Overall Rating 3 Stars:
I'd like to say this is a great start at drone building. The forms and shapes are very pleasing and eye catching. So if it was a design rating alone I'd give this a 5/5. But the function is what lowers the rating here...
For the following reasons;
* Turrets on drones are a no-no. The cores, bobby's and factions are better spent building even more drones. Since drones are a >>spread out<< cloud or swarm style ship, clumping together all your cores and bobby's has a negative impact. Suffice it to say there's no real point having ams defenses on drones. They're meant to be throw away units, having anti-missile dedicated turrets does >not< improve survivability, it only causes the drone to take up space that could be better used for more drones.
* Size, this is in major part to the turrets, they both eat up alot of space. 1/2 block of pure air (each) as well as the extra blocks needed to make sure they won't ram into stuff. Needless to say the turrets will also be active at all times, meaning they might damage the rack they're built on. = (
*Size part 2, for the length and breadth of the ship you should be packing in 3x the shielding at least, and about as much of a boost in firepower.
*Armor, advanced armor is a waste of blocks on this thing, swap it out for basic hull and you'll notice it's much easier to build them. I do love the multiple colors here as well, but to be honest you could drop the white blocks for grey/black and it'd look just as good.
* Remember drones come in numbers, whatever you design a drone around make sure you can field about 40 of them in some fashion or another.
BE CHEAP ABOUT IT!
Can't stress that enough.
40 seems to be the magical number whereby they can demolish just about anything. That said 40 of these is comparable to making 120+ of any drone I've published or seen so far. It adds up, and not to be mean or anything but take a look at some other designs around and see if you can make your drones a bit cheaper and stronger. That'll go a long way in making them, super effective! =)
Need any help? Just ask me or post on the Drone R&D thread.
