Vivid Drone

 is an economic unit  which is more efficient and more breach-vulnerable than standard Drones.

Strategy
Even counting that they cost 2 energy, s are much more efficient than standard Drones. This doesn't mean you should open with Vivids on your first turn, however: in the early game it is more important to buy multiple income per turn than to save a few gold. The exception is if you want to go for an extremely low-economy opening and get technology on turn 1 or 2 without wasting energy.

It is generally advisable to buy at any time when it fits on a medium economy, since its efficiency means the defending costs are less taxing, enabling more focus on getting Attackers.

Also be careful about reducing your base Drone count too much by building s if you want to make use of other units like Plexo Cell or Plasmafier (or even just Forcefields). Even if you don't plan on using other Drone-consuming units, getting rid of your last real Drones can deprive you of emergency defense capabilities and is likely a bad idea if there are powerful burst units such as Tia Thurnax or The Wincer.

Openings
In games where you know you want a very large economy, opening with a Vivid Drone + 2 Engineers on your first turn is more efficient than taking a typical 4 Engineer build using standard Drones. In the following builds, 1 represents Vivid Drone.

For player 1:


 * 1) 1EE
 * 11
 * 1) DDDD
 * 2) DDDD
 * 3) DDDDC, or DDDDA, etc

For player 2:


 * 1) 1EE
 * 2) 1DD
 * 3) DDDD
 * 4) DDDD, 1DDA, 1DDC, etc

There's larger value for Player 1 with Doomed Drone (0). This in particular with medium absorb, efficient attack and no extra soak.


 * 1) 1EE
 * 2) 01D
 * 3) 00DD
 * 4) 001 ( left)

Synergy with Defense
Similar to Drone, it can be played for preemptive soak along with Drone-consuming units, although it's a limited niche due to Drone expenditure.

Consider this: Taking a 1 turn delay as a 70% cost adjustment, this becomes very efficient.
 * 1) Vivid Drone. (Pay 2 and Energy.)
 * 2) Plexo Cell. (Pay 2-1 and 2 total now.)

Cost can be then considered as about 3 preemptively, for 4 soak.

Change log

 * December 30th, 2016
 * Cost changed to + consume 2 Drones.
 * Gold production changed to per turn.
 * Supply increased from 4 to 10.
 * December 9th, 2015
 * Cost increased from + sacrifice 3 Drones to  + sacrifice 4 Drones.
 * Gold production increased from to  per turn.
 * January 8th, 2015
 * Cost increased from 4 to 4 + sacrifice 3 Drones.
 * Gold production increased from 2 to 5.
 * Gold production changed from click-action to start-action.
 * Is no longer a blocker.