Drones

[Zarix]

Drones trigger mines. This is very bad for game balance because drones are units. As there is no partial unit damage you can sweep every possible mine field with a single drone that has more than 300 damage resistance. A medium drone with some armor is enough. Time to scrap your mine sweepers?

[dumbluck]

The new patch is supposed to fix this: mine damage from multiple warheads accumulates.

[Q]

Originally posted by Zarix:
Drones trigger mines.

You can change this in the settings file.

[Zarix]

Originally posted by dumbluck:
The new patch is supposed to fix this: mine damage from multiple warheads accumulates.

Do you know if those warheads have to be in the same mine? If all warheads of a mine field accumulate the problem is solved. But if warheads accumulate inside a single mine the small mines can still be swept by armor drones.

[AeoN2]

Something strange happened to me with drones and the computer AI.

In my new game I'm in early game (no heavy ships or tech yet), but since I sent out several scouts and colony ships I got 4-5 ruin planets, two of which gave me drone tech (level 2 total).

Then I met one of the TDM modpack AI's (the mechanic one with rock/none) and it declared war on me (not surprisingly when I read the description of it)

Anyway it immediately attacked and killed a worthless colony which I had got ruins from and was heading toward my next similar colony (with a single frigate).

I decided to give drones a try and emergency build a nice ship drone to defend the planet.

Next turn instead of attacking the frigate withdrew, like it knew I had a drone in the cargo of the colony. Strange I thought, but maybe a coincident.

Then a couple of turns later it entered the system again, this time with TWO frigates (coincidentily enough to bypass my drone), but I built another drone in time, and AGAIN it retreated out of the system.

My question is, can the AI detect what kind of weapons you have with no long range scanner tech? Even scan my cargo for weaponry?

--
AeoN2
--
Cole's Law
Thinly sliced cabbage

[oleg]

I don't think so. More likely your second colony was just outside the range that Rage resupply minister was thinking is prudent. Sometimes you can easily detect the invisible resupply radius of AI: Mighty AI fleet turns back one sector away from your frigate but once you move forward it get smashed.

[Krakenup]

Originally posted by AeoN2:
My question is, can the AI detect what kind of weapons you have with no long range scanner tech? Even scan my cargo for weaponry?

Yes, it can. I had previously reported that an AI snaked through my defended planets to attack the only one that had no weapons platforms. In a recent game, the AI moved an attack fleet into one of my systems - headed straight for an undefended planet. I saved the game, and emergency-built a wp on that planet. The AI turned and attacked another undefended planet. I loaded the saved game and built a wp on that planet also. It then attacked a third planet. I found that I could control where the AI attacked by which planet I left undefended. When I built wp's on all undefended planets, it attacked the planet with an older, obsolete wp. So, yes, it does know what defenses you have in cargo.