Drones Are Useless
 

In the game that I am playing now when I have time, I am trying to use Drones. What I have found is that you have to keep repeating orders to them each turn. That can get a bit teadous espcially when you have 100's of them out bound.

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

Not sure about the orders thing but I haven't found too much use for drones either.

I'd love to be able to equip drones with minesweepers. I'm sick to death of my friends mining every planet in their empire on top of the warp points.

T-

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

You have to repeat their orders if they run into a target enroute and go into combat. This can be a problem, yes. I think that a decent number of people complaining to MM and asking that drones remember their original orders when forced into 'intervening' combat situations might get us some results. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ September 13, 2002, 18:31: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

Or just don't use drones at all... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif Hmmmm... I don't see how anyone can say drones are useless. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif Is it against humans they are useless? Because against the AI they can be exceptionally effective in many ways... if you are willing to manage the problem of ordering them around in large bunches.

This isn't the only thread around here that has mentioned "drones are useless", but I don't get it... take on a telekenetic race with subverters and telekentics on massive mounts on weap plats and you'll kiss your drones all night and build them by the hundreds, delivered in cloaked dread carriers scores at a time.

Orthogonal

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

A medium or large transport with 2-4 drone launchers and stealth armor is great for hiding in an enemy system and using drones to pick off colony ships, transports, individual carriers, and small planets.

Drones work pretty well (even later in the game) when used in fleets together with large numbers of CSM's and fighters - one drone seems to be as effective as a couple of Groups of fighters, or several missiles in overwhelming the enemy's defenses.

Also, drones work fairly well defending planets when used fairly large numbers, and in support of fighters. If planet storage is an issue, build some transports with 2-4 drone launchers and as many cargo bays as possible, only adding one engine (and maybe solar panels) in case you need to move them some.

Those moon shipyards mentioned in another thread work good for building your supply of drones, use a few 'drone barges' for storage, and possibly suffling to near by planets since the moon doesn't have enough room to store them all.

When used independently against fleets, or against better defended planets; they don't have much use, but when used for combined arms tactics, or for picking off straglers, they are definitely worthwhile. (A transport full of drones is noticably more cost effective at that then a few destroyers or light cruisers)

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

One use for drones is build a base with lots of cargo and several drone launchers (optional a shipyard to build the drones); add stealth armor/cloack.
Equip it with anti-ship drones and is a system defense.
Equip it with anti-planet drones and in case the near systems are from the enemy...... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

Hmm. I think my only beef with drones is I'm not sure they do anything that I can't already do. There's nothing unique about them. I'd rather build other units.

To be fair I haven't played with them much. Maybe some special components that only drones can equip?

How about pods that launch multiple missiles one time only or Planet destroying bombs?

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

Never used a drone,
can you retrofit them?

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

You cannot retrofit any units, so no.

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

I could see drones have use in a limited resouce game....

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

I could see drones have use in a limited resouce game....

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

I don't think drones are useless, especially not for human players and psychic races.
However IMHO they are simply too expensive in the unmodded game. A typical drone costs as much as a destroyer or even a light cruiser. Therefore it takes too long to build them. And the other point that restricts greatly their use is the lack of the "move to" order, as I said already some 1000 times http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif .

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

Drones are not useless, but it's certainly possible to misuse them, and to use them wastefully. I've explained this several times on several "what good are drones?" threads in the past. Their strengths are not obvious, and trying to use them to replace ships, or in other common ways, can be wasteful. However they have some definite strengths. The challenge is to understand what and when they're good, and when they're not. I agree they'd be better and more fun with move-to and recovery from defensive launches.

Some of their unique strengths include:

* No maintenance cost (this is a huge advantage).
* No partial damage effects.
* Ability to be stored in cargo.
* No good way to detect them when stored in cargo inside scanner jamming.
* Immunity to allegiance subverters and computer virus and boarding and insurrection and some other things.
* Ability to draw point-defense fire and resist it with ECM/defense bonus/shields etc.
* Losing them does not reduce population happiness.
* Movement bonus.

PvK

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I never used drones but these points do seem to be good reasons to use drones. i'll give them a try. Do you use them to guard warppoints or do you just take them out to battles?

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

Anybody notice that the AI uses the planetary warhead on antiship drones. Seems a little unfair, same space and cost, 4x the damage. I'll let it have that little exploit, but I think it's a bug that should be fixed.

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

mmm, I did not notice the planetary warhead thing, pretty clever! Good eye.

minipol, you can do all sorts of thing with them. You can use them "long range" by having a spotter in an enemy system, and send the drones (with a solar collector) as remote planet killers - right from a forward base where you construct them. You can also use cloaked (or hidden-in-storms) drone carriers to pounce on stragglers. One of my Favorites is to disable AI ships of engines and leave them in space taking maintenance and the AI sometimes never comes to repair the ship - huge maintenance cost!

I don't guard warp points with drones, though, unless under durress... sattelites are the more cost/supply effective for that.

I generally don't "fleet" drone carriers together with "general" fleet warships, I run them in separate "droner" fleets, or as single pirateers.

cheers.

Orthogonal

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

If that's true that the AI is using planetary warheads in its anti-ship drones then there is a design problem in the AI files. What is more likely is that the AI just doesn't distinguish between the two types and launches any available drones at ships. Since planetary warheads do NOT do damage to ships, unless there is another bug, this is a huge waste of resources used to build the drone and of available strategic options.

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

Check the target types on the planetary warhead, it won't harm a ship. Just another case of stupid AI.

Almost any escort design you can come up with can be done with a drone. The drone would be cheaper and more importantly you can build more than one at a time. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif The downside is limited movement capabilities and they blow up when they run out of gas. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

I've found that they work well for early game defense. Mid to late game you just have to be more creative with them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

What if from an AI design perspective you simply made them build drones with one of each type warhead? If I recall correctly there is room on a drone for two warheads and some engines right?

Geoschmo

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Try it. Works just fine, text not withstanding.

If I want to be a @$$#@!@, I use it myself. I get ticked off sometimes when something's "not fair to the AI" and do it anyway, you know training facilities, ship capture, tactical combat, and other cheats/exploits of this sort.

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

According to this old thread {link}, anti-planet drones only do ramming damage against ships.

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, then, screw the special target types if the AI is too stupid to tell the diff, and just make a drone warhead that damages anything a drone can hit. (Let's see... Ships\Planets and Ships\Sat but no Ships\Planets\Sat targetting type. Hmm, go with 'All But Seekers' I guess and don't worry about fighters since drones can't target them anymore anyway...). Then have the AI build ONE type of drone and be done with it.

[ September 13, 2002, 21:15: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

Drones are useful. However if you approach the use of drones as a stragetic weapon it will let you down over and over. If you think of drones as advanced fleet missles then they will not disappoint you. They are expensive but when you are making a long term effort they are worth it. The combined arms aspect are very worthwhile. You can also make several types of drones for instance an anti fighter drone is good for cleaning out enemy held systems of satilltes and fighters.
I think the main factor that makes drones unpopular is that it take a great deal of foresight, and planning, and luck to have them in the right place at the right time. Every single weapons system represented in SEIV is useful in some way or another at any point in any game you play.

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

I did some testing. I built the following drones to test all the possible configurations in the simulator (tactical only):

A. large anti-planet drone: 6 QE-III engines, 1 Drone Computer, 1 Anti-planet warhead III
B. large anti-planet drone: 6 QE-III engines, 1 Drone Computer, 1 Anti-ship warhead III
C. large anti-ship drone: 6 QE-III engines, 1 Drone Computer, 1 Anti-planet warhead III
D. large anti-ship drone: 6 QE-III engines, 1 Drone Computer, 1 Anti-ship warhead III
E. large anti-planet drone: 6 QE-III engines, 1 Drone Computer, no warhead
F. large anti-ship drone: 6 QE-III engines, 1 Drone Computer, no warhead
G. small anti-planet drone: 6 QE-III engines, 1 Drone Computer, 1 Anti-planet warhead III
H. small anti-planet drone: 6 QE-III engines, 1 Drone Computer, 1 Anti-ship warhead III
I. small anti-ship drone: 6 QE-III engines, 1 Drone Computer, 1 Anti-planet warhead III
J. small anti-ship drone: 6 QE-III engines, 1 Drone Computer, 1 Anti-ship warhead III
K. small anti-planet drone: 6 QE-III engines, 1 Drone Computer, no warhead
L. small anti-ship drone: 6 QE-III engines, 1 Drone Computer, no warhead

Used them against a BC with all armor. Results:

1. all drones would seek and hit the target ship.
2. large & small drones with Anti-Planet warhead would do 108 damage.
3. large & small drones with no warhead would do 78 damage.
4. large & small drones with Anti-Ship warhead would do 708 damage.

Conclusions:
1. there are some bugs.
2. no matter what designation you give a drone, it will seek a ship.
3. impact damage is the sum of ramming damage plus warhead damage.
4. anti-planet warheads add 0 warhead damage, but since they have mass, they add to the ramming damage.

What I did not test:
1. if the drones launch automatically in strategic combat. I think this happens based on previous post somewhere.
2. testing of same against a planet
3. if PDC's attack drones correctly as stated in the latest patch.

Slick

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yeah, I just did a simpler test than Slick. A small drone; computer, 3 engines, supply, then either
Anti planet warhead + 1 armor 3
Anti ship warhead + 1 armor 3
All armor 3's

Target:
Light cruiser full of Armor 3

Armor 3 and anti planet took out 3 armors

Anti ship took out 16 armors.

Let me save everyone some time and call myself an idiot. If you've already called me an idiot, then the time consumed in the process is your own fault.

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

Not at all. I think most of us like learning the "nuances" *COUGHbugsCOUGH* in this game so that they can be reported and fixed. Since I never really use drones, I didn't know these issues until I read this thread and played around with them a little.

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

Drones, i have found, work well as a kind of special mission force, unless found in large numbers. I REALLY WANT "MOVE TO" so i can get my SBM/RD2 fleets from starfire Online again http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif . I love to keep playing my drone wars scenario. I wish they were cheaper/or had a special facility that could only construct units and was very good at it so you could get <drone name> x2 or x3 instead of only building one per turn.

And finally i disagree with whoever said they were better than a destoyer or an LC. hell no, i can get one LC a turn with organics, unless im up against crystalline which would u rather fight, 50 LCs with 2-3 organic armor and 2-3 large mount organic weapons and the ability to repair and continue a long campaign? or 50 drones that will eventually die off.

Also, what happens when u put weapons on a drone? and what is a good design for "fighter killers" just wondering

---
i'm sitll a newbie, being as i can't use drones

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The drone will fire the weapons normally, until it gets close enough to its target to ram it.

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

cant you give a drone armed with weapons a strategy to shoot, and not to ram?

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

That's correct Puke. The drone won't ram then.

PHoenix-D

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

so to recap, you can make "weapon platform" drones that fly around shooting but not ramming, like extra large fighters with ECM bonus' COOOL!

still wondering about this fighter killing deal?

EDIT: Gee: that was post 311 (indecent exposure)
can't wait till 420 (marijuana) or 11-99 (if i ever get that far it is actually officer down or something, http://www.chp1199.org/INDEX2.HTM)

more on that http://www.pimall.com/nais/n.radio.code.html

btw oral copulation is 288a in the penal code, and abandoned refrigerator (why?) is 402b

[ September 14, 2002, 22:30: Message edited by: Skulky ]

Re: Drones Are Useless
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This has to do with the strategy used by the drone. The default drone strategy will have all drones target ships first, make a second strategy for anti-planet drones that targets planets first.