[PvK]

Drones are not useless, but it's certainly possible to misuse them, and to use them wastefully. I've explained this several times on several "what good are drones?" threads in the past. Their strengths are not obvious, and trying to use them to replace ships, or in other common ways, can be wasteful. However they have some definite strengths. The challenge is to understand what and when they're good, and when they're not. I agree they'd be better and more fun with move-to and recovery from defensive launches.

Some of their unique strengths include:

* No maintenance cost (this is a huge advantage).
* No partial damage effects.
* Ability to be stored in cargo.
* No good way to detect them when stored in cargo inside scanner jamming.
* Immunity to allegiance subverters and computer virus and boarding and insurrection and some other things.
* Ability to draw point-defense fire and resist it with ECM/defense bonus/shields etc.
* Losing them does not reduce population happiness.
* Movement bonus.

PvK