Drones drones drones

[Ruatha]

Now you can use drones for recon, attack warp points.
They don't need to come home again, thus avoiding the stranded scout ship problem.

You can put alligience subverters on them, nasty.

Put solar panels on them and they Last longer.

Put beams on them and give them primary orders "some weapons range" instead of ram.

Make a cloaked drone launcher, load it with anti-planet drones, send it into your friends empires and park it in a storm, use when need arise.

If you have a surplus of minerals and mucho cargo space, build anti-ship drones to use just in case.

Generally though, they aren't all that valuable.. You won't win a game by using drones, I think.

[ May 08, 2003, 19:31: Message edited by: Ruatha ]

[Phoenix-D]

Another con for drones:

Micromanagement. LOTS of micromanagement. They don't stack and can't be combined into fleets.

[Pocus]

Ruatha : I see that drones can be used in many missions, but it seems that the ones you listed could have been done by ships.

So? drones are an added game feature which are redundant with what already existed pre-gold, or do they have special abilities which let them fare better than ships in some situations. ? I'm more and more inclined that they dont really add anything new to a game.

[Fyron]

No, they do not really add anything to the game. They are currently poorly implemented. If they were cheaper, then maybe they could be more useful in general situations.

[Q]

Yes you can do everything you can do with drones at least as well with ships, but you have to pay maintenance for ships.
But I agree that in the unmodded game drones are too expensive. I reduced their cost by half in my games. Then they are quite useful for a human player IMO.
Still there are big problems for the AI: he will attack over and over again fleets of 20 or more warships with a goup of 4-15 drones, which is of course completely useless. The AI does simply not realize, that the attacked ship (drones always attack one single ship) is not alone!

[ May 08, 2003, 20:28: Message edited by: Q ]

[Pocus]

Ok, so to summarize, in unmodded games few if any should be encountered, as they are not that interesting.

I have this devnull mod to try too, with the space monsters laucnhing drones. So many mods and so little time!

Joke apart, could they not be used as super satellite which can move to place them in the right position? In warp points, or around planets? Basically defence stations but with orbital engines? Ponder ponder...

[Pocus]

Just tested a small drone design acting as a satellite : cost is nearly the same, but with 2 added benefits:

base move of 1 : can position itself between the planet and the agressor
-50 % defence bonus !

So? Do they not shine as advanced satellites?
On a small drone, you have 40 kt remaining with this design. A shield for added resistance is a neat addition.