[geoschmo]

Baron,

Your point is valid, although it's hard to pull this off in strategic combat because your ships suffer from the same ai decision making that the enemies do, so it kind of balances out. However in tactical combat agains the AI, it is VERY easy to take advantage of.

Your idea of "CSM drones" is moddable. You could create a cheap set of drone components and only give them combat movement I think. This could also have the effect of running out of missles in the middle of combat which appeals to my sense of realism, which I try hard to suppress.

The only problem doing that though is that in strategic combat if all the drones launch and are not recovered after combat you could easily draw out the defenses with a single ship before the fleet moves in.

Geoschmo