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BlueG_AutoDrones (WIP)

*** Updated 1/10/2015***


This mod is still a work in progress (its not even in alpha). It may crash the game. If it does, don't bother sending it to the developers, though I would love to hear about it. At least, I'd love to hear about it if you send me the exception message that appears in Space Engineers' log file. The log file can be found in %AppData%\Roaming\SpaceEngineers. The file is called SpaceEngineers.log and I only need the part near the end where it talks about an exception being found. Knowing what you were doing when you got the exception would help too.

This version is usable in game play, but the drones require careful supervision. The only crash I know of right now (at least, with the personalities that I defined) is if you copy and paste an active drone.

This version implements 4 personalities:

• [follow] - The drone will follow its owner
  
• [dock] - The drone will move to the nearest connector whose names ends with the tag [dock], line itself up, and connect to it. Note that it assumes that the connector is facing to the rear of the ship (relative to the remote control unit).
  
• [mine:bore] - Move to the nearest asteroid and drill straight through it.
  
• [mine] or [mine:strafe] - Move to the nearest asteroid and drill along its surface. This behavior still needs improvement. The drones frequently hover away from the surface, but will eventually find a place to drill.

Currently, the personalities are hard-coded. If you want to change them, edit the DroneManager.cs file. The place where personalities are defined should be obvious.

I have a plan to allow personalities to be defined in game, but not by in-game script. That feature is still under testing and might not be realized. I'm hoping Keen will release an interface that allows direct communication between in-game script and script mods. If so, then that would be the best solution.

I'm planning on implementing other mining behaviors as well. Other planned mining behaviors include strafe mine, plough mine, and dig mine. I am currently working on the strafe mine behavior, which will move sideways along the surface of an asteroid. The ploughmine behavior will plough along the surface with its drills parallel to the surface of the asteroid. And the dig behavior will simply keep clearing out small holes around it by moving close and then pitching and yawing.

Once those are done, I plan on adding object avoidance to the drone's navigation system. At some point, I'm also going to require a beacon tagged [radar] (the same as in my BlueG_Radar mod) for the drone to sense its world with. that beacon will also determine the maximum range of its sensors. Otherwise, it will only know about the status of its own components and not the world around it.

Don't expect these drones to do everything. Oh, and again, EXPECT PROBLEMS at this stage of development. Please report them if you find them. I'm starting a Bugs discussion under the discussion tab for that purpose.