[PvK]

Originally posted by oleg:
PvK,

I am convinced that restoring original DL cargo but raising its size to 40K is the best solution. It will make DL-3 roughly equivalent to CB-3.
Yes, it is possible to make drone carriers by combining DL/CB, but did you try it ? It is just a different and unnessary layer of micromanagement. Besides, it is _very_ difficult to instruct AI to make any sort of usefull drone carrier now. I personally gave up. 40K size will not unbalance cargo and should decrease micromanagemnt considerably.

Yes I've made drone carriers using cargo, even with the AI. I don't consider it essential for carriers or drone carriers to be able to launch all of their drones in one combat turn, though, or to get an exact multiple so as not to have slightly too much space, so it's not hard for me at all. Just put Star-Unstable as a misc ability with a low setting. It's not very difficult, IMO. I don't know what difficulty you're experiencing.

I don't know that I agree though that drone launchers should be 40kT with 100-180kT of storage. 40kT for 100 storage is the same ratio as a cargo bay, plus the ability to launch drones. 2 x Cargo III would match the capacity of one Drone Launcher II, and Drone Launcher III would now be a more efficient spacewise cargo component than the current best cargo bay, which currently costs four times the original cost of a drone launcher, per space. Drones and Cargo tech not being linked, this provides a weenie way to get a better cargo ratio than is possible with Cargo tech, without even researching cargo tech. Players would start abusing drone launchers to cram more people on population transports.

My current Versions are pro-rated based on Cargo Bay I with a very slight advantage per tech level. Mainly, these are for convenience - drone tech is drone tech, not cargo tech:

DL I - 160 mins, size 54kT, storage 100 kT.
DL II - 195 mins, size 68kT, storage 140 kT.
DL III - 230 mins, size 82kT, storage 180 kT.

Drones are a tricky subject and MM obviously spend a lot of time balancing them. They do the same incrediable amount of damage in normal SE IV, but cost a lot of resources and are destroyed in battle. In strategic combat even lowly scout can trigger launch of hunderds of drones for immense lost of resources. I do not consider restoring the speed of large drones as unbalancing. You argue that larger drones make small one obsolete, but, hey, that is the whole point of investing thousands and thousands points into research !

I find the speed bonus from large drone hulls not so much unbalancing as inexplicable (from "advanced materials" - huh?) and uninteresting (techs that make other techs obsolete are less interesting than techs that offer advantages but leave some trade-offs for consideration). I would much rather have research add the possibility of components which could boost drone speed.

Drones do not have extra defence bonus as in standard SE IV. Besides, proportions ECM jammers go up to 31K in size, compared to flat 10K in unmoded game.

Unmodded drones are all -50 to hit, while Proportions drones have different to-hit bonuses per size. I don't really follow why you mentioned this, though. The increase in size of larger sensors/ECM in Proportions is another advantage to larger drones.

PvK