Drone and Anti-Drone Tactics?

Atraikius · #1 January 28th, 2002, 09:24 PM

Fighters seem like the best defense against drones from what I've seen. Seen 10 fighters stop 5 drones attacking a planet. As for drone tactics, they work very well for taking out enemy colony ships and transports.

PvK · #2 January 29th, 2002, 01:03 AM

quote:
Originally posted by mac5732:
Ditto for Puke's questions, are the drones going to make larger msl/beam carrying ships obsolete?

No. A missile-only ship would have no defense against drones, but that doesn't make them obsolete, and beam/PD ships in enough quantity seem to be able to handle drones on reasonable terms, or even cream them, depending on tech, design, and tactics, of course.

quote:
... How about using the Drones thru wormholes to hit targets, any problems in this area?

If you can see into the next system and the enemy can't see into your launching system, and the targets are in range of the warp point in one turn, a drone attack could be a deadly surprise, but this is of course true of ship attacks, too. Drones do have limited supplies and range, and can't change targets, so if you see a swarm closing in in time, you may be able to avoid them until they expire. I don't remember the exact results of dodging through multiple warp points and how they do/don't track in that case, but that's of course good to know (I forget).

PvK

Resident Alien 2 · #3 January 29th, 2002, 01:14 AM

I was thinking some Plague bombing drones would be interesting if you could sneak in and launch against all the planets in a system simultaneously.....

However in the demo you can't put a Plague Bomb on a Drone. But I would imagine it would be easy to mod this in if desired.

PvK · #4 January 29th, 2002, 02:26 AM

Oh, the other anti-drone tactic one beta tester (forget who - sorry) found was to build anti-drone-drones - cheap-o drones that ram other drones. Of course, you have to have them on hand in the right place at the right time.

PvK

Puke · #5 January 29th, 2002, 04:54 AM

it should be easy enough to defend planets with anti-drone-drones. or ramming fighters?

what about point-defense drones? that would be sort of anti-droneish, but would work for overcoming fighters and missiles as well. and cheaper than building PD ships for your fleet.

Q · #6 January 29th, 2002, 12:48 PM

I may have overlooked this in the demo Version but is there any way I can control the launch of the drones in simultaneous games or strategic combat??
If not this will be the big weakness of the drones: Image your colony where you store some 50 drones and then an single enemy colony ship stumbles into the sector and all drones are launched automatically and therefore lost!!
I would hate that.

mac5732 · #7 January 29th, 2002, 05:15 PM

In the demo, what were the limitations set on the drones as far as weapon types/engines/supply?
PVK mentioned if your were within 1 turn of wormhole they they could hit, what is the range restriction, in regards to lauching thru wormhole at a planet in a particular system. (I think I said what I mean) Also did anyone lauch drones thru wormhole at defending Battle Station or ships, if so what happened?

just some ideas mac