Drones

Non-AE drones added by the mod

Captain 's Edition imported some of its expanded weaponry into drone systems, greatly diversifying the pool of drones to choose from. While many of their base functions remain the same (combat, defense, personnel), their effectiveness in combat varies greatly. Just as with the expanded weaponry, one of CE's challenges is getting used to the wider variety of drones.

Drones Comparison

For a more detailed chart of the stats of all drones available in Captain's Edition, please follow this link.

NOTE: This chart is still WIP

List of drones (from top left of first image):

Light missile, fire missile, light anti-crew, light anti-crew mk II, light scatter, hull, hull mk II, heavy, heavy mk II, heavy scatter, scatter, missile defense turret, swarm missile defense turret, light defense mk II, light defense, scatter defense, heavy defense, heavy defense mk II, defense mk III, ion defense, heavy ion, ion, ion mk II, plasma, heavy beam, focus beam, hull beam, missile, heavy missile, missile mk II, swarm missile, minelayer mk II, minelayer.

List of AE drones (from top left of second image):

Swarm missile anti-drone drone, heavy laser anti-drone drone, effector anti-drone drone, ion anti-drone drone, light missile, stealth beam mk II, stealth beam.

Combat Drones

Combat Drones have received a major expansion, and can now use all weapon types (including unique CE weapons) instead of being limited to beams, lasers, and fire beams.

Something something missile drones, mine drones, anti-personnel drones...boop.

Defense Drones

Captain's Edition also expands the arsenal of defensive drones, introducing missile defense drones and other drones that use CE's new weapon types. Reload speed and power cost of defense drones varies more widely in CE than in vanilla, with reload speed being a major factor determining how effective a drone is. Anti-drones also have been expanded with drones that can outright destroy enemy drones or disable multiple hostile drones at once. The movement speed of a defense drone only matters if the player ship is too big and the defense drone projectile cannot reach the enemy projectile in time. A fast projectile speed overshadows this by a long shot.

Projectile Defense Drones

These drones consist of different types of defense drones which shoot at incoming projectiles. The two main classes of projectile defense drones are:

1. Those which can block missiles, mines, and asteroids (level 1 projectile defense drones)
2. Those which can block any incoming projectiles (level 2 projectile defense drones)

There is also a special drone that can only shoot down mines, described in the last type of projectile defense drones (Ion Defense Drone).

Missile Defense Turrets

Missile Defense Turrets are outdated defense drones that take a very long time to recharge and are extremely cheap. The Missile Defense Turret can shoot down missiles, mines, and asteroids but not tech-missiles or any other weaponry.

The only practical use for these is against missiles that take a very long time to recharge. The Mark I is quite a good deal worse than the Mark II, at a recharge of 24 seconds, being extremely slow against almost all missiles. The Mark II on the other hand, is alright against long recharge weapons, at a recharge of 14 seconds, but remember two things:

1. A good deal of the time there will be missile launchers with recharge faster than 14 seconds, making these defense drones not so viable.
2. If there is say a Flak along with a missile, then the missile defense turret will be thrown off, but this may happen for some of the later drones.

Missile Defense Turret Mark I

"Outdated turret drone that shoots down incoming missiles and mines with defense missiles. Reloads in 24 seconds."

• 1 power and a 24 second recharge; flies the slowest.
• Costs 10 scrap, and has level 1 rarity.

Missile Defense Turret Mark II

"Basic turret drone that destroys incoming missiles, mines, and asteroids with a counter-missile barrage. Reloads in 14 seconds."

• 1 power and a 14 second recharge; flies the slowest.
• Costs 20 scrap, and has level 1 rarity.

Light Defense Drones

Light Defense Drones can shoot down incoming missiles, mines and asteroids, but not tech-missiles or any other weaponry. Light Defense Drones have the same capability as the regular Defense Drone Mark I, and their responsive is generally decent.

Light Defense Drone Mark I

The Light Defense Drone Mark I has better response time than the Heavy Defense Drone Mark I (however, this is a partly unfair comparison as the Heavy Defense Drone can shoot down any incoming projectiles).

"Slow-reloading defense drone that shoots down incoming missiles, mines and asteroids with high-velocity light lasers. Reloads in 6 seconds."

• 1 power and a 6 second recharge; flies quite fast.
• Costs 30 scrap, and has level 1 rarity.

Light Defense Drone Mark II

The Light Defense Drone Mark II has better response time than the standard Defense Drone Mark I, but not as good as the Burst Scatter Defense Drone.

• 2 power and a 0.6 second recharge; flies pretty fast.
• Costs 60 scrap, and has level 3 rarity.

Burst Scatter Defense Drone

This defense drone is in a category all on its own due to its unique design and characteristics. The Burst Scatter Defense Drone can shoot down incoming missiles, mines and asteroids, but not tech-missiles or any other weaponry, just like the Missile Defense Turrets, the Light Defense Drones, and the standard Defense Drone Mark I. This drone is pretty much the successor to the Light Defense Drone Mark I and represents the best drone among all the level 1 defense drones.

"Quick firing drone that shoots down incoming missiles, mines, and asteroids with medium-velocity scatter salvos. Reloads in 0.3 seconds."

• 2 power and 0.3 second recharge; flies fast, faster projectile speed than the Light Defense Drone.
• Costs 70 scrap, and has level 2 rarity.

Standard Defense Drones

These drones contain the vanilla drones: the Defense Drone Mark I and Mark II, but also include a new drone, the Defense Drone Mark III.

Defense Drone Mark I

"Shoots down incoming missiles, mines, and asteroids. Reloads in 1 second."

• 2 power and a 1 second recharge; flies at a decent speed; can shoot down missiles, mines and asteroids but cannot shoot down tech-missiles or other weaponry.
• Costs 50 scrap, and has level 1 rarity.

Defense Drone Mark II

"Fires faster than mark I and can shoot down any incoming projectiles. Reloads in 0.75 seconds."

• 3 power and a 0.75 second recharge; flies fast; can shoot down any incoming projectiles.
• Costs 75 scrap, and has level 3 rarity.

Defense Drone Mark III

"Advanced drone that shoots down all incoming projectiles. Reloads in only 0.5 seconds."

• 4 power and a 0.5 second recharge; flies a tiny bit faster than Mark I; can shoot down any incoming projectiles.
• Costs 90 scrap, and has level 5 rarity.

Heavy Defense Drones

Heavy Defense Drones reload relatively slowly, but can shoot down any incoming projectiles. Heavy Defense Drones use the same projectile as Heavy Lasers.

Heavy Defense Drone Mark I

"Slow-reloading defense drone that can shoot down all incoming projectiles. Reloads in 9 seconds."

• 1 power and a 9 second recharge; flies at a half-decent speed.
• Costs 50 scrap, and has level 2 rarity.

Heavy Defense Drone Mark II

"Slow defense drone that reliably shoots down all incoming projectiles. Reloads in 4 seconds."

• 2 power and a 4 second recharge; flies slowly.
• Costs 65 scrap, and has level 3 rarity.

Ion Defense Drone

The Ion Defense Drone is in a category all on its own because it can only shoot down mines as its ion blasts are too slow to intercept any other projectiles. Very cheap. Might be useful against weapons with Stalker prefixes in Endless Loot, as those weapons have slower projectiles than usual.

• 1 power and a 0.75 second recharge; flies at a half-decent speed.
• Costs 15 scrap, and has level 3 rarity.

Drone-to-Drone Combat

In Captain's Edition, each external drone has a hidden evade value similar to ships evade chance. This affects how easily a drone can be disabled or destroyed by anti-drones or stray shots. Fast moving drones generally have a better evade chance.

Personnel Drones

Much like in vanilla FTL, Personnel drones are drones that take the same space as crew when active. They can vary between offensive boarding drones, defensive anti-personnel drones, and system repair drones. Due to modding limitations, it is impossible to add new types of drones; however, Captain's Edition adds "defective" and "improved" drones with modified power costs.

(Leaking System Repair vs the normal System Repair; Veteran AP drone vs the normal AP drone)

...boop.