FTL Analysis: External Drones
Drones are, in the loosest sense, comparable to Weapons, to the point that they substantially recycle UI elements and associated mechanics like being able to shuffle around what slot a given thing is sitting in, depowering from right to left if the System takes enough damage it can't Power everything, etc. Unlike weapons, your control is pretty limited; you can turn them on and off, but that's it. You can't tell them to target a specific room, or dictate when they specifically fire, or otherwise give them a specific command. This makes Drones one of the few tools the AI isn't particularly less competent with than a non-terrible human player, and in fact since the AI isn't playing a strategic game the way the player is the Drone Part cost is generally only meaningfully applicable to the player, giving the AI a notable edge in Drone usage.
External Offensive Drones
External offensive Drones fly about the enemy ship, picking a destination at a random point around the ship to stop at and fire their next shot from each time they fire. This, their own movement speed, and the time it takes to fire a shot are the only controlling factors on an external offensive Drone's fire rate; they don't have a lengthy charge period between volleys the way weapons do. There's a fixed list of invisible destination points to travel to, but the random movement process is only forbidden from selecting the point they just fired from, and the destinations include clusters of points; thus, their fire rate can vary wildly within a battle, as selecting a point adjacent to their current point will lead to them firing two shots back to back whereas selecting whatever point is furthest from their current point will lead to an unusually long delay between shots.
Also note that an external Drone will be destroyed by enemy weapons fire should it happen to intersect with a projectile, with the shot that hit them also being 'used up' by this collision. This is very specifically hostile weapons fire; your own shots will magically pass right through your own Drones, and enemy fire will magically pass through their Drones. Beam fire is an exception and will never affect Drones, and Ion weaponry is a partial exception in that a Drone hit by an Ion weapon will stop moving, spinning in place, and after a delay maybe explode, or possibly just carry on as if nothing happened. As the AI usually pulls ahead of the player in number of weapons mounted on their ship, this will organically happen much more regularly to player Drones than enemy Drones...
... but in the case of offensive external Drones, you can actually deliberately delay firing a weapon until an enemy Drone travels in front of it to destroy it. As such, a player who is willing to engage in this behavior can shoot down enemy offensive Drones much more reliably than the AI can.
I don't like doing it, partly because it's a pain and partly because it honestly feels like an exploit rather than a legitimate part of the design. I really don't think it's healthy for the design that this can happen at all, honestly... I really think Drones should've been exempt from weapons fire. The AI sometimes getting lucky and through sheer blind chance happening to shoot down your Drone isn't a strategic consideration to plan for, it's just a random chance for the game to eat a Drone Part for effectively no reason at all. The player's ability to do so semi-reliably is at least a sort of skill thing, but it's janky on a balance level, as it gives AI external offensive Drones a reliable weakness to exploit that has no equivalent on eg weapons, and that the game doesn't really balance itself around.
External offensive Drones fly about the enemy ship, picking a destination at a random point around the ship to stop at and fire their next shot from each time they fire. This, their own movement speed, and the time it takes to fire a shot are the only controlling factors on an external offensive Drone's fire rate; they don't have a lengthy charge period between volleys the way weapons do. There's a fixed list of invisible destination points to travel to, but the random movement process is only forbidden from selecting the point they just fired from, and the destinations include clusters of points; thus, their fire rate can vary wildly within a battle, as selecting a point adjacent to their current point will lead to them firing two shots back to back whereas selecting whatever point is furthest from their current point will lead to an unusually long delay between shots.
Also note that an external Drone will be destroyed by enemy weapons fire should it happen to intersect with a projectile, with the shot that hit them also being 'used up' by this collision. This is very specifically hostile weapons fire; your own shots will magically pass right through your own Drones, and enemy fire will magically pass through their Drones. Beam fire is an exception and will never affect Drones, and Ion weaponry is a partial exception in that a Drone hit by an Ion weapon will stop moving, spinning in place, and after a delay maybe explode, or possibly just carry on as if nothing happened. As the AI usually pulls ahead of the player in number of weapons mounted on their ship, this will organically happen much more regularly to player Drones than enemy Drones...
... but in the case of offensive external Drones, you can actually deliberately delay firing a weapon until an enemy Drone travels in front of it to destroy it. As such, a player who is willing to engage in this behavior can shoot down enemy offensive Drones much more reliably than the AI can.
I don't like doing it, partly because it's a pain and partly because it honestly feels like an exploit rather than a legitimate part of the design. I really don't think it's healthy for the design that this can happen at all, honestly... I really think Drones should've been exempt from weapons fire. The AI sometimes getting lucky and through sheer blind chance happening to shoot down your Drone isn't a strategic consideration to plan for, it's just a random chance for the game to eat a Drone Part for effectively no reason at all. The player's ability to do so semi-reliably is at least a sort of skill thing, but it's janky on a balance level, as it gives AI external offensive Drones a reliable weakness to exploit that has no equivalent on eg weapons, and that the game doesn't really balance itself around.
So it's just... a bad mechanic in practice.
Anyway, specific Drones.
Combat Drone Mark I
50
: 2
Drone moves about enemy ship, periodically pausing to fire a laser shot at a random room, doing 1 Normal damage with a chance to start a fire.
It's useful to compare the Combat Drone Mark I to the Burst Laser I; they're both laser-fire tools that require 2 Power to run, cost 50 Scrap to purchase, and are basic and common. The Burst Laser I is better at Shield penetration, able to singlehandedly reliably do damage through 1 Shield bubble or pop 2 Shield bubbles to clear the way for another attack, but the Combat Drone Mark I has much better damage per second if Shields are down. You can't reliably quantify it as a specific number due to offensive Drone attack rate being random, but a Combat Drone Mark I can, assuming no misses, reliably keep 1 Shield bubble basically perpetually popped, where a Burst Laser I charges too slow to suppress 2 Shield bubbles in the same manner; that's a pretty clear metric showing a superior fire rate.
This comes with the caveat that if you don't have a Drone Recovery Arm, you're effectively spending 8 Scrap per battle you use a Combat Drone Mark I in (More on average in real terms, since it'll sometimes be shot down), where a Burst Laser I can be used in any number of battles for free. As such, if you don't have a Drone Recovery Arm, you'll ideally have a good sense of whether you can easily clear a given fight without spending the Drone Part or not, and spend or not spend appropriately.
Combat Drone Mark I
50: 2Drone moves about enemy ship, periodically pausing to fire a laser shot at a random room, doing 1 Normal damage with a chance to start a fire.
It's useful to compare the Combat Drone Mark I to the Burst Laser I; they're both laser-fire tools that require 2 Power to run, cost 50 Scrap to purchase, and are basic and common. The Burst Laser I is better at Shield penetration, able to singlehandedly reliably do damage through 1 Shield bubble or pop 2 Shield bubbles to clear the way for another attack, but the Combat Drone Mark I has much better damage per second if Shields are down. You can't reliably quantify it as a specific number due to offensive Drone attack rate being random, but a Combat Drone Mark I can, assuming no misses, reliably keep 1 Shield bubble basically perpetually popped, where a Burst Laser I charges too slow to suppress 2 Shield bubbles in the same manner; that's a pretty clear metric showing a superior fire rate.
This comes with the caveat that if you don't have a Drone Recovery Arm, you're effectively spending 8 Scrap per battle you use a Combat Drone Mark I in (More on average in real terms, since it'll sometimes be shot down), where a Burst Laser I can be used in any number of battles for free. As such, if you don't have a Drone Recovery Arm, you'll ideally have a good sense of whether you can easily clear a given fight without spending the Drone Part or not, and spend or not spend appropriately.
More rarely relevant but still worth noting is the existence of the Anti-Combat Drone, as an enemy ship fielding one makes a Combat Drone Mark I essentially a complete waste of resources to deploy. As there's not any tools that hard-counter laser weapons in this sort of way, this particular piece is straightforwardly an advantage for the Burst Laser I in this comparison.
Anyway, the Combat Drone Mark I has decent odds of being the player's introduction to Drones; it's both one of the two Drones early enemy ships are allowed to try to attack you with, and one of the three Drones a newly-bought Drone Control can come with. I'd say it's decently representative of an intro, but Drones have less types than weapons paired with more variability across types; it's pretty meaningless to try to describe any given Drone as 'generic', or 'representative', or whatever. There's only two Drone types that really behave like the Combat Drone Mark I, for example.
Anyway, the Combat Drone Mark I has decent odds of being the player's introduction to Drones; it's both one of the two Drones early enemy ships are allowed to try to attack you with, and one of the three Drones a newly-bought Drone Control can come with. I'd say it's decently representative of an intro, but Drones have less types than weapons paired with more variability across types; it's pretty meaningless to try to describe any given Drone as 'generic', or 'representative', or whatever. There's only two Drone types that really behave like the Combat Drone Mark I, for example.
Nonetheless, you should get used to the Combat Drone Mark I. Of the assorted Drones, it's common to find, works as widely as Drones get, and has no unusual flaws dragging it down. It also has a reasonable Power demand and a modest Scrap cost, making it fairly easy to squeeze it in if you have a Drone Control. (Including potentially adding another copy if you already have one) It's thus versatile, easy to acquire, and easy to slot in, which is a convenient combination in general and in particular isn't matched by any other Drone; most runs that start with or acquire a Drone Control are liable to get an opportunity at and good use out of having one.
Combat Drones have exactly one blue option, with said blue option only existing in Rebel-controlled Sectors... and only being a chance to get a better result, while being guaranteed to burn a Drone Part. Fortunately, Combat Drones are plenty good in their own right, so the lack of blue options isn't a serious flaw.
Combat Drone Mark II
75: 4Drone moves about enemy ship, periodically pausing to fire a laser shot at a random room, doing 1 Normal damage with a chance to start a fire. Moves and thus fires much faster than the Mark I. (Almost twice as fast)
Where the Mark I can basically singlehandedly suppress Shields if we ignore evasion, the Mark II can reliably get damage through to the ship underneath. In practice you're extremely unlikely to get it early enough for this to realistically happen (Because enemy evasion rises as you progress), but they're very powerful and efficient so long as you can spare the Power. It's also worth emphasizing that Drone Part expenditures don't vary with different Drone types; a Combat Drone Mark II is getting more value per Drone Part than a Combat Drone Mark I, and thus by a very real metric gets more value for the Scrap you pay. This is complicated by the higher purchase price and higher Power demand, admittedly, but is still worth emphasizing.
The high Power demand is notable, but less so than if these were weapons; where weapon slots default to 4 with a few ships only getting 3 such slots, Drone slots default to 2 with only a few ships getting as many as 3 slots. Thus, where equipping 2 weapons that demand 4 Power each means you're not using your full weapon slots, with a lot of ships 2 Combat Drone Mark IIs will be exactly using your full Drone capacity. More probably, you'll be at 6 on the Drone Control, pairing the Combat Drone Mark II with one of the several 2-Power Drones lying about. Or even just sitting at 4 and not using any other Drones. That's very different from 4-Power weapons, where even one being equipped makes it difficult to fill out the rest of your slots, and thus stealthily means your peak damage potential with such weapons isn't as high as you might intuit.
The Power demand does make it difficult to slot in a Combat Drone Mark II when your run is still early. Looting one in the first Sector, for example, is still going to take a bit to be useful even if your ship started with a Drone Control, since you'll need to scrape together enough Scrap to upgrade the Drone Control and your Reactor. For the ships that go up to 3 Drone slots, it's also mildly constrictive on your options, as only the System Repair Drone and Anti-Combat Drone cost 1 Power, and several Drones cost 3 Power, though honestly it's still generally less constrictive than what 3 weapon slots tends to result in. Among other points, the Combat Drone Mark II is the only Drone that requires 4 Power; it would be misleading to say Drones tend to need less Power than weapons, but it is true that Drones don't have peak Power demand come up as a restriction as much as weapons do.
All of this is to say that the Combat Drone Mark II is genuinely pretty close to a pure upgrade over the Mark I. A pair of Mark IIs is roughly equivalent in performance to four Mark Is, only costing half the Drone Parts per battle and being, y'know, physically possible for every ship instead of for no ships. This means that even if you have a Drone Recovery Arm, the Mark II is desirable; if it weren't for the slots consideration, the Drone Recovery Arm would mean a pair of Mark Is would be generally superior (Less vulnerable to Drone Control taking damage, slightly better average fire rate, less impacted by a Drone being shot down), but the max slots consideration means you can't actually say things like 'I'd rather have four Mark Is'. At most it means that, for some ships, you might prefer a Mark II and two Mark Is.
It's even more Scrap-efficient to buy in Stores! Stockpiling 75 Scrap is admittedly a notable ask, but it's still shaving off 25% of the cost compared to purchasing a pair of Mark Is.
Its primary 'flaw' is that it's fairly rare. It's not particularly surprising for a run to simply never see one in Stores nor loot one. As such, you shouldn't be planning as if you can expect to get one -the Mark I is common enough it's surprising if a run never sees one at all, by contrast. (In part because 1 out of 3 Drone Control purchase opportunities will throw in a Combat Drone Mark I for free)
It's less obviously 'super' than the Burst Laser II, but is very much the same kind of design philosophy at work. I don't really get why laser-type offenses got this more than other offensive tools...
Beam Drone Mark I
50
: 2
Drone moves about enemy ship, periodically pausing to fire a beam shot at a random stretch, doing 1 Normal damage per room hit. Can technically hit more than one room, but will almost never do so, and can't hit more than two rooms due to how the AI draws the beam even though it could theoretically hit up to three rooms.
Beam Drones are... frustrating.
Beam Drone Mark I
50: 2Drone moves about enemy ship, periodically pausing to fire a beam shot at a random stretch, doing 1 Normal damage per room hit. Can technically hit more than one room, but will almost never do so, and can't hit more than two rooms due to how the AI draws the beam even though it could theoretically hit up to three rooms.
Beam Drones are... frustrating.
For the player, they're dubious. Since they're out of your control and external offensive Drones have randomized fire rates, unlike beam weapons you can't arrange to hit just as the enemy Shields go down. As such, while the Beam Drone Mark I has an incredibly impressive rate of fire for a beam-category offensive tool, in practice this only matters if you can completely knock out enemy Shields, and keep them knocked-out.
In practice, if you can achieve that state, you've probably already won: the AI obsessively prioritizes keeping Shields fully repaired, with this in fact only being topped by 'go to the Medical Bay when low on health' as a priority, and having enemy Shields down already means you're free to trash other Systems as you see fit, leading to a cascade effect where the Shields being zeroed out for long really does basically always mean the ship in question is about to explode regardless of your exact kit.
Which is to say the Beam Drone Mark I is only reliably helpful when you're already completely dominating the enemy ship. At that point, why are you wasting a Drone Part? You've already won, that's just a waste. If you have a Drone Recovery Arm I guess you might as well deploy it?...
It is a decent way to bust through Supershields, but so are Combat Drones, only they're much more broadly useful, and 1 in 3 Drone Control purchases will come with a Combat Drone Mark I. So that's not really an argument for the Beam Drone Mark I.
Advanced edition helps some, as Hacking Shields is a way to get a reasonably lengthy period of Shields being down without it being automatically correlated to victory being right around the corner. That's burning two Drone Parts per encounter to get the Beam Drone Mark I semi-useful, which is... not great. If you have Hacking, a Drone Recovery Arm, and a good stockpile of Drone Parts to burn on Hacking, then I guess a Beam Drone Mark I might be worth actually holding onto and using?
That really is all advanced edition did to boost it, though. I guess you could argue the Rock Cruiser C is a boost to it, since it provides reliable access to a Cloning Bay and Crystal crewmember, making it feasible to lock off the Shields room and not problematically suicidal to have a Beam Drone firing randomly while your Crystal is aboard the enemy ship? I guess?
Meanwhile, in AI hands, the Beam Drone Mark I is frustratingly dangerous. Its random, uncontrolled targeting isn't a weakness: the AI doesn't control its targeting anyway. Its inability to reliably hit when Shields are down is not a weakness: the AI doesn't try to time its shots in the first place. It requiring a Drone Part isn't a significant weakness: AI ships have more Drone Parts than they'll ever realistically use unless you're willing to abuse the timing trick to reliably kill their Drones.
Meanwhile, its high rate of fire means it will regularly manage to slip in a hit while your Shields are down in spite of the AI's failure to coordinate its actions. Crucially, AI ships gain firepower aggressively, such that it's nearly impossible to have reliable defenses outside the early portion of a run -and most ships won't manage such even in that phase. Also crucially, AI ships have favorable design rules when it comes to Drones; past the extreme early game, enemy ships will regularly be either sacrificing one weapon to gain 2-3 Drones, or giving up no weapons to, again, pick up multiple Drones. So the extent to which the Beam Drone Mark I is still bad in AI hands is substantially mitigated by the point that an AI ship that has one didn't really lose much to get it, where for the player the investments necessary to fit a Beam Drone in are much more substantive.
The only meaningful qualifier here is that every once in a while you'll get the ~Dreaded~ Beam-And-Beam early Drone Control ship that literally can't hurt you if you have even a single Shield bubble. That's funny and all, but that doesn't mean the Beam Drone Mark I is bad in AI hands, it just means there's a specific edge case the devs overlooked in the AI ship design rules.
This really shouldn't be a thing in the game at all, honestly.
Note that Beam Drones can be used in a couple of events. They're redundant with actual beam weaponry for one of the events, but for the other event they're basically the best option. On the other hand, this particular event is uncommon, only seen in Rock Sectors, and not often even then... though on the other hand the event doesn't provide an option to not engage with it, so if you're paranoid, holding onto a Beam Drone can be a good idea, in spite of their overall terribleness.
Beam Drone Mark II
60: 3Drone moves about enemy ship, periodically pausing to fire a beam shot at a random stretch, doing 1 Normal damage per room hit. Can hit more than one room, but only occasionally does so. Moves slower than the Mark I and thus fires less often (Just over 2/3rds the Mark I's speed), but does 2 damage to Zoltan Supershields.
This is advanced edition content...
... which is a bit confusing, since it's very obviously extremely bad.
In theory its superior beam length -exactly double the Mark I's- gives it superior damage potential even with its lower rate of fire. In practice it usually still hits one room, so you're basically paying extra power and Scrap to... reduce your damage output?
I don't get why they didn't give it double damage. That would've ensured it had superior average damage, given it a limited ability to penetrate Shields, and incidentally made it better against Zoltan Supershields without requiring bizarre special-casing.
Even the fact that the Scrap price is only slightly higher is... like, the opposite of helpful in practice, because 99% of the time you shouldn't buy it and should in fact immediately sell it if you loot it, so if it had eg cost 85 Scrap it would be basically all upside by increasing the sell value.
This is also ignoring that Beam Drones are already terrible by default, making this a bad version of something that was already terrible. Why would someone look at the Mark I and go 'we really need another version of that thing players shouldn't use, and the new one should be even less usable'?
I really don't get why so much advanced edition content is worse-designed than the base content, particularly given how often the issues are obvious in seconds of actually trying to use the content. Did they seriously never test the impact of doubling beam length and just assumed it would actually help? What happened here?
Fire Beam Drone
50
: 3
Drone moves about enemy ship, periodically pausing to fire a beam shot at a random stretch, with very high odds of starting a fire in the hit tile. Does 1 damage to Zoltan Supershields.
More advanced edition content...
... but the Fire Beam Drone is actually pretty terrifying!
It's got issues, mind, being only slightly faster-moving than the Beam Drone Mark II and thus more prone to Shields regenerating before it can fire, being fairly Power-intensive, and of course being close to useless against Autoships and Lanius ships, but when it works out it works really well, setting fires far faster than most AI crews can possibly put them out. This can rapidly spiral out of control, Shields burning down to open the way for more fire, Medical or Cloning Bays breaking so the crew can't heal/bounce back from dying, etc, and can readily translate into a crew kill for bigger rewards.
Ideally, you support it with Ion weaponry, enough to knock out and lock down enemy Shields. Hacking enemy Shields can also give it an in, of course, and if you're lucky that's all it'll need: its metaphorical foot in the door.
I really don't get why so much advanced edition content is worse-designed than the base content, particularly given how often the issues are obvious in seconds of actually trying to use the content. Did they seriously never test the impact of doubling beam length and just assumed it would actually help? What happened here?
Fire Beam Drone
50: 3Drone moves about enemy ship, periodically pausing to fire a beam shot at a random stretch, with very high odds of starting a fire in the hit tile. Does 1 damage to Zoltan Supershields.
More advanced edition content...
... but the Fire Beam Drone is actually pretty terrifying!
It's got issues, mind, being only slightly faster-moving than the Beam Drone Mark II and thus more prone to Shields regenerating before it can fire, being fairly Power-intensive, and of course being close to useless against Autoships and Lanius ships, but when it works out it works really well, setting fires far faster than most AI crews can possibly put them out. This can rapidly spiral out of control, Shields burning down to open the way for more fire, Medical or Cloning Bays breaking so the crew can't heal/bounce back from dying, etc, and can readily translate into a crew kill for bigger rewards.
Ideally, you support it with Ion weaponry, enough to knock out and lock down enemy Shields. Hacking enemy Shields can also give it an in, of course, and if you're lucky that's all it'll need: its metaphorical foot in the door.
Furthermore, unlike the other Beam Drones the Fire Beam Drone isn't functionally AI-favoring, due to the key point that the AI doesn't have access to external venting. The point of 'the AI doesn't coordinate fire so not being able to coordinate fire doesn't hurt it' still applies, and the point of 'the AI automatically always instantly knows about fires on their ship' is also a bit obnoxious, but the player can often respond to a Fire Beam Drone slipping a fire into a random corridor by just venting atmosphere, where the AI will have to lose crew time to fighting the fire if they're not a Lanius ship, Autoship, or carrying System Repair Drones that have nothing better to do. (That is, if they have System Repair Drones, you start a fire, they put it out, and nothing else happened, that didn't inhibit the enemy any, but if you also did some System damage and the System Repair Drones thus either ignored the fire or prioritized the fire over fixing the System damage, then the fire was helpful even if it did no damage)
Only the Rock Cruiser B is designed such that the Fire Beam Drone is functionally AI-favoring. (Because it has no external venting, and by default has no Door Control to slow the spread of fire) Which is annoying, but the Fire Beam Drone is also rare; it's incredibly frustrating if you do end up with a Rock Cruiser B run doomed by virtue of running into a ship with a Fire Beam Drone while not having the tools to avoid the ship being turned into an oven, but you have to play the Rock Cruiser a ton to actually expect it to happen at some point. It's really not that bad, all things considered.
Strangely, the Fire Beam Drone doesn't do blue options. It doesn't even act as a crappy alternate to the blue options Fire Beams work in.
External Defensive Drones
Where external offensive Drones flit about the enemy ship in a random way, (most) external defensive Drones instead slowly circle around their own ship at a predictable speed, following the line of the Shield bubble. (Regardless of whether any Shield bubbles are present or not) Personally, the visuals of this always look to me like the Drone is grinding along the outside of the Shield bubble, which is a pretty cool image, but unfortunately that's not the intent; the 'grinding' is just the attitude jets firing, and occurs even if no Shield bubble is present. Which I find a bit sad in part because the direction the attitude jets fires doesn't really make sense for the manner in which they drift, in addition to being a much less interesting image.
External Defensive Drones
Where external offensive Drones flit about the enemy ship in a random way, (most) external defensive Drones instead slowly circle around their own ship at a predictable speed, following the line of the Shield bubble. (Regardless of whether any Shield bubbles are present or not) Personally, the visuals of this always look to me like the Drone is grinding along the outside of the Shield bubble, which is a pretty cool image, but unfortunately that's not the intent; the 'grinding' is just the attitude jets firing, and occurs even if no Shield bubble is present. Which I find a bit sad in part because the direction the attitude jets fires doesn't really make sense for the manner in which they drift, in addition to being a much less interesting image.
Alas.
Anyway, external defensive Drones can be shot down by regular weapons fire just like offensive Drones, but in practice this is effectively completely random, and favors the AI in most cases due to their generally greater weapon count, since where shots arrive from is completely random; even a volley from a single weapon can have its individual shots come from opposite edges! Thus, you can't deliberately time weapons fire to hit external defensive Drones, or otherwise contrive to make it more likely to happen aside simply firing as many shots as you can as often as you can.
This is frustrating, because external defensive Drones are where it's actually vaguely design-purposeful for regular shots to be able to destroy them. It's entirely possible to end up in a situation where you'll eventually win with no damage if you just leave the game running, but where you're stuck just waiting and praying that your shots will intercept the enemy Drones enough times that they run out of Drone Parts so you can start being able to fire missiles or use your own Drones or get enough laser shots to overcome their Shields. But no, you can only deliberately destroy enemy offensive Drones, even though that doesn't do anything design-purposeful.
Frankly, I don't understand why you can't just... target Drones directly, the same way you can target individual rooms.
Anyway, moving on to specific Drones...
Defense Drone Mark I
50
: 2
Drone circles your ship, shooting down incoming missiles, asteroids, Hacking Drones, Boarding Drones, Ion Intruder Drones, Crystal shots, and flak projectiles.
The Defense Drone Mark I is your most basic, generic of the external defensive Drones... and is honestly the overall most useful of the bunch, and indeed is one of the strongest reasons for a ship to consider buying a Drone Control.
Defense Drone Mark I
50: 2Drone circles your ship, shooting down incoming missiles, asteroids, Hacking Drones, Boarding Drones, Ion Intruder Drones, Crystal shots, and flak projectiles.
The Defense Drone Mark I is your most basic, generic of the external defensive Drones... and is honestly the overall most useful of the bunch, and indeed is one of the strongest reasons for a ship to consider buying a Drone Control.
Shooting down missiles is the most key piece here; missiles are normally a huge problem by virtue of bypassing your primary reliable defense of Shields, and the Defense Drone provides a mostly-reliably answer to such. Even if you're actively buying Drone Parts, this is a good deal, as preventing even 4 Hull damage has literally covered the Scrap cost for a Drone Part. As a run progresses this becomes more reliably a good trade; early in a run, repairs are cheap, enemy missile weaponry largely only does 1 damage per hit, and it's often possible to prevent them from firing off that many missiles by just targeting Weapons and all. Late in a run, even 2 Hull damage prevented covers the cost of a Drone Part while enemy missile damage trends upward, potentially up to 4 damage per hit; spending a Drone Part to block one Breach Missile late in a run costs you less Scrap than letting it hit.
This is also all ignoring that missiles hitting your ship can be knocking out (Sub)Systems, potentially leading to yet more damage taken because eg Shields is knocked low enough a laser volley gets through. It's also ignoring that missiles are generally able to set fires and/or cause breaches to cause further trouble. In real terms a Defense Drone's effective Scrap savings are going to be even better than just the obvious 'you don't need to repair the Hull damage that missile hit would've done', potentially much better.
I'm focusing most particularly on the anti-missile usage because, for several reasons, it's by far the most pertinent element. The first consideration is that missiles are simply far more common than any individual other thing a Defense Drone can shoot down, to the point that I'm reasonably confident missiles are more common than all the other things combined. Crystal weaponry in particular can only be found on enemy ships in the Hidden Crystal Worlds, but Drones, Hacking, and asteroid fields are all uncommon.
The second consideration is that Defense Drones are actually most reliable about shooting down missiles; for a lot of player ships, a Defense Drone is almost perfectly reliable at shooting down missiles if there's the one launcher. It's much less reliable at shooting down other cases; asteroids have a variable 'fire rate' that will intermittently have two asteroids arrive close enough together that the second gets through. Hacking Drones move fast enough, and can be re-launched quickly enough if shot down, that it's basically impossible for a Defense Drone to do more than delay the initial Hacking Pulse by maybe 10~ seconds. Crystal weapons, when they crop up at all, include burst-fire options that can overwhelm a Defense Drone, and also are Shield-susceptible so a Defense Drone is less uniquely valuable there anyway.
Boarding Drones and Ion Intruders are the only cases where a Defense Drone is actually reliable at fending them off that's not a missile, and this comes to the point that the non-missile threats are quite likely to be occurring alongside missile presence. If you're facing a ship that launches a Boarding Drone or Ion Intruder while nothing else is around to distract your Defense Drone, yeah, it's a reliable stop to those... but this just doesn't happen very often. Most of the time you'll still inevitably have an internal Drone get through.
You might intuitively expect to be able to solve these issues by adding another Defense Drone, but unfortunately Defense Drones stack poorly: their AI is not sophisticated enough to coordinate. Instead of two Defense Drones resulting in one shooting down a missile and the other reserving its shot for whatever comes next, they'll just both fire on the same target. You'd have to micromanage them, leaving one off and only turning it on after the other one has hit its target, to have a pair meaningfully help against staggered-but-close volleys -and even that won't help if multiple things they can shoot down arrive at roughly the same time.
So yeah, the Defense Drone Mark I is chiefly an anti-missile tool. It's very, very useful off just that, to be clear! But you shouldn't focus too much on the theoretical other uses.
This isn't really any different in AI hands, either. It's still chiefly an anti-missile defense for them, too. The main differences are that a player hopefully won't mindlessly fire missiles into a Defense Drone until they run out of ammo the way the AI absolutely will, and that the player's ability to coordinate fire gives superior ability to get missiles through anyway if they feel it's necessary.
There is exactly one event Defense Drones provide a blue option for. It can occur in most Sectors, though, and so will crop up reasonably often... but it also can result in you taking a decent chunk of Hull damage, so it's not exactly important to have it. Like the Combat Drone, this isn't a big deal since Defense Drones are pretty darn good anyway.
Defense Drone Mark II
70: 3Drone circles your ship, shooting down incoming projectiles of any kind. Has a somewhat faster fire rate than the Mark I.
This is theoretically an upgrade over the Defense Drone Mark I, but in practice it's depressingly prone to being a downgrade.
First of all, the Defense Drone Mark I's list of targets is almost exactly the things you want a Defense Drone shooting down; aside asteroids and the largely-irrelevant Crystal shots, these are all threats that completely bypass Shields, making them disproportionately dangerous. The Defense Drone Mark II being able and willing to shoot down laser and Ion shots sounds nice in theory, but in practice it means it gets very readily distracted from the things you want it shooting down, where a Defense Drone Mark I will be vigilant against the key threats so long as they aren't stacked with each other or with flak.
Second, the much wider range of targets to fire on furthermore means the Defense Drone Mark II is far more prone to wasting shots entirely. This requires getting a bit into the Defense Drone AI and physics to understand, so let's do that.
Physics-wise, both types of Defense Drone are firing a magically selective shot that only interacts with whatever they were specifically trying to shoot down. This means that if they don't hit their chosen target, they don't hit anything, guaranteeing their shot did nothing of use.
AI-wise, both Defense Drones consistently elect to fire on what I'm going to call the earliest valid target in their area; if, once their cooldown is vanished, they have two valid targets, one of which is half a second away from hitting the ship, while the other just entered the screen? They will fire on that first target, because it arrived first. And they'll hit nothing, because the targeted shot will hit your ship before their shot can reach it, of course.
With the Defense Drone Mark I, this is a flaw with its AI and mechanics, but a limited one. Plenty of the ships you fight will have only a single relevant target type (ie only one missile weapon), and even when they have two different ones, it's not like the AI coordinates its offenses to try to overwhelm your defenses. It primarily is an actual flaw in regard to fighting in an asteroid field -and primarily if the enemy you're fighting in an asteroid fields is firing missiles or whatnot. (Which is common, mind, but if they aren't, then it's not a flaw)
But for the Defense Drone Mark II, this is a constant, serious flaw. It will regularly fire on targets it can't actually hit; not only will it not be shooting down the projectiles you want it shooting down most, it often won't actually be shooting down even the laser and Ion shots that it being able to shoot down is ostensibly what makes it superior! Even with it having an improved fire rate, it's still very regular for it to fire three shots and have only one actually hit anything. Over and over and over again.
All while demanding 50% more Power than the superior-in-practice Defense Drone Mark I, not to mention costing almost 50% more Scrap to buy from a Store.
In practice: skip. Sell. Don't use. The Defense Drone Mark II is a trap for learning players who assume that surely it must serve an actual purpose.
It doesn't even enable any blue options to justify holding onto it!
Annoyingly, it's noticeably more prone to being useful for the AI, simply because the player doesn't necessarily use any of the tools the Defense Drone Mark I can target. (And indeed most of them are pretty bad for the player) Mind, it's still questionable of an 'upgrade' for the AI if you are using such tools due to the distraction consideration -that with a Defense Drone Mark I, you can't slip in a missile or Hacking Drone or whatever just by carefully timing a laser volley launch as a distraction, where you absolutely can do that to a ship relying on a Defense Drone Mark II. But it can sometimes actually benefit the AI. (For one thing, the AI always deploys all its Drones without regard to whether they're relevant or not; a player with a Defense Drone Mark I will just not deploy it if the enemy ship has nothing it can shoot down. Enemy ships will toss their Drone out even if it has no possibility of helping)
I just don't understand how this got missed. It's so obviously a massive downgrade. What happened here?
Hull Repair Drone
85: 2Drone moves about your ship, stopping periodically to repair one Hull point. After this has been done 3, 4, or 5 times, the Drone vanishes.
The AI never uses this Drone, which is probably for the best since it would either be obnoxious or a complete waste of their Drone Parts, not a meaningfully interesting thing to deal with.
One way of looking at the Hull Repair Drone is to quantify the effective Scrap cost: at 8 Scrap per Drone Part, the Hull Repair Drone averages 2 Scrap per Hull point as its cost. (It's 2.6~ Scrap if it rolls 3, and 1.6 if it rolls 5, for reference) As Hull repairs start from 2 Scrap per Hull point and climb over the course of a run to 4 Scrap per Hull point, that means that buying Drone Parts starts out on average as efficient, and over the course of the run becomes reliably more and more efficient. As you are free to pull things in and out of storage if no danger is present, just keeping a Hull Repair Drone in storage and pulling it out when you need it after a fight -assuming you even have so many Drones to slot in that these shenanigans are needed- is actually quite worthwhile, and will make your run more resistant to unexpected damage spikes; instead of losing 26 Hull and then dying to a ship that really should've been only mildly harmful, you can repair a bunch of damage before you move on.
If you have the Drone Recovery Arm Augment, it's even better: while a Hull Repair Drone that uses up its full charge will still deplete a Drone Part, if you Jump while it's still repairing, the Drone Recovery Arm will recoup the Drone Part expended. Thus, you can let the Hull Repair Drone repair two Hull, then Jump, and it will reliably be free Hull points. (You can also gamble and only Jump after the third or fourth repairs, but that is a gamble) This mild exploit will make your ship a lot less likely to be chipped to death, and in general will let your Scrap stretch farther, and there's literally no reason to not do it if you have both a Drone Recovery Arm and a Hull Repair Drone. (Unless you feel like that's cheating and your conscience torments you, I suppose)
And of course you can use the Hull Repair Drone in combat if you feel you need to. This shouldn't be a default -it risks being blown up before it can do its work, for one- but the point is that the Hull Repair Drone is hugely useful on a consistent basis.
Indeed, it's one of the clearer examples of a design flaw with FTL: that Drone access is disproportionately useful (In spite of how many Drones are pretty underwhelming), and the game really seems to intend for them to be basically optional if you're not one of the ships that starts out specialized in Drones. Among other points, Drone Parts are something you reliably loot periodically -and unlike missiles, you're very unlikely to burn through a bunch of Drone Parts trying to win a single fight. A ship can often get a shocking amount of value out of just carefully-considered use of a single Drone type, where the Drone Part cost doesn't end up being a serious weakness because you only deploy eg a Combat Drone Mark I every second or third fight, while looting Drone Parts at a similar or greater rate.
Crucially, Drone access includes multiple unique capabilities: Defense Drones are basically your only tool for protecting against missiles (There's technically Supershields, but they barely help, and the only combat-renewable Supershield sources are Drone-based anyway!), the Hull Repair Drone is the only way to repair your ship that isn't 'be at a Store and pay for repairs' or 'get lucky with an event providing free Hull', and as we'll be getting to in a minute one of the only dedicated anti-Drone tools is another Drone.
And then Combat Drones mean Drones actually directly overlaps with Weapons! A ship with multiple Combat Drones and a Drone Recovery Arm loses precise aiming ability compared to weapon usage, but is still startlingly effective at killing enemy ship; the only meaningful limiter here is that no player ship can field more than 3 Drones at once (And most are limited to 2), meaning you can't field 4 Combat Drones at once the way you can have 4 weapons. And as I noted earlier, the Combat Drone Mark II eating 4 Power while being worth just about 2 Mark Is in combat effectiveness means this is much less meaningful than it sounds; you don't need 4 slots to fully leverage a fully upgraded Drone Control's offensive potential!
This is such a big issue it genuinely has a pretty noticeable impact on ship quality considerations: all else being equal, a ship that starts with a Drone Control is much more reliable at winning than one without -for one thing, it actually gets to use those Drones a run almost always loots, instead of selling them for Scrap.
And the game pretty clearly doesn't recognize that, unfortunately...
Anyway, returning to the Hull Repair Drone; its 'fire' behavior actually works exactly like an offensive Drone's, including that the speed at which repairs occur is highly variable, in terms of picking random destination points and doing its thing when it arrives. So for one thing, if you're going to use it in combat, don't save using it until the last minute: you can't count on it doing thus-and-such amount of repairs in so-and-so amount of time, so better to have it early than to have it too late.
Also, the Hull Repair Drone provides exactly three blue options, all of which will be rarely seen: one can only occur if you're out of fuel and wait a turn with your distress beacon off, one can only occur in Rock Sectors, and one can only occur in Abandoned sectors. The no-distress one will just trade a Drone Part for some fuel reliably, the Rock one will just result in a fight, while the Abandoned one will result in a Lanius joining your crew. (Which is admittedly nice) So events are actually pretty irrelevant to its utility, bizarrely; you'd think you'd have events where a ship was direly damaged and a Hull Repair Drone could patch up the ship, but no, even though multiple events do involve you helping a damaged ship, you just... never get the option to patch them up.
Shield Overcharger Drone
60
: 3 (2)
Drone circles your ship, periodically stopping to add a Supershield point of HP. This can stack up to 5 points, but the more points are currently present the longer adding additional points will take. (8/10/13/16/20 seconds of charge time at 0/1/2/3/4 layers present)
This is advanced edition content, and as is depressingly usual with advanced edition content it's really bad. A Zoltan Supershield is already underwhelming; getting a single point at a time intermittently, burning up a Drone Part for each fight you use it in? That's even worse.
For one thing, all the stuff with blocking boarding, mind control, and Hacking, which is some of the few qualities that are actually kind of useful on Supershields? Pretty much irrelevant; the AI will launch all those before your first Supershield layer goes up. You might get lucky on timing and trap a boarding party long enough to kill them, as Supershields block all crew teleportation, but that's about it. It's not like a Supershield going up will cut off ongoing mind control or prevent an already-attached Hacking Drone from doing its thing; it only interferes with initial activation of those.
For another, the physics of the game are against the Shield Overcharger. One of the most useful things you could theoretically do with the Shield Overcharger is catch Ion shots with it to prevent them from hitting your actual Shields... which has the problem that most Ion weapons have similar charge rates to eg Laser weaponry, and fire slow-moving projectiles outpaced by literally all other weapon shots. Thus, what will usually happen is that eg an Ion Blast fires a little before a Basic Laser, and yet the Baser Laser shot hits the Supershield and then the Ion Blast shot hits your regular Shield.
Similarly, in theory the intermittent Superhield bubbles could be used to catch missile shots... but, again, missiles travel slower than most other projectiles while their launchers tend to have comparable charge times to other Power-equivalent weapons. So you'll get a laser or beam wiping out your Supershield layer followed closely by the missile going right on through your regular Shield.
Anyway, returning to the Hull Repair Drone; its 'fire' behavior actually works exactly like an offensive Drone's, including that the speed at which repairs occur is highly variable, in terms of picking random destination points and doing its thing when it arrives. So for one thing, if you're going to use it in combat, don't save using it until the last minute: you can't count on it doing thus-and-such amount of repairs in so-and-so amount of time, so better to have it early than to have it too late.
Also, the Hull Repair Drone provides exactly three blue options, all of which will be rarely seen: one can only occur if you're out of fuel and wait a turn with your distress beacon off, one can only occur in Rock Sectors, and one can only occur in Abandoned sectors. The no-distress one will just trade a Drone Part for some fuel reliably, the Rock one will just result in a fight, while the Abandoned one will result in a Lanius joining your crew. (Which is admittedly nice) So events are actually pretty irrelevant to its utility, bizarrely; you'd think you'd have events where a ship was direly damaged and a Hull Repair Drone could patch up the ship, but no, even though multiple events do involve you helping a damaged ship, you just... never get the option to patch them up.
Shield Overcharger Drone
60: 3 (2)Drone circles your ship, periodically stopping to add a Supershield point of HP. This can stack up to 5 points, but the more points are currently present the longer adding additional points will take. (8/10/13/16/20 seconds of charge time at 0/1/2/3/4 layers present)
This is advanced edition content, and as is depressingly usual with advanced edition content it's really bad. A Zoltan Supershield is already underwhelming; getting a single point at a time intermittently, burning up a Drone Part for each fight you use it in? That's even worse.
For one thing, all the stuff with blocking boarding, mind control, and Hacking, which is some of the few qualities that are actually kind of useful on Supershields? Pretty much irrelevant; the AI will launch all those before your first Supershield layer goes up. You might get lucky on timing and trap a boarding party long enough to kill them, as Supershields block all crew teleportation, but that's about it. It's not like a Supershield going up will cut off ongoing mind control or prevent an already-attached Hacking Drone from doing its thing; it only interferes with initial activation of those.
For another, the physics of the game are against the Shield Overcharger. One of the most useful things you could theoretically do with the Shield Overcharger is catch Ion shots with it to prevent them from hitting your actual Shields... which has the problem that most Ion weapons have similar charge rates to eg Laser weaponry, and fire slow-moving projectiles outpaced by literally all other weapon shots. Thus, what will usually happen is that eg an Ion Blast fires a little before a Basic Laser, and yet the Baser Laser shot hits the Supershield and then the Ion Blast shot hits your regular Shield.
Similarly, in theory the intermittent Superhield bubbles could be used to catch missile shots... but, again, missiles travel slower than most other projectiles while their launchers tend to have comparable charge times to other Power-equivalent weapons. So you'll get a laser or beam wiping out your Supershield layer followed closely by the missile going right on through your regular Shield.
Oh, and trying to time a Supershield generation for just-in-time interception, while strictly possible, is deeply impractical; the Drone has to wait its full charge period to throw up a Supershield, so a just-in-time interception requires planning things out 8 seconds ahead of time, not activating the Drone in response to a missile being fired or the like. Doing this in the middle of combat, having to calculate all the modifiers to fire rates and potentially not knowing the AI's exact weapon list because of shared graphics hiding it? Even if you're actively keeping relevant stats open on your phone or whatever, that's still deeply impractical.
So what is this supposed to do? A Defense Drone Mark I protects against a lot of things a Shield Overcharger could be nice against, but will do so far more reliably and while needing less Power and costing a little less Scrap to purchase. The only thing the Shield Overcharger does that's reasonably unique and kind of reliable is that a Supershield will completely block a Pulsar's Ion effect, which normally hits both Shields and random non-Shields Systems... and luck is a significant factor there, since you need to have the Supershield generate shortly before the Pulsar does its thing and then not get knocked out by enemy fire.
If you happen to loot it while having a Drone Control, it can be worth considering using, particularly if you have a Drone Recovery Arm. Usually, though, you should just sell it as soon as you can.
On top of all that, this is narratively inconsistent. Zoltan Supershields supposedly require a huge burst of energy to be generated, this being the justification for generating them when you Jump. Why can a Drone generate Supershielding unlimitedly for a relatively modest Power cost? The game has no answer, not even a thin non-answer acknowledging the inconsistency.
The frustrating thing is there's absolutely multiple ways this could have been implemented that would have made it actually good. If the Drone had stored charges where you chose the timing of their release, you could time releasing a Supershield layer so it catches a missile, or a Pulsar burst, or whatever. If Zoltan Supershields were changed with advanced edition to be 'under' regular Shields, that would vastly improve the Shield Overcharger. If the Shield Overcharger just charged faster, it would still suffer from overlapping with a Defense Drone but wouldn't be so clearly a bad Defense Drone.
As the ultimate insult to injury, you'd think it would excel against the Rebel Flagship by virtue of getting to put up a full 5 layers if the Flagship is going to Jump toward you. (Such as because you're camping on the Federation Base) After all, you get to keep defensive Drones if you sit there and wait for the Flagship to come to you. But no, if you set up Supershield layers in anticipation of the Flagship... they'll be ripped away by its arrival with zero explanation.
Seriously, why is this so bad?
The Power cost in parentheses is, by the way, the Power cost for the Stealth Cruiser C's version of the Shield Overcharger Drone. It's otherwise identical to regular Shield Overchargers. (ie disappointing and confusing in its existence)
So what is this supposed to do? A Defense Drone Mark I protects against a lot of things a Shield Overcharger could be nice against, but will do so far more reliably and while needing less Power and costing a little less Scrap to purchase. The only thing the Shield Overcharger does that's reasonably unique and kind of reliable is that a Supershield will completely block a Pulsar's Ion effect, which normally hits both Shields and random non-Shields Systems... and luck is a significant factor there, since you need to have the Supershield generate shortly before the Pulsar does its thing and then not get knocked out by enemy fire.
If you happen to loot it while having a Drone Control, it can be worth considering using, particularly if you have a Drone Recovery Arm. Usually, though, you should just sell it as soon as you can.
On top of all that, this is narratively inconsistent. Zoltan Supershields supposedly require a huge burst of energy to be generated, this being the justification for generating them when you Jump. Why can a Drone generate Supershielding unlimitedly for a relatively modest Power cost? The game has no answer, not even a thin non-answer acknowledging the inconsistency.
The frustrating thing is there's absolutely multiple ways this could have been implemented that would have made it actually good. If the Drone had stored charges where you chose the timing of their release, you could time releasing a Supershield layer so it catches a missile, or a Pulsar burst, or whatever. If Zoltan Supershields were changed with advanced edition to be 'under' regular Shields, that would vastly improve the Shield Overcharger. If the Shield Overcharger just charged faster, it would still suffer from overlapping with a Defense Drone but wouldn't be so clearly a bad Defense Drone.
As the ultimate insult to injury, you'd think it would excel against the Rebel Flagship by virtue of getting to put up a full 5 layers if the Flagship is going to Jump toward you. (Such as because you're camping on the Federation Base) After all, you get to keep defensive Drones if you sit there and wait for the Flagship to come to you. But no, if you set up Supershield layers in anticipation of the Flagship... they'll be ripped away by its arrival with zero explanation.
Seriously, why is this so bad?
The Power cost in parentheses is, by the way, the Power cost for the Stealth Cruiser C's version of the Shield Overcharger Drone. It's otherwise identical to regular Shield Overchargers. (ie disappointing and confusing in its existence)
Annoyingly, the Shield Overcharger is notably less ineffectual in AI hands. It's still so bad I'm mystified by its existence, but the player coordinating fire and counting up shots and so on gives it far more potential to inconvenience the player. Its ability to stack Supershield layers is particularly bolstered in relevancy by fire-coordination; if the AI has a fast-charging weapon that has zero chance of doing real damage alongside something with a slower charge, they'll pop the Supershield immediately and its existence was worthless. If the player has the same setup, they may feel it's necessary to have that faster-charging weapon hold until it can be fired alongside the slower weapon, potentially resulting in two Supershield layers going up before they fire. As the game is tuned so AI offenses grow far faster than player offenses, the player is in fact much more likely to need such coordination to actually overcome enemy Shields, where those Supershield layers may prevent the player from having a chance of doing damage!
More egregiously obnoxious is the part where several player ships start a run as dedicated boarding ships; for such ships, a Shield Overcharger is a somewhat subtle trap, where you might not realize that sending in your crew is going to get end with them unable to teleport back and doomed to die. AI ships never use boarding as their sole strategy, and in fact add boarding 'for free' to their usual 'shoot the player to death' strategy; thus, this scenario can only screw over the player.
I really don't understand why the devs made so many boarding-only player ships while being so willing to throw in elements that make such play completely unviable...
Anti-Combat Drone
35
: 1
Drone circles your ship, firing Ion projectiles at enemy external offensive Drones, including Hacking Drones, Boarding Drones, and Ion Intruder Drones that are on the way. Each shot has a decent chance of outright destroying the hit Drone after a delay.
This is more advanced edition content...
... but it's actually pretty good!
Worthless if the enemy has no relevant Drone, of course, and notably it is, counter-intuitively, rarely useful against Engi ships; they never field any form of Drone Control-based offensive Drone! It's only because they can have Hacking that it can ever be useful against Engi ships.
But still. While Drone-using ships are uncommon, they're usually some of the most threatening enemy ships, and crucially the AI is mindlessly aggressive about deploying Drones and usually has a pretty limited stock of Drone Parts. It's entirely possible in even a relatively short fight to burn through their entire supply!
Notably, the Rebel Flagship will always have Hacking in its first phase and make heavy use of external offensive Drones in its second phase. If you have a Drone Control, an Anti-Combat Drone will be useful by the end of the game, guaranteed. As its Scrap cost is relatively low and its Power requirement is trivial, it's really easy to slip it in if you've got a Drone Control! Seriously, consider buying it if you see one on a Store in the mid-late game.
Anti-Combat Drone
35: 1Drone circles your ship, firing Ion projectiles at enemy external offensive Drones, including Hacking Drones, Boarding Drones, and Ion Intruder Drones that are on the way. Each shot has a decent chance of outright destroying the hit Drone after a delay.
This is more advanced edition content...
... but it's actually pretty good!
Worthless if the enemy has no relevant Drone, of course, and notably it is, counter-intuitively, rarely useful against Engi ships; they never field any form of Drone Control-based offensive Drone! It's only because they can have Hacking that it can ever be useful against Engi ships.
But still. While Drone-using ships are uncommon, they're usually some of the most threatening enemy ships, and crucially the AI is mindlessly aggressive about deploying Drones and usually has a pretty limited stock of Drone Parts. It's entirely possible in even a relatively short fight to burn through their entire supply!
Notably, the Rebel Flagship will always have Hacking in its first phase and make heavy use of external offensive Drones in its second phase. If you have a Drone Control, an Anti-Combat Drone will be useful by the end of the game, guaranteed. As its Scrap cost is relatively low and its Power requirement is trivial, it's really easy to slip it in if you've got a Drone Control! Seriously, consider buying it if you see one on a Store in the mid-late game.
In AI hands, it's very design-awkward. While Drones are very powerful as a category, most player ships don't start with a Drone Control and a given run may never get a good opportunity to install one, and the most significant utility Drones aren't susceptible to Anti-Combat Drones. You can have dozens of runs where Anti-Combat Drones are essentially irrelevant, only mattering by virtue of occasionally catching a shot...
... but they do make it notably risky to try to commit to the otherwise-interesting experiment of relying primarily on Drones for your offenses, and more egregiously they make it risky to build a strategy in which external offensive Drones are even moderately important. This is problematic in general, but gets particularly glaring an issue when looking at how many of the player ships that start with a Drone Control are set up to be helpless if their offensive external Drones can't be brought to bear.
In practice I feel the Anti-Combat Drone is a mistake to be in the design; if the game had always been designed so Drones were relegated to pure supporting tool (Imagine if the external offensive Drones all used Ion or bomb attack behavior, for example), the Anti-Combat Drone would still have been clunky, but not so deeply problematic an addition. As-is, the base design comports itself as if Drone reliance is similarly viable to relying on just Weapons, and then the Anti-Combat Drone comes along to blow a big hole in that theory.
Also clunky is that it's uncommon enough in AI hands it's not surprising for a run to beat the game without ever seeing one. I said it's 'dangerous' to rely too heavily on Drones; not 'unviable'. In practice you may get a half dozen runs through having fun with intense Drone usage, and then one run finally has Anti-Combat Drones show up and crashes and burns. It won't be a learning experience or anything; the game randomly deciding this run can't get away with Drone reliance is frustrating to run into, nothing more.
It's one of the more sympathetic issues with the advanced edition update, but it is an issue.
------------------------
Next time, we move on to internal Drones.
See you then.
Comments
Post a Comment