So I can totally trace the throught-process that lead to Antipersonnel Defense Drone. "New feature is Boarding Pods, gotta have a defense against them if people cheese it and build only Boarding Pods." Good initial instinct. But here's the thing... % damage reduction for a single specific module is a terrible solution to this problem. Just... terrible. It's a 100 Industry module that only has any valuable whatsoever if your opponent is committing fully towards a single playstyle, and is outclassed in defending against that playstyle by O2G Delivery Gear, a module with half the cost, two tiers down on the tech tree, that doubles your effective "Health" against Boarding Pods by increasing the Manpower capacity of your ship, meaning more Manpower for the pods to chew through, and that also, in addition to just doing the Drone's job better, throws in some extra Health as a bonus. How convenient.

I cannot see any reason to ever put Drones on a ship. Ever. It's so expensive and does so little, I just... can't imagine a place for it. It needs to do so much more to be relevant, especially in comparison to the higher-end Manpower modules that make boarding a ludicrously expensive proposition. I propose the following two Modules be added at the Deep Spare Personnel Systems and Hyperfield Generators techs, respectively:

Reinforced Crew Quarters (100 Industry)

+ 50 Manpower Capacity

- 15% Crew damage taken

+ 100 Health

Bulwark Crew Quarters (150 Industry)

+ 150 Manpower Capacity

- 25% Crew damage taken

+ 150 Health

This Crew damage reduction would include normal Manpower damage from combat, making these techs strong counters to not just Boarding Pods, but Titanium Shrapnel, the Shrapnel Rounds tactics card, and other things, while being less effective than normal Manpower modules for general purpose Invasion.

The idea behind that module is it saves you manpower rather than use more of it to defend yourself. But it's true it's an expansive module that is too specialized and completely useless if your opponents don't use boarding pods.

Foraven wrote:

The idea behind that module is it saves you manpower rather than use more of it to defend yourself. But it's true it's an expansive module that is too specialized and completely useless if your opponents don't use boarding pods.

The problem is the purpose of saving manpower is to prevent the enemy from taking the ship/prevent the enemy from preventing you from invading their system, which, again, the O2G Gear is just... objectively better at, even ignoring cost and tech tier. A 300 Manpower mid-sized ship getting an extra 200 Manpower is an increase of 66%, compared to the 10% effective Manpower increase the Drone grants.