r/alphacentauri • u/Zardnaar • 14d ago
How Do You Play Drones. ?
Its been a while since ive played them
Normally I'm a builder. Recently played pirates and gaians
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u/Bryaxis 13d ago
Democracy/Planned/Wealth for fast population growth and 60% mineral costs. Each Industry rating bonus is stronger than the one before it, so stack 'em up! I build lots of colony pods, and keep ample room between bases so they can take full advantage of all the facilities they can rapidly build.
As in most 4X games, production is king. Being able to quickly build colony pods, formers, military units, and laboratories makes them versatile and pretty good at things for which they don't have direct bonuses.
Just be mindful of your safe mineral limit as you can't switch to Green to mitigate eco-damage.
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u/gowfage 12d ago
Depends on your map, but drones are probably one of the strongest factions out there.
Key early game is getting bases out, getting the starting triple (HGP, WP, ME), and just start making a beeline for industrial automation. Probe the shit out of neighbours if you have any, and make a super city harvesting the seas with hundreds of crawlers each getting 6 energy back.
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u/BlakeMW 13d ago edited 13d ago
The way I like to play Drones is very early Free Market, their drones reduction makes this quite easy even on Thinker/Transcend difficulties, furthermore they can rushbuy rec commons cheaply thanks to the industry bonus.
Thanks to early FM your research penalty doesn't really matter, especially combined with the absurd ease with which the Drones can build infrastructure like Network Nodes and Research Hospitals, you aren't going to out-research Zakharov or Aki, but you can still achieve a very respectable research pace easily rivalling any faction which isn't specialized for research.
Later in the game, I tend to run Demo/FM/Knowledge (with brief forays into Planned for Pop-booming, and maybe Wealth for rounds of infrastructure builds, but Knowledge is usually better).
The Drones can often end up "running out of stuff to build" because they build so fast relative to their research pace, you have to watch out for support costs in the early game: when playing Drones, I tend to build more expensive units, like often I just go ahead and make synthmetal defenders even very early rather than scout patrols, it's cheap enough for the Drones to do, and provides additional security against nonsense. Also you can spam out armored infantry probe teams, as they don't require support, you can basically make an armored probe wall to keep out enemy units while paying no support for it.
As you can't run Green you should aggressively raise your clean mineral limit, in Thinker mod that just means just building Tree Farms etc for the +1 clean mineral limit. If not using Thinker mod, force a pop before building Tree Farms otherwise they don't raise the clean mineral limit.
If you have to deal with natives, the solution for the Drones is artillery and self-destruct, both of which ignore psi combat. SAM Artillery of at least missile level (preferably fusion laser) will really shred locusts of chiron. Self-destruct of a unit like 10-1-1*2 will completely erase all adjacent natives including locusts. You can also use missiles against native units of other factions though it's overkill vs wild natives.
If you run Free Market permanently, which I usually do (besides forays into Planned), you need to deal with pacifism drones, one option is just building a few Punishment Spheres to house your airforce, ideally in captured enemy bases. As it's SMACX you can also build Brood Pits for +2 police and the AV for +1 police, if you combine both you no longer have pacifism drones, though even just the AV is pretty helpful by halving pacifism drones, makes it more manageable with psych spending. You can also use pure specialists bases supplied by crawlers to house your airforce.