Strategy talk: How to use drones

[capnq]

I'm wondering if you could put a small colony component on a drone and fire it off as if it were a spore pod of some sort... make it a racial trait.

You could mod a small Colony Pod component that only carried 1M colonists and a drone-sized ship hull that it barely fits into. You'd have to voluntarily not put the component on any larger hulls, or somehow design it so that normal colony components were more cost-effective on larger hulls.

[Baron Munchausen]

There is a setting for colony components to have a 'default' population like the SE III colony components did. It works, too. So you could get around the cargo problem. But even if you put a colony component on a drone, it cannot use the 'colonize' order so it will be useless.

[Phoenix-D]

"You could mod a small Colony Pod component that only carried 1M colonists and a drone-sized ship hull that it barely fits into"

You can do this. However Baron is right; the colony component will not function. (tested in Gold 1.67)

Phoenix-D

[Puke]

i dont know if this would work, but what if you made a drone with a colony component and put it into the colony ship (rock) class, and then launched it near an uncolonized planet, and turned on its minister?

or what if you used the colonize button for the planet, rather than for the drone? in the planets screen, you can order the nearest colony ship to try to colonize any uncolonized planet..

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Puke:
or what if you used the colonize button for the planet, rather than for the drone? in the planets screen, you can order the nearest colony ship to try to colonize any uncolonized planet..

I tried that with fighters once before drones came out and it didn't work. Unless there is something different with drones...

[rextorres]

Besides being cheap minesweepers - until the next patch - with ecm III they are nearly unhitable by a normal weapon AND you need sensor III for PDCs to be effective. So early in the game they are great because you don't need a shipyard to build. I am playing a game against someone who uses them almost exclusively and it was a bit of a shock how effective they are.

[DirectorTsaarx]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
"You could mod a small Colony Pod component that only carried 1M colonists and a drone-sized ship hull that it barely fits into"

You can do this. However Baron is right; the colony component will not function. (tested in Gold 1.67)

Phoenix-D

Except that capnq suggested adding a SHIP hull that had the same SIZE as a drone; in which case the colony component should work.