from the damaged drone and replace it with remote control equipment, for example.

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Drones first attempted use is 1916 as per wiki

Particularly

Aeryon_Scout_In_Flight.jpg

which is pretty much what I was thinking of in earlier posts, removing it's offensive weaponry.

Some current drones http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2013802/U-S-military-drones-small-look-like-insects.html

So while the UAVs seem to be big and bulky, they were being used for long distance work. It does show that this is something that;'s been going through the military mind for almost a century, which I think gives it some status to stand alongside laser weapons.

Aeryon_Scout_In_Flight.jpg

Aeryon_Scout_In_Flight.jpg.57ed6b8cba728

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  • 2 months later...

Drones can't and should not replace vehicles.

Vehicles are operated by human beings (who can and therefore should earn experience in the game).

If a vehicle is not operated by a human being, it is a drone. Drones function remotely and independently, probably according to pre-mission programming. Due to Cold-War computing capabilities I suppose there would be a need to salvage and/or re-engineer stuff (I'm agreeing with Gauddlike here). Vehicles might be controlled by wire but then they are not drones.

Right?

I would like to see these things in-game mainly because it adds features and reduces the chance of boredom.

However, there need to be proper tactical uses for the equipment.

Playing the old UFO games I - excited as I was - always tried out the vehicles (and drones) but always got rid of them after just one mission. They were always too inflexible, too easily destroyed and too expensive to be replaced regularly. And they did not gain experience (except for Afterlight where a limited and slow experience gain plus upgrades were possible) so there was no long term gain to the alternative of using soldiers. Only if too many soldiers were wounded you might have considered to use vehicles or drones. But then, without enough soldiers at your disposal, your game was already pretty much screwed.

I vote for vehicles and drones that can be carried along independently from soldiers. Then there is no choice whether to use more soldiers.

Vehicles should get a crew that can gain experience (for the same reasons jet pilots would add to the experience by the way, but are not as necessary in my opinion).

Small drones (1x1 tiles) should also be available, after encountering alien drones and researching the loot. These should be relatively cheap scouts with limited sight (camera tech was not that great back then), maybe a flying and driving version with the choice of shorter 360 degree angle or farther but more limited shorter angle of 90 degrees. They could, on the higher or highest tech level, be able to carry a limited load of arms. Why not having one (or later more) special drone slot(s) in your transports? In Afterlight is was great fun to discover the drones, researching their upgrades but they came so late in the game that they did not add any useful uses in comparison to soldiers whom they would have had to replace, and their capabilities were so limited that it was just a big disappointment.

I think these features would add a lot to the gaming experience.

For balancing: If a scout drone would be so limited in its sight that a nearby rocket blast would take it out too, there's no danger that players would let their soldiers stay at the transport all the time. In addition, the ammunition of rocket launchers is usually very limited so you could never take out the majority of aliens right in the beginning. And if a sniper shoots at the aliens discovered by a drone they might usually know the snipers position due to the aliens' advanced communication tech very swiftly and will come for him... Or of course take out the drone first. And the aliens would use the same tactics humans use, too as they are not dumb.

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Drones don't really function remotely or independently.

To use a comparison, we are currently using 2 drone varients in Afganistan and they are controlled by real people. It would have shocking results if the drones own AI was to select its own targets once sent on a mission. The drones can follow pre-defined flight paths but that no different to the auto pilot on an aeropane.

I get your meaning of drones and I guess you are thinking C&C Generals type drones and that could work and I like the idea of been able to have people in the vehicles. APC style vehicles could be the way of things.

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Sure, I believe that that is done mainly for political and ethical reasons. An automated choosing of people to be killed would indeed be scary and would further reduce what political capital the nations using drones today still have.

For game purposes I think that having an operator sitting in the transport would be sufficient explanation and balanced too while having to use one of the team members to control the drone would surely not be positive for game play as well as mission efficiency.

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I like the idea of drones but I don't really see them adding that much to the game.

The drones would be unmanned but don't necessarily need to operate using their own AI.

They could just as easily be controlled by the dropship pilots as they have nothing else to do once they have landed.

There is very little risk involved in running an expendable drone out to find enemies while you sit your troops out at long ranges with sniper rifles/ rocket launchers.

Reduced risk equals less interesting missions for me.

The balance seems to be either make the drones incredibly expensive (less expendable) or make them poor at their roles (less desirable).

Neither of those makes me want to actually use them.

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If the drones were to be unmanned, and without weapons, I guess they would only provide scouting.

In game terms, I guess the deployment of the drones could happen when the drop ship was about to land, as the drop ship sprays the surrounding area with 10$ drones, scouting the area around the chopper.

Kinda like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJv8VZC1UVo

Except maybe not a million drones, but seven, or the likes.

This would of course take away the experience of scouting the area by yourself.

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