When the first set of ships was being put together for the first edition of
Star Fleet Battles back in the late 70s, SVC had a number of source materials to draw from; the
Star Fleet Technical Manual (where some of the
original ship designs in the SFU hail from), various other books and blueprints, and the on-screen footage itself.
One of the source materials drawn from was a set of blueprints for the Klingon D7. The ship shown there had a series of rear-firing phasers, as well as drone missiles (neither of which were shown on-screen). SVC had some of the ship's phasers used for drone defence; which begged the question, who were the ones launching these drones against the Klingons?
This is where the original Kzinti use of drones came from. The Klingons and Kzintis were poised as mutually antagonistic, so they became the ones who most strongly emphasised the use of drones in combat. Traditionally, the Klingons would have more disruptors than drone racks on their ships, and then rely on their superior maneuver to gain the advantage; the Kzintis would have large numbers of drones and few disruptors (or none at all, on some of their earlier ships), thus giving their less agile ships the ability to strike in any direction.
The real issue in
SFB (one which, thankfully, has been side-stepped in
FC) came wih the onset of carriers, alongside a wide array of new and improved drone types. Instead of only relying on the drones your ships could launch and control, now you had waves of fighters rippling off their own drone launches, all of which would add to the clutter on the tabletop. And then, when gunboats (PFs) were added, things got even more drone-heavy...
(The most striking change came for the Federation in
SFB. In the Middle Years, Star Fleet had almost no drone-armed ships, and relied on their phasers and photons in battle. In the General War, the Feds had added drone racks as refits to most of their ships, and thrown in a bunch of drone-heavy variant ships,
and added various carriers filled with drone-armed fighters of various sizes to their ranks. )
This is one reason why
Federation Commander is a much faster playing game than
Star Fleet Battles. In
FC, there are no "true" carriers; the only fighters in print are Hydran Stingers, used on a fleet with a casual carrier doctrine. Since Stingers have no seeking weapons (their firepower is direct-fire only) the level of clutter a
Hydran fleet brings to the table in
FC is nowhere near as unwieldy as a Kzinti or Klingon carrier group cn be over in
SFB.
If, as I might guess, the conversion here is using
FC, rather than
SFB, as the main point of comparison, drones should be important to keep an eye on, but not the daunting logistical challenge they can be in General War-era
SFB.