06-08-2020, 04:42 PM
If you're designing ships with only missile and drone weaponry, you might consider saving some PI on their movement. Normally, impulse drives are used in combat for both attack and defense, and for P-weapons this is quite important. However, missiles and drones, once fired, maneuver independently and no longer use the impulse drives of the launching vessel. Therefore, such ships use their impulse drives for defense only. It is sometimes practical to save money by reducing the impulse drives to "-1" if you're not as worried about their defensive factor, since extra engines will not help offensively. Of course if the ship gets destroyed then you have to build a whole new one to replace it, but cutting back the number of engines can sometimes save so much that you can afford to field two or three times as many ships for the same cost.