Drained Discussion with Orangelex44, and Winslaya

[TreborTheTall]

Greetings!

The video version of this guide/discussion can be found here:

I had one guest join me for the recording of the video: Orangelex44.

Below I have the notes that I took before and after our discussion (please feel free to add anything that we may have missed):


Generic Tips:

1. There are 3 ways to get them:

a) Tactical operation, “Condemned to Drained” which is relatively easy to use
b) the heritor’s doomsday spawns in drained on friendly colonies
c) there is a strategic operation, "Ancestral Wrath", that also spawns in drained operation

1. There are not a lot of units in game are t1 infantry, which a unit needs to be in order to be a valid target for “Condemned to Drained” .
2. Drained are better than other “free” spawn units (like echos of despair, and pustules)
3. Strong alpha strike (low defensive stats in exchange for high damage output+ the ability for siphoners to reset drained with essence charges that further boost the drained damage output)
4. At prime rank, drained can mind control units, which you keep after the combat (works on t3 with the “Empowered Drained” mod)
5. One could argue, when compared mantra of control, cerebral control collars, and the subjugator’s mind control, that the drained mind control is the best in the game.
6. Drained units keep mod loadouts of units that get “condemned to drained”.
7. Easy to farm them off of colony militia, as they all include t1 infantry units.
8. Drained gain extra experience per essence charge they have at the end of combat.
9. Drained get extra damage per rank of experience, which pairs nicely with the esteq conduit.
10. There is a Heritor doctrine that gives drained resurgence.
11. Entropic decay reduces entropy resistance, and makes it easier for drained to mind control units (techoclaust crusade could help with that, good if the mech is not mindless).
12. Drained heal themselves when they attack.
13. When compared to the forgotten’s desolate, desolate are weak to air units (without a ranged attack mod like consuming gaze, or esteq conduit) and only heal when they kill off a unit. Desolate however get a repeating melee attack

Commander Backgrounds:

• Star Union Scholar, Merchant Scion, or Covert
• Any option works fine
• Heritor Assault Loadout
• Just don't pick Party Animal

Playable Races/Faction Notes:

All most all of your tools come from heritor, so race is not super important to this strategy. Need a strong enough early game to get to the fancy mechanics.

• Amazon - scan lower resistance making “Condemned to drained” or “Mind Dominate” more likely to apply to units.
• Assembly -Assembly let you instantly mod new drained units as they are acquired. Can tech rush.
• Syndicate - condemned to drained + cerebral control collars = lots of free units. Flanker can make drained even deadlier. You can indenture Drained with a mod. Easier to get NPC units, which is awesome when you can ally with the forgotten, who also focus on entropy damage.
• Vanguard - Vanguard lets you park drained at a city and passively get them to max rank where they become more dangerous. Nanite injector are good on them.
• Dvar - focus on single action attacks
• Kirko -
• Shakarn - high dps units that when paired with drained, allow you to have a superior alpha strike. Easier to get NPC units, which is awesome when you can ally with the forgotten, who also focus on entropy damage.

My Early Game Build:

• Mod-less is fine in the early game (easy to lose, therefore not worth the invest of mods into them) If your going for unit spam, it should be a low cosemite build
• Consider modding once they get 2 or 3 ranks of exp. (mostly because they can mind control and prime rank)

My Late Game Build:

• Esteq Conduit
• Empowered Drained
• Esteq Protector Incantation (maybe trade out for a mod that boost raw damage output, like Sequential Kill systems)