drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.

[oleg]

I have a VERY tough time in AIC game (low AI bonus, no warp points) against Ukra-Tal. At turn ~150, My empire (two systems) can support no more than 20 destroyers. Ukra-Tal regulary sends fleet of 15-20 ships to my system. They have better tech, and with all hidden AI bonuses, I can barely fight back. Ukra-Tal builds a lot of ships with seeking parasites and use them en mass. Whatever I do, I lose ships in every battle and can not build them as fast as AI

I swithed to fighters (i use "tactical fighters only" option)- no goog, AI has to-hit bonuses and pulverize my fighters. True war of attrition In desperation I decided to use drones. Normal drones with warheads proved to be a disaster - to kill 20 ships I need to use 30+ drones due to PDC fire.

And now I use old trick - instead of warheads, I put seeking parasites ot them ! The idea is that my drones will buzz around Ukra-Tall ships and overpower PD fire ! Since drones can not be targeted by missiles, the dreaded Ukra-Tall' SP will be useless

And yes, indeed !! Next battle and 3 small trasports with 5 drones each completely annihilated an enemy fleet with 18 ships They even have enough fuel to attack second, smaller fleet before expire. It turned the war around - I can afford a lot non-maintatence drones ! Hurra ! But all was well till I was abushed by a fleet with Carriers. Those pesky fighters makes a short work of my drones Still, they managed to cripple enemy. Now I researche medium drones and put point defence beams to shoot fightrs.
Drones practically saved my empire. I now love them !!

And now the bug : First I used "maximum weapons range" for drones with missiles. It works fine in simulator, but in the real battles, drones fire only ONCE and then run away ! I switched to "optimal firing range" and drones behaved nicely. Apparently, once drones get into "do not get hurt" movement - secondary movement in "max. range", they get stucked and do not go back despite having missiles recharged. Very odd.

[geoschmo]

That's a bad one. Send that to Malfador.

[Fyron]

Isn't the entire goal of the Drone hull to fire its weapons once and then ram the target? It seems like a much bigger exploit to me to be able to use them in a non-ramming capacity.

[se5a]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Isn't the entire goal of the Drone hull to fire its weapons once and then ram the target? It seems like a much bigger exploit to me to be able to use them in a non-ramming capacity.

if that were the case then other wepons would not be availible to put on drones.

[Baron Munchausen]

Satellites mounted with seekers offer the same sort of 'advantage' as drones. They are absolutely devastating as warp point defenses against seeker using races like the default Jraenar or Toltayan.

I'd be interested to know how drones react to all the various strategies other than 'ram'. Has anyone experimented? I've never bothered to use any other strategies with them. But mounting seekers is a clever way to give them some 'chaff' while they close in to ram. Too bad seekers are so large and drones are so small. It eats up a lot of precious space. Mounting them with PDC makes them much more resistant to fighters, btw.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by se5a:

quote:

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Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Isn't the entire goal of the Drone hull to fire its weapons once and then ram the target? It seems like a much bigger exploit to me to be able to use them in a non-ramming capacity.

if that were the case then other wepons would not be availible to put on drones.

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Umm... if that were the case, they would be allowed, as they would get to shoot once before the ramming... which is exactly what I said. Warheads can not shoot at all.

[Loser]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
...mounting seekers is a clever way to give them some 'chaff' while they close in to ram.

Oooh... once a nice Missle Mod comes out you could use this to create self-chaffing missles, or MIRV.

[Baron Munchausen]

Well, yeah, come to think of it, you could mod a special 'chaff' type seeker just for drones. Make it 20-30 kt and fires every other or every round, but does very little damage. Maybe 10 points or so. Just lots of little seekers to over-load PDC.

[oleg]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Well, yeah, come to think of it, you could mod a special 'chaff' type seeker just for drones. Make it 20-30 kt and fires every other or every round, but does very little damage. Maybe 10 points or so. Just lots of little seekers to over-load PDC.

Light missile system in Proportions is close to it except for the larger size (60kt). I am currently experimenting with sprint missiles (speed=12) on drones. looks promising

But drones still have an achiles heel - drones can easily be provoked buy a small sized atack with a sole purpose to trigger the loads of drones for self-destruction

[ December 15, 2003, 22:08: Message edited by: oleg ]

[Baron Munchausen]

Well, yes, AI targetting is stupid and will launch all available drones at the smallest attack. This is quite a problem for the viability of the AI since drones cannot be recovered. Some sort of targetting routine needs to be tweaked to tell the AI not to treat drones like fighters.