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This post provides some insight on drone warfare and answers some fundamental questions on whether they should be used or not, as well as give some info on my personal experience with them.
Drone swarms are incredibly effective when you take their mass into account. They also have the advantages of rendering high alpha damage long reload weapons useless and drawing turret fire from your main ship.
For empirical evidence I tested out a ~2.5k total mass drone rack (more on that latter) against two different 6k mass ships (separately) and won both times with minor losses. Both ships were equipped with turrets, which quickly got shredded.
However, due to the lack of proper AI drone control mechanics (I believe that it's currently being worked on), it's impossible to recall or otherwise control the drones after they launched, and redocking them all takes time.
A solution to this problem is to use drone racks: I developed a disposable drone rack (to be docked on the main ship) that can be easily swapped out after a drone launch. This rack is also equipped with a system that ejects the drones in quick succession by using "beam-amc-push" weapons and logic by individually undocking and pushing the drones out. I admit that this last part was mostly to have a cool effect but also to keep the drones from causing mass collisions once they undock. For those wondering why I included that system into the rack instead of the main ship it's because there's currently no way of controlling the logic of a docked entity with ship board logic. One would have to undock them all and then eject them, which would cause more collisions and not look nearly as cool (and add some complication to the person actually launching them).
Here's an example of such a drone rack without the ejection system in place:
Now, the downside of this system is that it adds the additional cost of the actual rack (although it's easy to salvage it, so it's really no that much of a downside) and that one doesn't recuperate/salvage the drones (because that would defeat the entire purpose of having a rack in the first place). The cost of a single rack of 22 drones featured above is currently around 15 million. Noot so bad considering that both ships killed during testing must have been around 60 million each. There's also the fact that there has to be a different left and right rack in order to properly launch them (this issue could be solved with a slightly more complicated ship mounted ejection system, but would require more then one button to be pressed by the player). Edit: I forgot to mention that a player needs to manually activate the activator located on the rack. However, @NeonSturm made an excellent suggestion that may solve this problem (third reply in this post).
An other general downside of using drones, which will also be present once the AI control system is implemented is that drone swarms generally suffer small/big losses during combat. So there's a certain additional monetary cost required to maintain a fleet of drones when compared to a larger "single piece" ship.
TL;DR If you have the moneys (or the motivation to salvage/recuperate) all the drones use drones (in a rack or not) as it will prove much more combat effective since swarms have a high effectiveness/combined_mass ratio. If you don't have the moneys (or time/motivation) stick to normal ships.
EDIT: here's a link for the drone rack: http://starmadedock.net/content/drone-rack.1376/
Drone swarms are incredibly effective when you take their mass into account. They also have the advantages of rendering high alpha damage long reload weapons useless and drawing turret fire from your main ship.
For empirical evidence I tested out a ~2.5k total mass drone rack (more on that latter) against two different 6k mass ships (separately) and won both times with minor losses. Both ships were equipped with turrets, which quickly got shredded.
However, due to the lack of proper AI drone control mechanics (I believe that it's currently being worked on), it's impossible to recall or otherwise control the drones after they launched, and redocking them all takes time.
A solution to this problem is to use drone racks: I developed a disposable drone rack (to be docked on the main ship) that can be easily swapped out after a drone launch. This rack is also equipped with a system that ejects the drones in quick succession by using "beam-amc-push" weapons and logic by individually undocking and pushing the drones out. I admit that this last part was mostly to have a cool effect but also to keep the drones from causing mass collisions once they undock. For those wondering why I included that system into the rack instead of the main ship it's because there's currently no way of controlling the logic of a docked entity with ship board logic. One would have to undock them all and then eject them, which would cause more collisions and not look nearly as cool (and add some complication to the person actually launching them).
Here's an example of such a drone rack without the ejection system in place:
Here it is docked onto a ship equipped with an ejection system:
Now, the downside of this system is that it adds the additional cost of the actual rack (although it's easy to salvage it, so it's really no that much of a downside) and that one doesn't recuperate/salvage the drones (because that would defeat the entire purpose of having a rack in the first place). The cost of a single rack of 22 drones featured above is currently around 15 million. Noot so bad considering that both ships killed during testing must have been around 60 million each. There's also the fact that there has to be a different left and right rack in order to properly launch them (this issue could be solved with a slightly more complicated ship mounted ejection system, but would require more then one button to be pressed by the player). Edit: I forgot to mention that a player needs to manually activate the activator located on the rack. However, @NeonSturm made an excellent suggestion that may solve this problem (third reply in this post).
An other general downside of using drones, which will also be present once the AI control system is implemented is that drone swarms generally suffer small/big losses during combat. So there's a certain additional monetary cost required to maintain a fleet of drones when compared to a larger "single piece" ship.
TL;DR If you have the moneys (or the motivation to salvage/recuperate) all the drones use drones (in a rack or not) as it will prove much more combat effective since swarms have a high effectiveness/combined_mass ratio. If you don't have the moneys (or time/motivation) stick to normal ships.
Assault drones: The main attack force of carriers, these little monsters are a very real menace when in numbers.
- Favored weapon: missiles
- Strengths: Destroying enemy defences and ships
- Weakness: Rapid fire turrets or drones (mostly drones.
- Favored weapon: rapid fire cannons.
- Strengths: Killing enemy assault drones, the rapid fire cannons ensure that most missiles get shot down before reaching the destination while damaging the enemy at the same time. Taking out small enemy turrets
- Weakness: Enemy turrets, defence drones.
- Favored weapons: Long range (usually cannons) with punch-through.
- Strengths: Killing enemy enemy drones (especially support drones).
- Weakness: Assault drones if they get too close (since they can't effectively shoot the missiles down).
- Favored weapon: diverse
- Strengths: Generaly mindf***ing the enemy
- Weakness: Case by case.
I originally made that drone rack for my work in progress titan (and have yet to install it) but also plan on using it on other vessels. I can release it if people are interested.
EDIT: here's a link for the drone rack: http://starmadedock.net/content/drone-rack.1376/
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.[DOUBLEPOST=1411255284,1411254650][/DOUBLEPOST]I shall link the thread: 
