Advent drone hosts still massing homing drones

from Sins Forums

As you should know from Diplomacy, the advent carriers had a bad habit of filling their hangar bays with homing mine squads, especially in late game engagements where I suspect the surviving carriers would replace functional fighter or bomber wings with mines. Drone hosts with nothing but mines are a serious liability and greatly reduce the effectiveness of the Advent AI, where they take up fleet points and erroneously add to the calculated fleet strength of the advent fleet such that they won't retreat even when it's obvious they're losing badly. As the AI is currently getting an overhaul, I feel this is something that could be looked at, especially when they seem to continue to do the same thing in the beta. 

12,084 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Yeah, I see a lot of those things.....

they come in to attack a planet or fleet and then just sit there >.>

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Interesting, the issue is because the AI doesn't see those carriers as carriers. It sees them as mine layers. When a carrier is built it assigns it to either be a carrier and built strikecraft, or a minelayer and builds mines. It can't change its mind mid game like a human player can. Indeed I've seen Vasari minelayers be fairly suicidal as well, except with those at least the AI hasn't purchased the mines yet. ;P

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

I think they just need to disable the minelaying code for Advent AI.  Advent carriers are too expensive and important for the AI to waste them as minelayers the entire game.  It severely cripples the Advent AIs ability to attack starbases.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting lbgsloan, reply 3
I think they just need to disable the minelaying code for Advent AI. Advent carriers are too expensive and important for the AI to waste them as minelayers the entire game. It severely cripples the Advent AIs ability to attack starbases.
End of lbgsloan's quote

Indeed, I did this in a mod and its a noticeable improvement. While the advent probably have the best mines the few situations where its a good idea to use them aren't worth wasting entire carriers for it.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Hey, at least they finally plant those mines in neutral wells. Was quite suprised to see the asteroid belts close to their worlds littered with mines. They even put minetraps at wormhole entrances, almost lost my fleet there...

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

They could also just assign one of their three available squad points to a Homing Mine squadron while still using the other two available squad points for normal squadrons. That could help solve the problem I think. Using combat mine layers wouldn't be a bad Idea... Right?

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

I loved the old HW2 minelayer. Assign them a pocket in space to plant mines, if left alone the minelayer would even tend to the minefied and refill it once it was "in use".

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

I... dont like the mine layer squadron. I think its a fairly dumb system for laying mines... I'd rather have just an ability that laid mines from the drone hosts. cool idea, fairly dumb implementation imo

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Have to agree.  The mine layers just suck up the game and make the Advent so easy to take out. 

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting SithLordAJ, reply 8
I... dont like the mine layer squadron. I think its a fairly dumb system for laying mines... I'd rather have just an ability that laid mines from the drone hosts. cool idea, fairly dumb implementation imo
End of SithLordAJ's quote

That's exactly what I did in my mod. Unfortunately the AI won't build any fighters if you tell it its a minelayer, and won't deploy mines with it if you tell it its a carrier, but for human players it works great. Zombie was trying to chase a pack of my drone hosts with some subverts one game and I just threw up a wall of homing mines. Try to use distortion field through that, heretics! ;)

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

This is still a problem after the live release.  AI Advent fleets are relatively toothless without the fighters/bombers replaced by mines that don't even get placed most of the time.