Drone Launcher

The drone launcher is literally the only artillery the Substrate have.  The Destructor is *sort of* arty, but it doesn't have the same impact as the drone launcher.

Air is really good against drone launchers - dreads too.

Use Artemis + PAM to take out launchers. Pam to scout and artemis to take out it with range. Drone MRV's only have something like 1800 combined health, so they are not the most tanky of defenses. 

If you were really over it you would stop creating new accounts.

Drone launchers mostly slaughter frigates, they're like low damage cluster bombs, spreading out to kill lots of targets at the same time, but only doing enough damage to actually kill your tier 1 frigates. They have very little impact on dreadnoughts to the point of being completely inconsequential, and individual turrets are hardly sufficient to kill cruisers unless you sit there with no radar or vision getting pounded by one out of view.  They're really only horrifyingly destructive when you're chewing on a battle group at the same time and thus unable to simply wipe them out with a couple volleys of artillery.

They're also little different from the sheer destruction PHC artillery does from a high position against the equally shorter ranged Substrate units.  While they may be more in line with the dreadnought than cruiser artillery, they also cost massively more in radioactives than other defensive structures do.

I had my first encounter with a player who quickly built up drone launchers at choke points. I was, unhappily, surprised by how utterly effective they are at wiping out a huge army of frigates.

I did find air to be effective against them although he was able to defend against those with other units. I will try using artemis in the future to see how those do (although I'm not sure what a PAM is - is it the radar ability?).

May I ask, does the Apollo defend against them? The Apollo is said to be "anti-drone".

I'm sure a dreadnought is effective but they are a later game unit while the drone launcher can be pumped out right at the beginning.

Drone launcher and artemis are pretty overpowered. I think Destroyer needs to able to attack units in a same way artemis does and make them both less effective to discourage one unit type spamming. Drone MRV needs to be nerfed quite a bit too. Either make it cost more metal and take longer to build or have it's damage and AoE reduced.

The PAM (or whatever it is called) is the small scout unit that is recruited from the sky factory (again forget the real name lol). Essentially it is a tool to search the enemy positions without losing a vast amount of units to drone launchers. Early on when drone launchers are built the enemy tends to have limited, if none AA. With this you can zero in on the location of said launchers and eventually eliminate them with ranged units. Health is pretty low, so only a few barrages and it should be toast. You'll just need enough meat so the launcher focuses on less vital units compared to your t2 units. 

muffin I;ve just watched you yesterday on stream getting destroyed by a drone launcher.

basically you lost 3 min to kill one drone tower and you had 4000 to 1000 score and map control advantage. A little bit later I have watched your army getting slaughtered by another drone tower long enough to be face rushed by maulers. that was basically a lost game. So drone tower is not ok. by far

The drone launcher is a great way to make up for the fact that substrate have no artillery.  :)

We've made a modification to the Drone Launcher for 1.0:

Its AOE has been decreased from 250 meters to 100 meters but it now has armor piercing.

The drone launcher has a minimum attack distance, this means a small group of T2 units which get into position can take it down pretty easily. The drone launcher is very strong against T1, but takes a long time to take down a T2 unit, long enough for them to hover right up to it.

With AOE reduced to 100, and current minimum attack distance, this will leave individual drone launchers exposed to incursions.

Will it have 99 AP rating?

Was it that match I still won via turinium generator count, or that snow map where some of my units / buildings didn't want to do anything? If it was the first one yes my groups were slaughtered due to my lack of focusing on where the drone towers were. I would destroy one, but didn't see the second or third nearby and suffered a grizzly fate. Even though my groups were destroyed and eventually overrun by T2 substrate, I still grasped victory by the fingernails thanks to reaching the turinium limit in the end. 

yeah it was the game when you won by turinium. you had maulers sitting on your cc and it was pretty much over, your main production sites where shut down. Unfotunately you needed at least 4 artemis to focus and he was powerbuilding dronelaunchers. they are insanely op and still in mp ppl use them to leapfrog