I finally thought of a use for drones!

[Baron Munchausen]

Drones are UNITS and will not show any damage until they are suddenly destroyed. And shields are just considered part of their hitpoints. It's the same with satellites and fighters.

[Kamog]

what causes a ship or unit to abandon its primary movement strategy and use the secondary strategy?

Hmm, what is the answer to this?

[couslee]

I have not used drones yet (or mines). but, if what your wanting to do is have your ships break formation duing tactical combat, click the options button and select clear all orders.

Formations in tactical suck. it is more important for them to stay in formation then to get a good shot off, and god forbid if you move the group leader any other time than Last. it's a fight, but with your own captains.
Leader moves here.
hey, the leader moved, lets position ourselves in formation, it don't matter if we are now in range of the planets supercannons, we are in formation.
leader moves there
hey, lets move out of our firing range for that enemy ship, but we will be in formation.

I want a new component for my ships. a brig

[ January 20, 2003, 08:35: Message edited by: couslee ]

[dumbluck]

Originally posted by Kamog:

quote:

---

what causes a ship or unit to abandon its primary movement strategy and use the secondary strategy?

Hmm, what is the answer to this?

---

IIRC, I ship will revert to secondary movement strategy if it cannot achieve it's primary movement strategy, for any reason.

[Ed Kolis]

Oh, never mind, I'll tell you my strategy - I just realized it's not so great after all. What I did is designed a drone with a beam weapon and ECM, thinking that the drone's +50 defense plus the ECM's +60 would make the drone nearly impossible to hit... then setting the drone's primary strategy to Optimal Firing Range instead of Ram (yes, it can be done!) and making Ram only the secondary strategy (so why DO the drones eventually ram anyway? they can't lose their beams...) But what I forgot about is Stealth Armor and Scattering Armor - those provide an additional +30 to defense that my ships have but if I try to put them on a drone then I have to sacrifice too many engines and the drone can't keep up with enemy ships... So in the end it only comes out my drones are 20% harder to hit than my ships... which is a little help, but not much...

Still, I wonder about those shields...

[geoschmo]

Not to mention PDC gets a bonus to hit and can target drones. But it's a good try.

[atari_eric]

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
...But what I forgot about is Stealth Armor and Scattering Armor - those provide an additional +30 to defense that my ships have but if I try to put them on a drone then I have to sacrifice too many engines and the drone can't keep up with enemy ships... So in the end it only comes out my drones are 20% harder to hit than my ships... which is a little help, but not much...

Hmm, it's almost worth spitting out decoy drones with nothing but junk and engines... though that may not even work if the other drones can be determined to be more dangerous...