There is a small program you can use to find your IP address with W95/98 that you have to run once in a dos box. It is "ipconfig" for W2k but for the life of me I cannot remember how it is called in W95/98. Anyone?
Drones:
Bear with me. What exactly is the drone problem? Do they produce error Messages? If so, can you sent me a savegame to
heavyload@gmx.de?
You can give a drone any strategy you want and - as you already found out - I actually did.
IMHO it is not a very wise strategy to slam these very expensive devices into the next planet if I can glass it with my beam weapons and then go to the next planet repeating history.
If you want to use more strategies make sure to alter the right file, for the standard races in the TDM-ModPack this would be the Default_AI_Strategies.txt in the TDM\AI folder.
I agree with you that the standard races could use widespread improvements and that is exactly why I'm part of the TDM-Crew. However, I have now 5 races and that is the maximum I can support. I could increase this number but only by neglecting testing my races.
I personally think that drones are not that great a tool for the AI as it lacks the knowledge how and when to use them. Those my races use drones only in a limited way. None of my races uses both types of drones, only one. If you increase the amount of drone types you only end up confusing the little AI brain even more. For the AI to do a good job you have to make it simple to use. And as I only use one drone type I only need one drone strategy.