[brianeyci]

I found a way of using drones -- I used drones against Capt. Kwok in a KOTH game. Didn't get too far though. But if you do want to use drones, here's what you do.

1. Colonize every planet, no matter how small. The small planets can be used to construct drones. The only problem is cargo space, but if you have a drone carrier in orbit you can collect them as they come out. This works best if you have perfected the "dual-emergency build start". What this involves is finding a large breather planet early on and colonizing it. Then, midway through your initial emergency build, build a transport ship to shuttle population to the new planet. By turn 25, you should have around 20 colony ships rather than the normal 10-15. The advantage is even more pronounced if you have a three planet start, you have around 60 colony ships by turn 25 rather than 25.

2. Since drones can't take advantage of training and can't be fleeted, they're perfect as missile weapons. Fifty drones is fifty missiles. 100 drones is 100 missiles. Best thing is that this number of drones can fit in a relatively small drone carrier fleet, lets say 30-50 ships. So, your opponent sees your 50 ships and has an insignificant number of PD (because no sane person would use missiles anyway). He gets annihilated by the drones. The key after this is to go on a riot run, because he will start mounting large amounts of PD. Since you will not be researching ECM or Combat Sensors or even ships hulls (I find you don't really need anything more than destroyers to pull this off), you can have quite advanced fast seeking speed missiles.

I think the above strategy only works in small maps, and only if your opponent is not expecting it (who expects someone to use DRONES and MISSILES) and only if you can pull off a riot run after, or else he'll start building many PD ships. You also need a lot of micromangement to pull it off, and luck to find breathable planets early to start the "dual-emergency build" or forget about it as you won't have enough small planets to build sufficient amounts of drones. But if it works, you can say you beat someone with DRONES and MISSILES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

<edit>Also missile drones need a strategy of "maximum firing range" as primary and "don't get hurt" as secondary with targeting priority to "has weapons, nearest, etc". That way the drones dance in and out of enemy range, and can be quite effective this way.</edit>

Brian