Drones?

I have never ever used drones. Just never got around to it.
In the early game if I am getting my arse kicked, I tend to just build a hell of a lot of fighters until the enemy has gone.

Same here.

I never use fighters ..or drones for that matter.

I never had much trouble with fighter supply and I generally don't use weapons requiring ordanance.

Drones are pricey, and heavy, but they move so fast.. they can make the initial contact with an ennnemy fleet a lot easier since all the ennmies firepower is directed at expendable drones. basicaly overwhelming them.

Problem is.. drones are stupid: you cant control them.
Drones wont attack other drones.
Often, when you start a battle with drones in space.. they wont get a new target.. they just kind of fly around being useless. But launching them and you will see that they are quite deadly.. even a low level.

For fighters, in a game i played (most basic tehcs were about lvl 20), i made a bunch of durable fast fighters equiped with lvl 20 mesons and phased guns..
And i tried to devise dedicaded fighter-killers capital ships.. to see how it would perform against expert opposition..
A cloud of about 80 small figters (one full carrier), managed to mop the floor with about a dozen 1000kt anti-fighter cruisers. Cruisers won when there were about 20 of them.

Fighters are fragile.. but are really deadly against a "balanced" ennemy. Only massive PD will win against them.

Without ammo, nice guns are just sophisticated clubs.

Has anyone else noticed that drones that move into combat in another sector (NOT using a wormhole) start combat at the center?

Other ships fleets and fighters start combat at the edge, and the defenders start at/near the center. Then they move together and fight.

Its hard to stop anything that starts at the center. That doesn't make sense, they should have to move like everyone else. I thought this might be a bug.

Also, once the drones arrive and nothing destroys them they never go away. Ever. So I get battle reports in which nothing happens every turn until I can get around to catching them as they orbit around the edge. They should go away if no valid target exists or at least run out of gas and die.

I always try stock first so I can know what to hate and try to change.

if you attack with a cloaked shit you wont attack, but move to the same grid as the enemy, then de cloak and in combat your ship is right on top of the enemy...

maybe because its a drone being smaller/faster, basically what battlespud said it is given the ability to start in the center in combat

I've been experimenting with drones and haven't yet found the best option. I do find them interesting to help with defense though. You can build drones on worlds that don't have shipyards. That can allow you to build up quite some, say, missile launching drones, at the front to counter a small invasion. But they are hopelessly outclassed by stronger bigger ships.

I wouldn't rely to heavily on them though. There nice for 'on the side...'

~Myrath

If you can afford the time then drones become extremely useful as support for ships, especially in the form of missile drones. This allows more room on ships to be given to mounted direct fire weapons. Direct fire drones are also good for anti-fighter work.

They get even better in Balance Mod due to their decreased upkeep costs (and the ability to be carried in Carrier class ships).

I always use drones when playing my friends who like to turtle at choke points. With massive fortifications/mine fields/CSP( Combat Space Patrol).

I can build the Drone force from planets that are not used for building my fleet. Other wise Its almost impossible to smash through with out taking prohibitory losses.

We play with out Stellar Manipulation.
So Drones can be used to weaken Defenses, with out subjecting your main fleet to catastrophic losses.

I build space yards on every planet so that if I have the income all of my planets can build ships for my fleets.

Shadow hornet, thats a lot of time your colonies will not be producing any thing.

true, Kilson but the space yard on the planets also help with upgrades or building buildings/upgrading them and at higher lvls it takes forever if you dont have one

if he builds them one every planet even the ones that only have space for One facility , that cost a lot to build takes along time where is I have research facilities churning out tech for me. try it with a friend use a map editor to make two clusters that are the exact same. One who only puts shipyards on planets that can hold 10+ the other puts shipyards on all there worlds. The one who uses the other space for Research/ resource generation will come out ahead. While they might be able to build more ships. The other player has a stronger economy through research and more resource production facilities.

I personally only build many shipyards in dedicated systems (industrial systems) that are close to my frontlines.
Those industrial systems are supported by the following systems that usually have 4 SY each..
Otherwise, all systems that are useless have at least one.
Major systems like homeworlds.. get two (population tends to be high).

And i often reconfigure my systems as the games goes, so if the frontline is moving i gradually move the industrial systems elsewhere. Replacing the old ones with more ressources/research/intel.

And on topic.. after a battle that i fought against a neutral and he was using weaponless drones.. i ended the battle after destroying his fleet (but not the drones.. too fast) but when i got back to the system view.. both his drones were inside my troop transport! I captured them.. and i have no idea how..

then next thing i know, i cant recyle them to steal their technologies.. and a single drone in another battle fled, was not captured, and blocked an important warpoint. All my ships that were moving changed course by themsleves when they "realized" that an unarmed drone was runing around the WP.. and it took me a long while to understand how to destroy it.
(i tried specialised, fast interception drones.. but drones wont attack drones! I tried "by themsleves" and launched them, but they dont obey any orders at all) I had to send two small squadrons to block the perimeter of the battle map, and waited that the drone passed right in them.
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Without ammo, nice guns are just sophisticated clubs.

I know that early game ships suck so I get fighters as soon as I can and build them up to the point when I have the tech to let me build powerfull ships.

In early game I have not needed anything from colonies but space yards to build more ships and or units as of yet.
lost my 1th online game and I made/joined 2 others that I am wining at this time and there is no way that I can see of me not wining them both, and space yards on every planet has worked out for me.

I only played SE5 Stock Version online.

I like to use drones to soften up heavily defended planets. Because of the way bombardment works in this game (even BM), damage is spread all around everything on the planet. That means that if you are using ships against a planet with a lot of WPs and troops defending on the surface, they are going to take a beating before the WPs go down. I just don't like losing ships, so my tactic is to build anti-planet drones and send in a wave first. I know its all just production points, but somehow sending in the drones to be the cannon fodder sits better with me.

How do you stop drones from running away in combat?

put a warhead on them.

No other weapon system is sufficient? Not missiles not direct fire weapons? Is that a known bug or is it a deliberate design feature and if so, what's the logic behind that decision?

In stock, Drones are set to automatically ram and so if they don't have a warhead, they will retreat. You can change this behaviour by editing the Drones entry in VehicleUnitTypes.txt in the data folder. It's the "Seeks Towards Target And Rams" ability you want to drop - don't forget to adjust the number of ability entries for the Drone entry if you make that change.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Thank's Capt Kwok. I found the file and the entry. If I drop "Seeks Towards Target And Rams" ability, will drones start acting like intelligent warships - utilizing something like optimal firing range strategy, or will some other sort of idiocy set in?
Further, since this is getting into the domain of moding, two questions:
1. have you changed this drone behavior in your balance mod? and
2. can you direct me to a source that could explain to me what system/language(s) is/are used in programing the game and what tools/languages do I need to know to alter/mod SEV?

If that setting is removed, then the Drones will follow their given design strategy assuming they have an offensive weapon. The seeks target and ram setting is removed in the Balance Mod.

You only need a text file editor (Notepad etc.) to mod SE5's data files. The AI has its own custom script which is compiled by the included SE5 script compiler. The SE Wiki covers the basics:
http://wiki.spaceempires.net/index.php/AI_and_Script_Editing_%28SEV%29

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Thank's again Captain.
Is drone behavior going to be enhanced in some way in your upcoming Balance Mod v1.15? And how soon will this version be released (I was reading somewhere - beginning of April...)?

Drones are already fully functional in the current v1.14.

It'll probably be the end of April for v1.15.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod