[dmm]

Missiles can't target drones, and drones can outrun ships. Therefore, ships with only missiles are easy prey to drones. The obvious solution is to put a few PDC or direct-fire weapons on the missile ship. Here is the design flaw: A crucial advantage of missile ships is that they can stay out of range of direct-fire ships. But if you have such weapons on your mainly-missile ship, it will use them to attack any drones EVEN IF THAT BRINGS THE SHIP WITHIN RANGE OF ENEMY MAIN GUNS (thus violating the "Maximum Range" orders). It's like bees to honey; they can't help themselves. And, to make matters worse, the drones can have few engines and lots of armor. So they quickly fall behind the main enemy fleet, causing the mainly-missile ships to run RIGHT THROUGH the line of enemy capital ships, subjecting themselves to devastating point-blank main-gun salvos in their mindless hatred of drones.

Note that you only need one drone, and that it has no purpose other than being bait, so it only needs one engine.

This exploit probably works with fighters and sats too. Sats would be particularly cost-effective.

Note that I am also assuming that the drone-launching fleet has sufficient PDC (or sufficient ships) to withstand the initial missile onslaught.