drones riles !! plus some bug in strategies.

[Baron Munchausen]

Well, certainly drones are expensive to use as a primary weapon system. I don't know of anyone who recommends them as a primary method of attack/defense for your empire. They are disposable, after all. They are just one more option in your toolkit.

What do you do if you spot an unauthorized colonizer sneaking into your claimed territory but all available ships are currently busy standing off some other enemy fleet? Sending some ship off to chase it down could be time consuming if it has a head start. A drone is very fast so it will catch up sooner and it doesn't cost any maintenance to have a few lying around for 'emergencies' like that, while keeping extra ships in every single system to catch stragglers or 'accidental' invaders (from 'anomaly' events or whatnot) does cost a lot of extra maintenance.

A few anti-planet drones will also let you mop-up new 'unauthorized' colonies that you run across without risking a ship on the possibility of early weapon platforms or mines.

They are also very useful as part of a 'combined arms' combat strategy. Fighters tend to get ripped up by PDC if you send them in alone against a human opponent's ships. As do missiles. Obviously PDC will be more effective if the enemy can tune his designs and strategies to deal with either in particular. The whole suite of fighters, seekers, and drones is quite a handful and makes it much more difficult to design ships and strategies to wipe them all out.

A little modding of the game provides drones with all sorts of special uses (like the 'plague drones' I've wanted to be able to use for so long) that make them even more flexible.

[Patroklos]

Drones can also be helpful for when an emeny deploys his fleet to meet yours you can launch fast moving drones to take out whatever is now left vulnerable in the system, so that even if you lose you took out something. I use them alot against the AI to take out singe ships trying to join a massed enemy fleet. Humans don't normally do this though.

-Pat

[PvK]

I've used missile-launching drones before with good success, using a Max Range strategy, which didn't run away - I wonder what the difference was between my strategy settings and yours, Oleg.

Drones with direct-fire weapons and other movement strategies can also work - just make sure they don't accidentally have the Ram movement strategies.

As for Fryon's idea that all drones should have to use a kamikaze strategy, I completely disagree. Drones have many limitations already and certainly don't need to be toned down or made less interesting or flexible in that way.

PvK

[oleg]

Don't know It was a simultaneous movement and max.range strategy had max.range as a primary movement and don't get hurt as a secondary. May be you use max.range movement as a secondary mavement ?

[Fyron]

As for Fryon's idea that all drones should have to use a kamikaze strategy, I completely disagree. Drones have many limitations already and certainly don't need to be toned down or made less interesting or flexible in that way.

That was not "my idea of what drones should be," it was my understanding of what the entire purpose of the drone hull in SE4 was supposed to be...

[PvK]

Where did you get that idea, though, Fryon? Seems to me that by allowing all strategies and weapon components on drones, the intention is pretty clearly to allow them to be designed to do other things besides crash (or shoot just before crashing).

Oleg, I don't really remember the details of my drone strategy settings, though I have some old turn files somewhere and if I remember and have time when I'm near that computer, I'll try to look it up.

PvK

[Fyron]

The game manual? Seems like a pretty authoritative source to me.

Drones are large computer-controlled missiles. They are designed much like small ships and can carry engines, shields, weapons, and most especially, warheads. Drones are usually equipped with a large warhead used to damage ships or planets. Drones are launched from ships or planets and seek out an enemy target. Once the drone encounters the target, it will ram the target and do as much damage as possible. Most drones are constructed with special materials giving them an increase in their speed.