[AP] Using Drones

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Nick Northern
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[AP] Using Drones

Post by Nick Northern » Thu, 26. Jan 12, 04:44

I just tacked on 8 Keris fabs to a complex yesterday, to test out what they can do. Oh my...goodness. I took the first 50 drones that were made and went into a Xenon sector, and unleashed all 50 on a pair of Q's. The drones made short work of both Q's and went looking for more victims, eventually claiming a couple L's before they blew up. I was very very impressed. Anyone else make heavy use of drones?

I have used Mk1 drones for shield suppression in boarding ops, and as diversions for my fighters when they get in trouble.

Post any and all uses of these fun toys. :)
Enemies make you stronger, allies make you weaker.
Frank Herbert

Sovereign108
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Re: [AP] Using Drones

Post by Sovereign108 » Thu, 26. Jan 12, 12:06

I have 5 Advanced Drone Factories chruning out MKII Fighter drones and a CLS Pilot collecting them and putting the drones in my mobile HQ (Orca).

Right now, I have over 700 MKII Fighter Drones stockpiled up :)

Nick Northern wrote:I just tacked on 8 Keris fabs to a complex yesterday, to test out what they can do. Oh my...goodness. I took the first 50 drones that were made and went into a Xenon sector, and unleashed all 50 on a pair of Q's. The drones made short work of both Q's and went looking for more victims, eventually claiming a couple L's before they blew up. I was very very impressed. Anyone else make heavy use of drones?

I have used Mk1 drones for shield suppression in boarding ops, and as diversions for my fighters when they get in trouble.

Post any and all uses of these fun toys. :)

Sovereign108
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Joined: Tue, 23. Jun 09, 12:20
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Post by Sovereign108 » Thu, 26. Jan 12, 12:07

They are not so good versus M1's and M2's and stations though! They take ages to destroy. For everything else, they are great.

Jumee
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Post by Jumee » Thu, 26. Jan 12, 12:14

Sovereign108 wrote:They are not so good versus M1's and M2's and stations though! They take ages to destroy. For everything else, they are great.
unleash all 700 and you will see for yourself how they are not so good :P

they are like LT's once you build the complex you have an ultimate weapon under your control that you dont need to pay for

Sovereign108
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Post by Sovereign108 » Thu, 26. Jan 12, 12:16

The thing is, I haven't figured out how to recall the drones! So rebuilding your stockpile will take a little time.
Jumee wrote:
Sovereign108 wrote:They are not so good versus M1's and M2's and stations though! They take ages to destroy. For everything else, they are great.
unleash all 700 and you will see for yourself how they are not so good :P

they are like LT's once you build the complex you have an ultimate weapon under your control that you dont need to pay for

Probe1
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Post by Probe1 » Thu, 26. Jan 12, 12:17

(In my M7 Griffon) Yesterday I went into Mercs Rift and dropped an adv sat. Then I flew into a pirate carrier destroyer pair accompanied by a M7, a few M6s and a snootload of fighters.

I started jumping to Tears of Greed. At 80% I hit enter. I left but 800 mk1 drones stayed.

I quick as I arrived in ToG set them to attack all. There were no (Pirate)survivors.

Vyrebird
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Post by Vyrebird » Thu, 26. Jan 12, 20:05

Sovereign108 wrote:The thing is, I haven't figured out how to recall the drones! So rebuilding your stockpile will take a little time.
Drones (of all sorts) can, in general, be collected two ways - a ship can run them over ala a loot crate, or the drone can dock with a ship.

Running them over tends to be viable with Freight and Recon drones, but convincing a swarm of Fighter drones to stay still for you to run over is a bit hard ;)

The main way to get them to dock with a ship, is to tell the drones to Follow something with docking ports. If there's nothing else for them to do, that causes them to dock with the ship, and thereby be recovered (as with all AI dockings, it's more likely to work if the ship being Follow'd has come to a stop)

I've heard in TC the following-drones-docking only worked for ships with 'open bay' docking (ala a TM or the Griffon, rather than something with an 'internal bay' like the other M7s), but I only ever tried it with open-bay ships so I can't confirm that. In AP, it seems to work with regular carriers as well. With a fleet of ~85 fighter drones left after combat, I told them to follow my Panther (which has an internal docking bay). They approached it, stopped (forming kind of a sphere around the ship), and just started disappearing. I was afraid they were dying from running out of energy, but looking at their orders, they were at the "Landing in bay" phase, and the ship's drone count was climbing - so apparently drones have learned some form of 'docking by proximity'.

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