Interesting. I had all but given up on launching drones "in line" like you have done. I tip my hat to you Loadout.
I have a couple of questions for the Drone R&D group.
1. Due to the HP system, is there anything to keep in mind with drones? For example many have noted that having advanced armor in the front of ships is a good idea, does this apply?
2. Has anyone noticed any changes that needed to be made to drones based on the new mass of blocks? Example: Using less thrusters to gain the same thrust:mass ratio as earlier updates.
Just thought I would ask and save myself some time if someone already had the answer.
As far as I've seen and tested so far...
1. No real difference, having advanced armor slows down some of the weaker shots, but alot of the time they'll be side swiped by missiles and the like. Which makes frontal only armor kind of moot.
1b. As for HP, I've upped my armor to standard to help that, but honestly not much has changed. Core shots will still nuke ships regardless of remaining hp. I've seen it a dozen plus times with larger ships vs drones. When the drones win, there is almost always large amounts of armor and structure hp remaining.
2. For the most part armor weighs the drone down only a little bit, it balances for the most part quite well. Hypothetically if you have a high armor drone you would need extra thrusters to stay at the same ratio, however given how much lighter everything is, and how 80-90% of any drone is going to be systems, it's unlikely that when updating older drones they would need more (or less) thrust.
TLDR;
In all likelihood you won't have to change the thrust on your drones.
Hp and front heavy armor are a bit of a moot point, your drones will still be cored or nuked as usual. Hp is kind of a joke like that.
Just my longwinded two cents. ^_^