noobie question about drones

[Tough Guy]

This is my first time playing the game.

I have gone thru some old Posts and still have some Qs.

Are drones similar to fighters that have to be taken to combat by a (drone)carrier? Are they better than fighters??

Some people seem to think they are worthless. Why?

[Phoenix-D]

The main thing about drones in the unmodded game is that they use ship components. I.e. they are -expensive- and pretty big. That's what makes them less useful.

Phoenix-D

[Atrocities]

No, they are not like fighters. They are a long range missile for lack of a better term.

You build Drone launchers, (Carriers) and can deploy them into space and order them to attack a target.

I use drones in bulk to attack a hardened target such as a homeworld or strong hold. I send the drones in with planetary war heads and pummal the planet. In most cases you have to send in a ton of drones to get past any good Point Defense (PD) weapons system such as Satellites, or Weapon Platforms.

Eventually your drones will make it through and reck havoc upon your target.

You can build and launch drones from planets, or ships & bases with drone launchers.

Drones can be equiped nicely and are effective against ships/bases/planets. However, strong PD cannons will blow many of them out of the sky.

[Slick]

Originally posted by Tough Guy:
This is my first time playing the game.

I have gone thru some old Posts and still have some Qs.

Are drones similar to fighters that have to be taken to combat by a (drone)carrier? Are they better than fighters??

Some people seem to think they are worthless. Why?<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">To answer why some people consider them useless (not me), they do have some problems:
- When the planet or ship carrying drones is in battle, it will belch out all its drones no matter how many enemies it is up against.
- Drones belched out in this manner will be sent to the various targets in battle, but the game isn't smart enough to distinguish anti-planet from anti-ship drones so you get lots of wrong type of drone attacks.
- If a drone with a anti-planet warhead strikes a ship or vice versa, the warhead does not go off (it only counts as mass for purposes of ramming damage).
- Drones are unrecoverable once launched.
- Drones self destruct when they run out of supplies.

That being said, they can be used somewhat effectively if you know the weaknesses.

Slick.

[Puke]

there are work arounds for nearly all these problems.

drones are big and costly compared to fighters, but can potentially deal more damage. and unlike ships, they do not cost maintenance

drones can not be recovered, but this is being fixed in the next patch

drones might not attack the right target type, but you can write custom strategies to fix this problem (one is included in Fyron's USM).

all drones launch when a planet is attacked.. yeah, well, this sucks. it will not be a problem once drones are recoverable, though.

[Phoenix-D]

Puke, where are you getting the "drones can be recovered in the next patch" from?

I don't see it posted anywhere else, and I -don't- think that drones being non-recoverable is a bug.

Phoenix-D