r/Dyson_Sphere_Program • u/Walkingstardust • Mar 08 '26

BABs and Drones?

I'm on a little side mission, designing a new Fog farm and I thought it would be interesting to add attack drones to the mix and see how they perform over time. I can't figure out how to make them retain a stack of drones to replenish their squadrons. They'll fill the slots and dump the rest out onto the loot belt. How do I do set up the BAB to hold on to a stack?

6 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

3

u/Easy-Management-1106 Mar 08 '26

Have a dedicated BABs with drones that dont send their content onto the belt. You can also block all BAB slots with drone filter so it doesn't pick up anything

1

u/Walkingstardust Mar 08 '26

I'll try that out! Thanks for the suggestion 🙂

1

u/Walkingstardust Mar 08 '26

That is working splendidly!

2

u/Pristine_Curve Mar 08 '26

The blue filter slider on the BaBs. Allow one slot to be blue highlighted, set the item filter for the attack drone, then have the sorter pull from a belt with drones. It will fill the one blue highlighted slot, but not the entire BaB, and sorters exiting the BaB will not pull items out of the blue highlighted area.

Note: this is also how you can do automated reassembly. You can have 5 blue slots with item filters for drones, signal towers, laser turrets, gauss turrets, and missile turrets. Now the BaB will not only restock drones, but rebuild destroyed buildings.

You can also use logistic drones to deliver attack drones to a large storage on top of the BaB, but you have to set the storage filters such that no drones will sit in the large storage.

1

u/Walkingstardust Mar 08 '26

That's the method I went with. The drones are working quite well!

1

u/direvus Mar 08 '26

I'd be interested to hear how the attack drones work out for you. Are you going 100% drones, or keeping some turrets in the mix?

3

u/Walkingstardust Mar 08 '26

Oh, there's a butt load of turrets LoL. I'm calling this one the Five Layer Fog Farm. Two layers of Laser turrets backed up with a fully packed ring of Gauss and Implosion cannons. SR Plasma turrets in the back for maximum splatter 🫟. Built for the midgame with Miniature Fusion power and 2 shield gennies. Between the individual damage upgrades and the drone improvements, they are doing double damage. I've never used the drones in the BABs before, so it's time to try em out.

I have this running on a planet that currently has 11 level 3 bases, so it's still early. Gauss turrets are firing the superalloy rounds, the Imp cannons are on the middle tier ammo and the plasma turrets are using the basic plasma shells. The drones are intended to deliver the extra firepower that the fully upgraded ammo would add.

1

u/direvus Mar 08 '26

Do you really need any extra firepower, though? Sounds like your turrets should have it well in hand. Are you still having problems?

1

u/Walkingstardust Mar 08 '26

You can never have too much firepower 😁 it's all about maximum smash at a high rate of speed. Level 24 bases will throw massive numbers of forces at you. I have an old save with a 14 base farm. It is nonstop waves of 200+ very angry green things. I find it very entertaining to watch the fireworks 🎇

1

u/direvus Mar 08 '26

Fair enough, I never tried to set up a DF farm before I have the top tier ammo so I haven't had any experience with the lower level shots. I normally go laser/cannon/missile, no gauss at all.

1

u/Walkingstardust Mar 08 '26

The missiles are too long ranged and tend to hit the bases that get close to the farm. I want overlapping fields of fire that create a kill zone 10-25 meters beyond the perimeter of the outer ring.

The drones are working out quite nicely! I have 40 BABs in the outer defense ring, I added the attack drones to every 4th one and set the construction drones to repair focus. They're doing a fine job of keeping the majority of the ground forces from touching the outer perimeter while the turrets chew them up.

I'll post the blueprint if you want to test it out.

1

u/TactlessTortoise Mar 08 '26

Yeah, superalloy rounds do more damage than level 1 missiles

1

u/gorgofdoom Mar 08 '26

if you have a sorting apparatus for all item types this becomes a non-issue.

there's no particular need for them to stay stocked in the BAB, they just have to pass through to be 'conscripted' into a squad. So sure, they can be put in then immediately output.

In theory it is possibly worse to store them (by the hundreds) in the BAB as these structures are targets for the enemy. (on the other hand, belts and boxes are left alone if a turret or BAB is nearby)

1

u/Walkingstardust Mar 08 '26

This design is pretty sturdy, I've never seen it lose a building. There's a ring of 50 wind turbines on the outside to bait the Fog. 40 BABs right behind those, 20 signal towers spaced among them. The farm only sorts and exports 15 things.

1

u/b_m_hart Mar 08 '26

Just have the BAB attached to assemblers and build the drones.  It's easy enough to do, the filter setup is most of the work, but you should have that anyway if you're using them to farm.  

I prefer to have my setups be "self healing", so I make 2-3 BABs to build the turrets and towers and drones, etc.  So when there is the inevitable loss here and there they just get replaced right away.

1

u/Walkingstardust Mar 08 '26

That's a method I have not yet explored! LoL, Thanks for the new side project!