All drones and fighters have T1 resists.
Shields thus have 0% EM, 60% expl, 40% kin and 20% therm.
Armor is 60% EM, 10% expl, 25% kin and 45% therm.
I did a quick spreadsheet where I compared effective drone HP against all damage types.
In the comparison I used T2 heavy drones with Drone durability skill at 5.
To my great surprise the most effective damage type was actually explosive damage!
Here are the numbers for average effective HP against each type:
- Explosive: 1696 HP
- Kinetic: 1720 HP
- Thermal: 1951 HP
- EM: 1986 HP
This was for shield and armor combined, if you go against shields only EM is ofc by far more effective.
I guess the benefit of having EM dmg is that you try to blow through enemy drones shields as fast as possible to try and make permanent armor damage that cannot be repaired by scoop redeploy tactics.
However, in a large fight where people dont really micro manage their drones due to lag, explosive or kinetic damage will get them killed faster!
I might also add that on average the T2 heavy drones have 60% more armor then shields.
