Defense drone mk 2 worth it?

[rocker913]

Doing a run with engi ship and picked it up. Is it worth using? It takes 4 bars of power and I heard from some people its not that good.

[Muninn]

I used it on a Kestrel in my first successful play-through, so I would say it can be good.

[Evegir]

Two anti-ship mk 1s instead would be more useful. More so, if you have the drone recovery arm. It's best to bombard the enemy before getting shot a lot.

[Kuro]

The mk 1 drones are better in my opinion. Your worst worries are missles, they will go through your shields and cause fires and breaches. The problem with mk 2 drones is that they also try to stop rather harmless beams, so they might miss a missle due to their defense weapon being on cooldown. With the mk 1 drone this never happens, it's a specialized version that only deals with the most dangerous projectiles.

[DarkTwinge]

Defense Drone 2 is extremely weak and should only be used if desperate. (It's also useful for no-shields challenge runs, but obviously that's well out of the realm of normal play.)

It costs 4 power, requiring a relevant Drone System upgrade and more free power to operate - neither of which is free, and the power might be limited by both cost and other systems needing those resources.

And on top of that -- it often isn't any better than Defense 1 and can be worse. In many casses you don't care about the added benefit of shooting down lasers, and it can sometimes be a detriment of the drone decides to focus on a laser that was going to bounce off your shields and ignoring an incoming missile.

In my Balance Mod I drop the power requirement from 4 to 3 and they might still be a little weak.

[pickled_heretic]

I know most people hate them, but I love them. They are good for dealing with ion weapons and will take a shot out of a burst laser volley. Instead of treating them like a hard counter to missiles you have to treat them like a soft counter to everything.

[Chris]

I would say in the end no, not really. It's not bad, but not really that good either

[Greatdain]

I have expiremented with having two defense 1 drones vs one defense 2 drone. In my opinion, having two defense 1 drones active is more effective in nearly every scenario. Just last night I completed the game using the Engi cruiser, type B, using that tactic.

The mkII seems to get easily confused/overwhelmed during intense combat scenarios. Since it can shoot down enemy lasers I noticed it will miss an incoming missle 1/3 times in preference for lasers. It also failed miserably inside of asteroid fields.

Expirement for yourself, though; it's fun to find neat setups and customize your tactics.

Have fun

[Drain]

Unless you're running a no shield run; it's trash. The problem is that it tries to shoot down EVERYTHING, meaning that it'll shoot at lasers while missiles hit your ship. You don't want your defense drone districted by lasers that will be blocked by your shield anyway. You want your drone focused entirely on missiles that will skip the shield. The thing also costs 4 power. It's simply not worth it.

[Scampfarmer]

In all my experience of using it only the very occasional missile has managed to slip through. I would say it's worth it for the extra defense it gives against regular attacks. Especially something like Burst Laser III which it can effectively reduce to a Burst Laser II.