Are drones usefull?

Play IRM mostly where drones are iterstellar mikssikles only but they can be used for tactical strikes as well as for softening up hard targets without losing experianced ship crews they are also useful for recon in force as a drone killed finding out about a defensive mine field is not one wasted.

They also make nasty planetery defence weapons for planets since a properly armed drone will kill any size of ship and shooting down landing ships stops invasions quite effectivly.

Yes they do have their uses but are expensive and require sufficient upgrades to be effective. The implementation just seems poor. A level one drone is slow if you equip it with anything besides engines. The AI builds these and never uses them because all they do is put engines on them. Pointless.

IMO it all goes back to the manner in which engines were designed for the game with no consideration for mass. These drones are nothing like the drones of Darkstar One.

Again they cost too much and are too poorly equiped.

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-my "Ministers are more sinister than Ministers... But who cares?"

The only time I use drones is as scouts. A fighter can easily beat up a drone...But a ship loaded up with sensor drones can explore a system pretty fast, evan with low tech sensors....Me, I don't really beleive in the whole war head thing...

I am finding them to be useful in the latest IRM.. with a few warhead techs (very cheap to research), you've got an expendable ship/colony killer able to destroy things worth far more than the drone you lose. Of course they're very limited, they do not replace fighters or ships in general, but they're better in certain specific uses - especially as a cheap, quickly built last-ditch defense against invading fleets, or possibly as an economical way to soften up heavily defended enemy planets.

They also make a good way to take a peek at what's on the other side of a warp point. If you think there's an enemy fleet on the other side, pop a drone through. If there is, all you've lost is a drone. Then you get to send a few hundred drones through and make with the vengeance.

Suction feet are not to be trifled with!

I practiced using drones to destroy enemy colonies that popped up in system where the fleet was away. Very useful. Now what happened was the infrastructure was not destroyed but the populace was. I thought that was weird and also believe the planet still counted toward the enemy score. It was still necessary to invade these planets to conquer them if only to abandon them.

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-my "Ministers are more sinister than Ministers... But who cares?"

IRM is indeed a mod. IRM stands for InterRelations Mod. It's made by Fallen Haven, and I usually suggest SpaceEmpires.net as the best spot to pick up your mods. To install a mod, all you need to is extract the .zip/.rar/.whatever to the GameTypes folder in your Space Empires 5 directory. When you click new game, a box pops up asking what type of game you want to start, and the mod will be listed there. Good places to find out about new mods are here and here

I don't know if any of this is covered in the manual, since I never bothered with it, given that by the time I got my copy, it was hopelessly out of date.

Suction feet are not to be trifled with!

when you change the settings of drones so they don't ram or run they are incredibly useful; they have no crew to worry about; are small and fast; can use warp points and are immune to a lot of weapons as they are so small [missiles can't target them]. obv PD will do the job against them but their ability to warp makes thme invaluable as armed scouts.
of course, they can be expensive compare to fighters/fighter bombers but i've used them to defend against lotsof capital ships with missiles and they couldn't target them so the drones just flew amongst them and pounded them to destruction.
of course, if you don't take out the two lines in VehicleUnitTypes.txt that make them 'ram' and 'cannot be controlled after launch' then they have limited use.
acxtually, i'm beginning to think having total control of drones is cheating as they are so powerful with their warp ability.

but, to put them in context, they take up a lot of supplies which can affect supplies of your capital ship fleets. and watching a drone ram a ship and get destroyed carrying 9-12,000 supply pts is a crying shame [dep on how many engines you put on a drone.. i usually put on a lot, about 9.., the alternative is to make them a lot less engine heavy and so dependant on drone carriers].

I use them to distroy heavily armed enemy planets or fleets of ships as well as to cover entire systems that i control in sensors so i can see the entire system and nothing can sneak up on a unsuspecting planet.

Yes they take about as much resources as a starting frigate does to make them, but if you upgrade those war heads enough nothing can stop a drone. If you max out war heads a drone can do 1k-2k of damage to a ship making them more powerful then a dreadnought at those levels, 3-4 of them can take out 2 or more dreadnoughts.

As well as them doing splash damage i'v noticed that using them to hit planets will damage nearby satilites as well and if there was a starbase i bet they'd do a bit of damage to that too. But like i said researching warheads = owning enemy ships....

I find ships sufficient for killing ships. My primary use for drones involves cloaking. I cloak a bunch of large, fast drones loaded with anti-planet warheads, then zip over to a heavily defended planet, and if they don't have sufficient scanners, I can swarm the planet with lightning-fast drones who instantly smash into the planet, destroying everything.

I like using drones against enemies that have better ship techs than my own. The may be expensive, but they're cheaper than ships.

Ah drones. I once wiped out a race in SE IV with them. I had been watching as diplomatic relations had been steadily deteriorating, and we had a lot of shared systems, so I built cargo facilities and drones on all my planets. When he declared war I launched all drones, destroying 50% of his planets in one turn. Glorious.

The main use I found, though, was as system cleanup duty. They are excellent for taking out enemy colony ships trying to wander through your systems without tying down a combat ship or using fighters. They are also good at taking out the retreating cripples that are limping away from battle.

I don't like how ground based defense guns can shoot at them, making attacking planets almost impossible if the enemy has good defenses (the one I defeated above obviously didn't).

But I build them anyway. I just LOVE the idea of having big long range missiles I can shoot from planets!!

They are also handy for a one-shot gambit to carry in your fleet. They just might provide the nuisance factor in a crucial battle that keeps the enemy ship guns off your fighters and anti-ship missiles, tying up enemy fire while your own ships close in.

All that is done before the naked stars is remembered

Fun, but not very effective:

Have a few heavily armored/shielded drones go after some fighters/satelites. You're bigger than the fighters, so you get to ram a lot of 'em, and as drones, they still get a speed boost.

Plus drones can use warp points, use large drones with ECM's and combat sensors and a proton beam now your talkin, they make enemy ships fly around trying to blast em =P

In the Balance Mod, where they aren't set to automatically ram, they're extraordinarily potent, though they take a lot of research to get to.

They're immune to many seeker weapons -- capital ship missiles, and such -- but can equip those weapons themselves. So, what you get is a ship that can use the best starship weapons in the game, but not be targetted by those same weapons, while being protected by starship defenses (big emissive armor, point defense, etc.). Plus, you don't have to screw with the cost of all those engines, which is the biggest cost on a starship. A small drone, equipped with a capital ship missile and some armor, only costs about 1,200 crystal, compared to a comparably armed frigate's cost of about three times that. Add into the mix a hefty reduction in maintenance costs, and drones definitely come out on top, for me.

At least in the balance mod, anyway. They're not as useful in stock, because of the way engines work. In the Balance Mod, the smaller a ship is, the less engines are required to make it go faster. Since drones are the smallest piece that can use starship engines, they travel at the same speed as a frigate, with only two engines installed.

~ Kingside_Bishop

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Indeed, I just slap war heads on them and hunt the enemy down...

I might use them on my enemy and slap a plasma missle on them and see his capitol ships try and take em on =P until he gets point defenses, but he also has meason blasters but get a ECM and those measons are useless