Drones: Magic Cheat?

[GUTB]

Build a cargo ship with a stealth armor and some Drone Launchers. Fill it up with Drones loaded with anti-planet warheads.

Cloak, and proceed to any habited system of your choice. Launch Drones against system, and COMPLETELY WIPE IT OUT IN ONE TURN.

Go back home, replenish Drones as nescisary and repeat until EVERYTHING IS DEAD.

[PvK]

Uh oh... cue Wile E. theme!

[Arak Koba]

How is that a cheat?

[geoschmo]

Yes, but how many drones can you fit in an escort hull anyway.... Oh wait a minute, wrong thread.

This isn't a cheat at all.

Probably a waste of typeing to point out the obvious flaws in this strategy. Mines on the warp points will stop your stealth drone launchers before they can launch. Mines on the planets will stop the drones.

Even without mines, any defenses capable of stopping a standard ship attack will stop your drones as well. Point defense on sats or wepons platforms will be particularly effective.

Geoschmo

[Baron Munchausen]

I can see how this would appear 'wrong' but I think it's not appropriate to call it a cheat. Maybe it would be better to call it a balance problem. Being able to fire a single weapon at a planet and destroy it would seem to be unfair. A colony on a planet represents vast amounts of population and infrastructure spread over a great deal of territory. Blowing all of it up at once when it may not all be on the same continent would seem to require a doomsday sort of weapon that should be more expensive to develop and build, and more difficult to use. This is related to the problems we have discussed before about how easy it is to slag a planet from space with standard weapons.

[ 29 March 2002: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Wardad]

Yea, One of my small planets got slagged by a single drone.
I had one PD and 3 other weapon platforms. Engine Damage, shield depleters, but not enough raw fire power. Drones have a speed of 3 without engines.