[PvK]

Drones do add some valuable abilities not available to ships, but they require some fairly high understanding to use them effectively. They're very easy to use inefficiently, and many players don't figure out what they're good for. But they are good for several things, if you can figure them out.

Basics advantages of drones over ships:

* No maintenance is very important, in some situations.
* If your drone carriers have scanner jammers, enemies can't tell if your transports (or other ships) are stuffed to the gills with drones, or not - and a ship stuffed with drones can be much more powerful than a ship, even if it's also way more expensive to build.
* Drones in cargo don't use any fleet supplies to move.
* Drones don't take damage to their components - they operate at 100% ability until they are completely destroyed.
* Drones have speed and defense bonuses.
* Drones can soak up more point-defense than fighters or seekers - a combination of all three can overcome fairly heavy PD investment.
* No happiness loss to your empire when they get destroyed.
* They don't give enemies a full +1 experience when destroyed - much less.
* In games with a low limit on maximum ships/units per game in space, they count as one unit (or zero units when before launch), not one ship, so total strength can be much greater.

PvK