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The drones were disposable but effective combat vehicles. Some might be fitted with nukes for surface strikes. The drone itself can also be used as a kinetic energy weapon if it has a long enough run to get enough velocity built up.

You don't need nukes for surface strikes. Kinetic weapons from orbit, or even far outside of an orbital could do just about any damage you could hope for without irradiating the ground (assuming you eventually wanted to occupy the low ground)

A good point, and what this shows is that space combat's nature will also be strongly shaped by the available tech. You only need nukes if you lack the weapons tech to quickly reach the high velocities needed for kinetic energy weapons while also lacking the power generation and heat disspation for energy weapons (lasers).

Tech is less of an issue for planetary bombardment because you can use the target planet's gravity well against it.

In a lower tech paradigm where weapons tech doesn't allow you to fire projectiles at very high velocity, and power generation and/or heat dissipation makes lasers difficult, nukes can be viable as long as they can reliably delivered.

But in a paradigm where power generation, heat dissipation, and weapons tech do allow those things, nukes are kind of worthless. Lasers give you better accuracy and alleviate the need to carry ammunition, and kinetic energy weapons give you nuclear level firepower while keeping ammunition costs very low.

It's all dependent on the technology, as warfare always has been.