Best drone combination

[tjarne]

Which offensive drone combination is moste effective? I beat the boss using two Anti-Ship MK II and having a hull repair unpowered. But I'm wondering whetever using 2 Anti-Ship MK I and one MK II would be more effective? Do MK II deal more damage or just attack faster? The drawback would be lacking the repair droid...

[Kaerius]

Mk 2 just attack faster. I've yet to time it but I doubt it's even twice as fast, meaning two regular attack 1s would do a better job.

So the best offensive combination is probably 1 mk 2 + 2 mk 1.

Beam drones have the drawback of failing completely against shields(at least attack drones damage the shield) and the benefit of never ever being dodged (which attack drones can be).

[Alblaka]

Close enough.
AS-Drone I has a speed-value of 15, AS-Drone II has 28
A drone's weapon has no real cd, it's exclusively determined by how long it takes the drone to move to it's next firing position. However, since the drone remains static for ~0.7 seconds during firing speed does not have a 100% influence on fire rate

Overall, the formula is somewhat along the lines of

Code: Select all

time per shot = 0.X s + (randomWayLength / speed) s

We can clearly say Drone MK2 is better then MK1, but it's as well definitely below being twice as good. Probably something along 1.6x-ish.

If you want max Firepower, 2 MK1 + 1 MK2 are best. This as well applies because 3 drones can down 3 shields regulary, whereas 2 will barely accomplish that.
For anything but Engi Cruisers, however, 2 MK2 is the better pick, simply because they can't use 3 drones at once.

[Aufklarer]

Thats all true if your only utilising AS drones. Bear in mind that beam drones potentially do greater damage once the shields are down as they hit 2 rooms generally. So if you can drop enemy shields beam drones are very viable.

[DarkenDragon]

it all depends on your load out. there is no best combinations of just drones, you gotta have other weapons to support it.

no matter what, you need some kind of weapon that you can physically aim to take out key components to let your drones do their work

each drone has it's strengths and weaknesses and you just gotta utilize them

I honestly love the defense drone and defense drone 2, being able to have a drone to help with missiles consistently is a huge boost. for the instances that the enemy ship doesnt have missiles, I always make sure theres enough upgrades into engines for this case, so im either powering up engine when enemies dont have missiles, or powering up my defense drone when they do. never have power just sitting in the reactor doing nothing.

damage wise, beam drone does the most damage when shields can be reliably taken down. they dont miss and can "critical" hit by hitting more than 1 room.

if you cant reliabily take down the shields or you want the drones to do that work for you then anti ship drones are a better choice.

the only difference I see between mk1 and mk2 is the rate of fire, with 2 mk1 drones you can have a burst down the shields really quickly giving you an opening, while a mk2 drone will not since by the time it shoots off it's second shot, it'll give you smaller openings to break through the shields

the other bonus of having mk1 drones is that you'll have more power to use for other types of drones to have more customization in your play, giving you better situation choices.

hull repair drone I didnt really care much for since repairing never was much of an issue for me and drone parts become very scarce for me to be wasting them.

system repair drone is only useful if your crew size is less than 4, which is rarely ever the case.

Anti-personnel drone is a bit situational, gotta make sure you drain your ship of O2 in the rooms it's fighting in and you'll need those blast door leveled up to keep them in that low O2 room

Boarding drones im not much of a fan of since just 1 drone just doesnt do enough damage or have the amount of health needed to take on a whole crew, gotta pick the right time to send it, and even then its random where it goes and you have no control of it either.

the only drones I'll use are mk1 & 2 anti ship and defense drones and the beam drone.

but always remember, have a reliable way to take out shields, weither it be bombs, missiles, or ion weapon (mass laser could work but I feel thats a waste most of the time), and some quick charge weapon that you can use to snipe specific systems after shields are down, be it laser or beam (or another weapon of the above) the rest can be pure destruction weapons

[tjarne]

After playing some more I have found that I prefer MK I. My prefered tactic is to time my weapons to fire right after the droid has. Which will lower the enemys shield with 1. Sometimes the droid will have enough time to fire a second time before the shields are up but not always, unless it's MK II in which case it fire twice. I however don't think its worth the double energy cost. Also if their shield generator is down it's usually more power effective to shoot with normal weapons.

I have not found any real use for beam drones, as they are worthless until the shields are down and usually if I'm able to take down the shields that quickly it's usually over already. Also it's a lot harder to time the beam drones fire with my own.

And defense drones, well all I cans say is this SHUT UP AND TAKE MY SCRAP ALREADY!!. Those things are awesome, and MK I is usually enough for me.

The other drones have their uses I guess. Anti personell is good against the second boss stage. Especially if half your crew is zoltan(which happened to me in the federation cruiser). I think the boarding drone should be 2 power instead but otherwise is fine. The sys repair is useful if you are undermanned and I guess they can be used to delay borders but I haven't tried it.

The hull repair drones are nice to have, but I usually keep them in my inventory and never uses them midfight.

[hborrgg]

I think mk I defense drone is actally better then the mk II. During the final boss when I tried using a mk II it got destracted by all the laser spam and kept letting missiles and boarding drones through.

[DarkenDragon]

I dont believe defense drones of any type stop boarding drones >.>

[hborrgg]

Not once they're inside your ship, but on the way there they count as slow moving missiles and are extremely easy to take out.

If your defense drone isn't otherwise occupied that is.

[Aegis]

...hull repair drone I didnt really care much for since repairing never was much of an issue for me and drone parts become very scarce for me to be wasting them...

While you may not care for them, there is a very powerful reason to keep them around assuming you have an equal chance of getting 3/4/5 points of hull back per use. Economically, when taken into consideration with how often you find drone parts and how many encounters will give you a chance to purchase drone parts at a discount, the hull repair drone is less expensive than purchasing repairs at a store.

Also this about repair drones: http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2207

I'll admit it can be pretty situational for everything to line up but, hull repiar and a MKII Defense drone makes you very hard to kill.