How to counter drones?

[me6472]

So im stuck on the vesta overkill mission, and probably the main thing that stops me from beating this level is drones. Both mine and theirs.

Heres the thing-if they launch 20 drones at me, thats enough firepower to wipe out my entire fleet. And they do. Every. Single. Time. And they never miss, no matter how I orient my ships. I've tried broadside, ive tried scatter, ive even tried moving them myself. Nothing I do can stop their drones tearing me apart with pinpoint accuracy.

My drones, on the other hand usually never even make it close enough to open fire. I've tried interepts with veloceties exceeding 1.5km/s and they still get burnt up by their lasers. If the drones do make it close enough to open fire, they do so behind the target. The enemy ships are moving, so I would expect the drones to lead the enemy ships, but they don't. Disabling the range limitation on their guns doesnt work either.

I've seen numerous threads discussing how lasers are supposed to be able to tear apart an entire drone fleet, but that never seems to be the case for me. 3-4 cutters can't seem to disable 20 drones, even with the range limitation disabled and the targeting set to aim for the drone's guns.

I've also tried nukes. And they do work.....but they only take out 2 drones, no matter the number of nukes or drones. Thats because the missiles all aim for 2-3 drones, despite there being around 20 drones in a fleet. Playing around with target distribution doesnt help either.

I get the impression that i'm doing someithing seriously wrong here.

[BigBombR]

In Vesta Overkill, you want to use laser drones to counter gun drones. Use a combination of gundrones and missiles to soften up the enemy fleet before you engage with your own capital ships.

[AtomHeartDragon]

Lasers work well if you target guns and disable distributed targetting. Accurate kinetics in large numbers will do the job as well.
Since all the drones in VO are armed with chemguns, if you have good acceleration (around 1g or more) and short turnabout you can easily dodge their fire as well.
You can counterintercept with missiles or beam drones, but that's tedious AF.

Check my workshop for stock modules stuff that should work fine and be straightforward to beat VO with.

[|TAW| mars people]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQpc65QqIWE&t=11s

[AtomHeartDragon]

Why bother with stock ships instead of custom ones except as extra challenge (where "extra" implies you can already beat VO otherwise)?

Even with just stock modules (as VO unlocks module editor, so using custom/modded modules might be considered cheating) you can do much better than rather conservative and very underpowered stock designs and beat VO with relative ease.

[|TAW| mars people]

Originally posted by AtomHeartDragon:

Why bother with stock ships instead of custom ones except as extra challenge (where "extra" implies you can already beat VO otherwise)?

Even with just stock modules (as VO unlocks module editor, so using custom/modded modules might be considered cheating) you can do much better than rather conservative and very underpowered stock designs and beat VO with relative ease.

I am using default ships to fight!!!

[AtomHeartDragon]

Originally posted by |TAW| mars people:

Originally posted by AtomHeartDragon:

Why bother with stock ships instead of custom ones except as extra challenge (where "extra" implies you can already beat VO otherwise)?

Even with just stock modules (as VO unlocks module editor, so using custom/modded modules might be considered cheating) you can do much better than rather conservative and very underpowered stock designs and beat VO with relative ease.

I am using default ships to fight!!!

For me they are underpowered, sluggish, have inefficient armour and some painful design flaws. I like rolling my own.

[|TAW| mars people]

Originally posted by AtomHeartDragon:

Originally posted by |TAW| mars people:

I am using default ships to fight!!!

For me they are underpowered, sluggish, have inefficient armour and some painful design flaws. I like rolling my own.

ya, that is really truth!!!!!

[Prophet_01]

Nukes work well against drones. Their radiators and engine bells are tiny and don't survive heat spikes.

You can also use a series of small-ish maneuvers when they are still far out to make them correct their trajectories over and over again until they're dry.