AI ignores extractors on neutral areas?

from Sins Forums
It seems like the AI is completely ignoring my captured extractors on neutral areas, and just let's me use them for the rest of the game. Also at least in my latest game, it did not care to capture the extractors next to it starting planet in three hours. This really makes the games too easy, at least on some maps. I don't think the correct behaviour would require any arcane AI coding skills, and would have thought a search had found many topics on this issue, but found none. I might have missed the topics still, of course.
9,725 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
What level AI are you playing against? I've found that Hard AI will capture neutral resource nodes close by, but all in all they don't use colony ships all that much from what I've seen.

And the Vasari scout ships are always on auto patrol, so they're perpetually out of antimatter.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Agreed.

This one has been mentioned a few times, but generally been buried in the middle of other threads, so it would be hard to find.

It's doubly imba because you can have three of 'em in an asteroid field and they don't suffer an allegiance penalty. In a recent random10hardFFA, I had some refineries up next to some otherwise empty gravwellsand was pulling in enormous amounts of metal, completely dominating the black market.

-- Retro
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I forgot to mention that I am playing mostly against hard AI. And yes, it is very easy to overpower the AI just by capturing all the neutral extractors and dominating the black market. Of course, overpowering the AI is very easy for any skilled player, but I think that making the AI care a bit more about neutral zone extractors would require much more effort from the player.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah, this has been mentioned quite a few times. The AI does capture them once in a while, but it's not very diligent about it. And usually it will leave yours alone unless you manage to snag some right inside his territory.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
The only time I have seen this happen is against a Normal AI in Close Encounters. While they did not push enough to make it frustrating the AI would send in a colony ship once in a while to cap my extractors.