Federation Commander

Playing with my kids the Andromedan ships are overwhelmed by drones easily . Advice?

Shoot them down, outmaneuver them, run away. Same as anybody else.

The problem here is that anyone using serious drones is also probably using disruptors, and those are actually tougher to survive, in my experience. If you're up against, say, Kzinti, and you're looking at an absolutely nonsurvivable drone wave, you can maybe disdev if all else fails. But disruptors can really reach right out, and those tend to be the death of a thousand cuts for Andros.

But the best way to survive drone may be to fake them out. You end with drones on a side shield and buy acceleration so you can side slip away. It's not easy to set up, but the advantage of this for Andros is that it lets you keep closing to where your weapons can really bite. You don't want to stay out at range where he can hurt you and you can't hurt him.

Disruptors have that advantage because they lack the shock attack of empires that use multi-turn weapons. Photons and Disruptors produce the same damage over time, but the photons do it every other turn and can penetrate the PA panel banks while the smaller impact of disruptors cannot. The two weapons produce equal results. This was extensively tested and isn't a problem. Without disruptor penetration, the disruptor empires would never ever kill an Andro ship of any size.

Steve Cole wrote:Disruptors have that advantage because they lack the shock attack of empires that use multi-turn weapons. Photons and Disruptors produce the same damage over time, but the photons do it every other turn and can penetrate the PA panel banks while the smaller impact of disruptors cannot. The two weapons produce equal results. This was extensively tested and isn't a problem. Without disruptor penetration, the disruptor empires would never ever kill an Andro ship of any size.

All true, and it bears saying that it isn't just Andros, drones are always one part of a larger toolbox. For anyone. And even if they don't get one in on you, it forces you to maneuver, buy acceleration, power weapons for defense etc while you'd really rather be doing something else. Andros need to learn how to maneuver well because they just don't have the point defense weapons that other races do, and maneuver may be their best option against drones. Disdev is effective, but also aborts whatever attack you had planned, and you need to do damage to the enemy, not just avoid damage.

Disdev is effective, but also aborts whatever attack you had planned, and you need to do damage to the enemy, not just avoid damage.

Unless you understand your enemy (especially drone users) and factored in their use and set up the use of your DD as part of the attack....