Orion Drone Control

Hod K'el · Post by **Hod K'el** » Thu Feb 18, 2010 7:45 am

If I take drone racks as my option mounts, and end up with a total of 6 drone racks, do I then become a drone ship and have double drone control since I would obviously have an Oakdisc?

storeylf · Post by **storeylf** » Thu Feb 18, 2010 8:41 am

So obvious I haven't got a clue what you are on about. Where would I find this Oakdisc thing in the rule book?

djdood · Post by **djdood** » Thu Feb 18, 2010 9:21 am

Nothing obvious about it.

SFB-isms like OAKDISK and DERFACS, and UIMs and all that other crunchy business have been "rolled into" the ships. Ships with double-drone control are noted on their cards. The card either says it has it, or the ship doesn't (and double-drone control is pretty rare in FedCom).

My understanding of drone control capacity is that it is pretty well "hard wired" into a ship. It's as much computer processing power, sensor bandwidth, and network-bus capacity as anything else. Those aren't added with bolting something into the option mount compartment. To get those, you'd need to do a complete refit of the ship, at which point it's not adding drone racks to your option-mounts, it's creating a "drone variant" of the Orion ship.

mjwest · Post by **mjwest** » Thu Feb 18, 2010 4:13 pm

There is no OAKDISC in Federation Commander.

Orion ships do not get double drone control unless it is specifically printed on their ships. There is no stated rule that says an all-drone Orion gets double drone control. There certainly is no such implied rule.

So, no, regardless of whether a drone ship has one drone rack or six drone racks (or however many), an Orion ship may only control up to six drones.

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Thu Feb 18, 2010 9:27 pm

Moved to Tactics thread.

mjwest · Post by **mjwest** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 5:02 am

More to the point, you want to make sure that when you launch the full spread of drones, the enemy can't deal with them on the turn of launch. He has to deal with them on the FOLLOWing turn. That way you can do a second spread immediately as the first wave is killed. It is almost guaranteed that he will not be able to shoot down both waves.

Of course, if your enemy CAN shoot down both waves of drones in a single turn, you chose the wrong weapon to bring to the fight!

terryoc · Post by **terryoc** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 5:04 am

Another option for the Orion (or WYN Auxiliary battlecruiser) is load up with six drone racks (eight for the WYN, four inbuilt and four in options) and anchor the target with a tractor beam... the Orion can double engines to make sure the target cannot escape, and the WYN just has a heap of power.

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 2:49 pm

Moved to Tactics thread.

Kang · Post by **Kang** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 2:55 pm

mjwest wrote:More to the point, you want to make sure that when you launch the full spread of drones, the enemy can't deal with them on the turn of launch. He has to deal with them on the FOLLOWing turn. That way you can do a second spread immediately as the first wave is killed. It is almost guaranteed that he will not be able to shoot down both waves.

Of course, if your enemy CAN shoot down both waves of drones in a single turn, you chose the wrong weapon to bring to the fight!

And of course the engine doubling means you can catch up and anchor him big time. But this is getting more off-thread; it is the rules forum after all!

mjwest · Post by **mjwest** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 3:00 pm

Yes, it is off-topic. Since I think we covered both ideas, it looks good.

However, Mike's post made the whole thing worthwhile.