How much damage do those drones really tank though and do they really make up for not having a shield module in that bay? A shadow destroyer already has health on par with a cursed golem. Also it seems like the AI has ion cannons in about 2/3rds of its systems which make it completely impossible to get a number of drones up as they bypass the shadow FF.
I run drone set ups on Zenith hulls. I usually run 3 bays and a shield on the destroyer. You can have up to 10 drones out per bay. You get a new drone from each bay every couple seconds. Even the Ion Eye can't kill all the drones so you can pretty much get a salvo or two off from each one. In a crowd your light modules will do most of the work. Drones will act as fodder (still getting in some damage). Plus drones have the best attack range out of all the champions modules.
Ion cannons are 4 shots every 4 seconds. Drones spawn 1 per 2 seconds per bay, IIRC. 3 bays = 3 per 2 seconds, or 6 per 4 seconds. Of which, 4 die instantly during those 4 seconds. It's very limiting.
Slicers are too slow in the nebula. They also cause the Champion to do the 'Can't stand still disco' by continually pushing it out of the way, frequently moving it right out from under a shield.
Drones do not inherit the Champion's targeting info. This means that you need to micro, ever 2 seconds, to re-target the drones. That's a lot of micro!
Drones die to anything. Base 11,000 health. Multishot ships shut them down, hard. In the nebula, for example, the Intimidator pops them at 16 per volley (every 4 seconds). 4 dead drones per second? That means it takes 9 bays to be able to get a single drone to attack an Intimidator. That's a lot of dead drones.
Drones have the best range, but every time you extend the range by 2 seconds travel time, your damage drops by 10%. For slicers, this can be a real problem. For bomber drones, 2 seconds travel is about 4,000 distance? Half their range.
Damage is comperable to the other Heavy Modules - if, and only if, all 10 drones are alive and attacking. That means they need to spawn within range of their targets, and never need to chase. Slicers? Again, problems.
I like the drones, and use them a fair amount (usually with the Neinzul hull line. Nothing like stealthed carriers!). But I think they could use some tweaking.
Significantly higher health would solve the 'dies in a breeze' problem, which means more drones living to attack, which helps fix damage degredation issue.
Extending the self-attrition time (and correspondingly lowering the firing rate or spawn rate) would help fix the range issues (especially on the slicer drones).
