Beam Drone 1 just total crap?

[Levgre]

I was using Engi C, i found a combat drone and needed to sell one to buy other stuff from the shop. I figured, I have hacking and enough lasers, may as well give the beam drone a shot with the higher dodges on hard.

Was a mistake.. the rate of fire on the beam drone is significantly lower than the combat drone. You have coordinate your weapon shots pretty exact with the drone, or enemy shields will recharge before it fires. You get less hits in than the combat drone during hacks.

Those disadvantages beyond not working 'with' your weapons to take down shields, like a combat drone does, makes it seem to be quite crappy, a choice of last resort. It's really only good when the enemy shields are already permanently down, meaning you likely will have no issue winning anyways.

[Snow Job]

You can set up the Beam Drone to fire through gaps in a recharging shield; wait for it to move into a firing position, power it down, then power it back up when there's an opening.

Is the rate of fire really much lower than with a Combat Drone? I mostly skip Combat Drones altogether because the Beam Drones never miss and inflict a little more damage per shot, but I could be way off base.

[5thHorseman]

You can set up the Beam Drone to fire through gaps in a recharging shield; wait for it to move into a firing position, power it down, then power it back up when there's an opening.

That doesn't work anymore with AE. When you depower a drone and power it back up, it picks a new place and goes to it no matter what it was doing before you powered it down.

[shadowcrust]

If you play the Torus or Noether or another ship dependent on ions, the Beam Drone is very useful and arguably better than the Combat Drone as it never misses. Keeping down the shields is just half of the victory, and if you play ships with three slots of weapons and use two of these for ion weapons, any additional beams are good. Also nice to have against Zoltan and super shields.

[Jerjare]

Here's my strategy for each:

Combat drone: If I have Heavy/hull Lasers, beams, or am simply severely limited on damaging "shots", Combat drone is better. Each combat drone will consistently chew through 1 shield bubble. I'd rather a heavy laser inflict 2 hull damage then 1 shield bubble.

Beam drone: If I have ion weapons, bombs, missiles, or weaker multishot weapons that can keep shields down but can't reliably damage/hit hull ill take beam drones. Since they auto hit theyre more reliable vs unshielded auto scouts. They also rip through zoltan shields very fast.

Of course, my favorite is to have both at once, even better with drone recovery arm! Engi A has great potential for this obviously.

Neither II version seems worth it. Wish they were literally double the effectiveness- Combat drone II should fire 2 lasers at a time, beam drone II deal 2 damage per room hit. Course it would be painful to be on the receiving end...

[project_mercy]

As mentioned, beam drones go well with Ion weapons. One, it keeps the shields down. Two, the pair of them really decimates zoltan ships. It's not ideal, but it can be a fun run.

Ion guns and fire drones is also a hoot.

[Levgre]

You can set up the Beam Drone to fire through gaps in a recharging shield; wait for it to move into a firing position, power it down, then power it back up when there's an opening.

That doesn't work anymore with AE. When you depower a drone and power it back up, it picks a new place and goes to it no matter what it was doing before you powered it down.

I tried it out, and you can at least put it in a spot a bit before when it would fire, to guarantee it gets one shot in. If you power it down when it's 'too' close to firing position, then it will travel to far and won't get in another shot.

This is at least better than delaying weapons for the beam drone. Still for all the trouble seems to not be worth at all. Combat drone can put one towards bringing down the enemy shield, then get a shot off while the shield is down.

[Diet Water]

You can set up the Beam Drone to fire through gaps in a recharging shield; wait for it to move into a firing position, power it down, then power it back up when there's an opening.

That doesn't work anymore with AE. When you depower a drone and power it back up, it picks a new place and goes to it no matter what it was doing before you powered it down.

I tried it out, and you can at least put it in a spot a bit before when it would fire, to guarantee it gets one shot in. If you power it down when it's 'too' close to firing position, then it will travel to far and won't get in another shot.

This is at least better than delaying weapons for the beam drone. Still for all the trouble seems to not be worth at all. Combat drone can put one towards bringing down the enemy shield, then get a shot off while the shield is down.

From what I can tell, the threshold is if you power the drone down before the thruster that slows it into firing position goes off, it will stay in the same spot and fire, but if that thruster fires, the drone will move as if it got that shot off.

[Kieve]

Been playing Engi C recently myself and haven't had any issues with Beam 1. All this powering-down for timing stuff isn't even necessary if you just make sure to time it right when you unleash the drone in the first place - wait until the dual laser is about 80% charged, then let the little bugger loose. If they're sporting missiles I tend to aim for weapons first, or shields if they're not.
I've taken some knocks here and there, but I've no complaints about my little Beamer. Just wish the galaxy would throw me a bone and offer some better weapons to pad out the arsenal.

[itg]

I was using Engi C, i found a combat drone and needed to sell one to buy other stuff from the shop. I figured, I have hacking and enough lasers, may as well give the beam drone a shot with the higher dodges on hard.

Was a mistake.. the rate of fire on the beam drone is significantly lower than the combat drone. You have coordinate your weapon shots pretty exact with the drone, or enemy shields will recharge before it fires. You get less hits in than the combat drone during hacks.

Those disadvantages beyond not working 'with' your weapons to take down shields, like a combat drone does, makes it seem to be quite crappy, a choice of last resort. It's really only good when the enemy shields are already permanently down, meaning you likely will have no issue winning anyways.

I'm pretty sure Engi C only has that beam drone in order to take down Zoltan shields. Otherwise, t's rarely worth using alongside the starting weapons, in my opinion. Beam drones are great with ion weapons, though. The fact that they don't miss and they can sometimes damage two rooms more than compensates for a possibly slower firing rate.