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.