Using Aliens to take Resources

Dirty Trick Debunked

A few days ago (sorry couldn't find the original post in all the clutter) there was a suggestion that you could move some war-ships and a constructor near a starbase owned by one alien, give the war-ships to another alien with which the first alien was at war, and the second alien would then promptly use the gifted ships to destroy the starbase, letting you move in with your constructor to take the resource.

Sorry, doesn't (always) work. I tried it twice against the Drengin, by giving the warring Torians a couple of SWEET destroyers (large hull ships). Oddly enough, the Torian not only didn't smear the starbase for me, but he was also too stupid (and this is at 'Painful" AI) to group the destroyers together and so lost them a couple of turns later by using them one-at-a-time to attack a group of Drengin fighters. I was so mad I gave the Drengin 10,000 credits and my blessing to eat some tasty green skin.

Really, this isn't a rant, but fair warning... the dirty trick isn't so great after all. Happy conquering!

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I'm more concerned about the fact that they didn't group the ships into a fleet. Sounds like the AI needs to be tweaked some more.

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Kazriko

Join Date 07/2004

+10

Part of it could be range. Maybe the ships + the alien's range was not sufficient to let it even operate where it was, so it just left it sit there or moved it to somewhere that was within its range?

I started to make hyper-high range fighters for this purpose...

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It wasn't range. The location where I turned the ships over to the torian was only about 10 movement units (a parsec?) from Toria, the green loser's homeworld.

I should note that, at the time, the Drengin were assaulting one of the Torian's planets, and it's possible that the Torian placed a higher priority on defending his planet than whacking the base. Still doesn't explain the failure to group the ships though. I checked his research level on logistics and it was equal to mine, so the ships could have been grouped.

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I wonder if this has been addressed in the new patch just released on the 6th.

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What has not been addressed was the enemy sending one fighter at a time against my starbase it had no hope of defeating. I think they lost about 10 heavy fighters this way before I took the planet.

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Yeah ... I was the original poster that posted that. I saw it happen once (unintentionally) and was giddy with my new dirty trick. I have tried it about a dozen times after that and either the ships a) Just sit there, or

move off somewhere else.

This is kind of a drag, but on the other hand, unless the AI is clever enough to do the same to you, it WOULD be kind of an exploit.

Dano

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