A few questions on drones |
I want to invade a nieghboring system, but the warp point is guarded by some 120+ fighters, i have plenty of ships in the invading force w/carriers (70% of the fleet is made up of Escort ships full of PD components), but i want to soften up the warp point with a drone attack first.
1) When u make drones, and they are created, does the drone strategy have to be set, or is it automatic?
2) If it does have to be set, do i set it for Drone attack, Fighter attack or Kamakazi?
3) Can you make drones to just attack fighters? Or set them for fighter priority on targeting? And if so, exactly where do i do this at? (Please be specific old man here lol).
4)In the Empire options menu, if i set the priority of said drones, will that change priority of my anti ship drones as well? Or my anti planet drones?
I think my strategy is pretty obvious, i want to build 10 drones on 5 different planets in the same system, launch them from the planets, the drones will go to a rally point next to the warp point in question, form a group, then enter the enemy system and attack the fighters guarding the warp point. Is this possible? 8D.
Thank you for your time to read this and any advice/help is always appreciated.
Re: A few questions on drones
I've never used drones. Are they cost effective compared to ships? My max allowed unit count is usally very low anyway to make the game go faster.
Re: A few questions on drones
Isdahl, if you find that old post on drone strategy, would you repost it or bump it?
I'm looking around for it myself and not finding it at all.
Thanks




Re: A few questions on drones
1. Drone strat has to be set in the design. All new drones of that design will follow it.
2. I am not sure which default strat. I just always made custom strats to target fighters first. A load of Point Defense Drones make quick work of fighters.
3. Yes. Do it in the Empire Options menu (Shift + O I think).
4. If you change strategy targeting priority, it changes it for all who follow that particular strategy. That is why I use custom strats for my anti-fighter drones.
Yes massing up drones is a great strat. I use it all the time. A group of 12 PD drones can usually take out 30 standard fighters of the same class. You can't mass drones into fleets, but you can recover and launch drones in groups. It's an exploit to some, but not to me, where you "transfer cargo" your drones in orbit to a planet, and then have the planet relaunch them as a single group. Also dedicated drone launcher ships can do this, assuming they have the cargo capacity to retrieve and then relaunch as many drones you want in a single group. An exploit that I do consider an exploit though, is drone hopping - moving drones to planets and then relaunching them (relaunched units reset their movement count). I tested it once, and moved a group of drones from one end of the galaxy to another, through 15 systems, in a single turn. It makes for some wicked piling up of drones.
I posted a mean drone strategy somewhere on this forum a while ago.
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