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.

[Skulky]

I think to help level the playing field, we need a sat/weapon platform only weapon that is reasearched in tandem with PD and is 2-3x as effective and can only be used against drones. This way the advantage will again lie with the defenders and make it harder to wipe out your enemy with drones.

[PvK]

I'd say it's already pretty hard to wipe out your opponent with drones, if he's not caught off guard. Given the scenario that the attacker has got access to a system with several relatively unprotected planets, a group of escorts can do the same thing as a drone carrier, and isn't used up in the process. Just like with escorts, mines and/or weapon platforms, bases, or even satellites, can block the attack.

At least from the few games I've seen them used in, it didn't seem like PD really needed to be made tougher on drones. I saw PD wasting drones pretty easily. If you lost a colony with a couple of WP's on it to one drone, and one of the WP's was a PD WP, then I expect either it was an expensive high-tech drone or a low-tech PD WP, or both.

PvK

[Fyron]

Yeah, drones are useless. Now, if you could give them the "move to" order, then they might have a few uses. Or, if they could turn into satellites (or maybe just stop in one spot and act like a satellite), then maybe they could be used as remotely deployable satellites, so that you could set them up at warp points or other planets without having to use satellite launching ships.

[PvK]

I wouldn't say they're "useless", but the satellite mode is a cool idea, I think.

I think the main efficient uses of drones are as surprise weapons (can be hidden from human opponents in ways that ships can't), and as relatively maintenance-free build-up arsenals. Depending on your enemies' technology and designs, I think they can be effective in several situations.

Another use is in concert with fighters and missiles - drones can soak up a lot of PD and weapon fire, making the other systems more effective.

They are quite expensive, but I think that helps keep them from becoming too powerful.

PvK