Drones are supposed to be sort of like long-range missiles that you design and construct like units. You'd design a drone with whatever components you needed for some task, and then you'd launch it like a fighter and give it orders. It would then follow those orders, and self-destruct once it had finished. They should theoretically be able to do anything a ship can do, assuming you can fit the components into it. Unlike fighters, they can transit warp points. They're maintenance-free, but not reusable.
Drones were apparently enabled in the early beta tests of SEIV, but Aaron couldn't get them working quite right at the time and so disabled them in all public releases since then. I've been longing for their return ever since SEIV came out. Most of the code must be in there already, it probably just needs tweaking or something...
Please, Aaron, I wanna push a button and plague-bomb my enemy's worlds from afar! Sun-buster drones, just imagine, pretty-please!
