Minor races use ships badly

Umm the minor races are terrible at everything

If only they were reasonably competent...

In the Galciv backstory, the Drengin set up the militaristic Xendar as a puppet regime and used them to attack the Terrans, who they thought were too weak to fight back (not quite the case, since the Xendar are all but exterminated now) They used the puppet regime to avoid politicial consequences of the attack.

I would love to be able to do that in some form. Minor races should be useful as proxies and allies if you choose to take advantage of them instead of simply rolling them over.

Seriously.  

I wonder why they haven't been fixed. I mean they suck *ss at everything. They just hold nice class 15 planets until someone researches planetary invasion. Then the invader just slaps a particle beam on the side to clear out those crap ships.

It's practically a blatant oversight now. EVERYONE know that they suck, I'm sure the devs know too. SO why don't they fix it? I could call them lazy, but I know the contrary is true because they are always updating and patching.

Alot of minors go "stagnant" do to the fact that they all have a coresponding major race that acctually controls thier ship range, therefore if that major isnt present, or gets killed off, the Minor basically has zero range.

search for some of my earlier posts on the subject, did a bunch of testing etc.

if you are not playing metaverse, you can somewhat allieviate the various issues by increasing the minor's stats in racecfg, but even with significant increases in stats, the minors still are pretty much just tradeing partners and free planets.

I think that minor races should have a similar level of inteligence (maybe one level down) as the major races have with maybe a lower desire to colonise other worlds and a greater desire to defend themselves, if they were to look to produce fleet technologies and logistics maybe they could add a extra dimension to the game.

I have a feeling its a function of the difficulty level, the higher level you go the more active they seem to be, and the more defended their planet. They are still weak thats for sure, but I only see them stacking non combat ships in orbit at (say) Painful Level and below - above that they seem to be more active, even seen them colonising other planets on many occasions.

I also have a sneaking suspiscion they are there as a source of Tech (always strip them of techs by buying just before you take them out - great source of techs and cash from selling yours with no danger, as you are taking them out the same move), and if you take a long while getting at them, at the lower levels they then to seem to start stacking non combat ships. Almost a default mode waiting to get zapped, a game mechanic basicly.

On current game the Drengin AI declared war on one in the middle of a major war with Archeans - which was daft as the Minor was out of Drengin range, and Dregin were having a major bust up elsewhere. I had actually "forgotten" to take out that Minor, and the Drengin declaration prompted me to have a look, and realised I hadnt zapped them - which I promptly did. Its almost as if the game was reminding me to go take them out - it was certainly pointless Drengin AI declaring on them as they were out of range.

Strange .......

"we now return control of your TV set .... do doo do dooo do dooo........"  

Regards
Zy

I'd like to see them given the AIs of some of the major races, just without the starting cash and initial techs. The massive slowdown they'd get from not having funds to kickstart development or even the ability to use a hyperdrive from the get go would severely limit their expansion, yet still allow them to expand given the chance.

It would be nice if they were smarter. I think that would be great! in Galactic Civilizations 1, the minors at least put up a fight! I do think they should have at least 1000 bc at the start! Perhaps they could at least even try to make military! Perhaps in Twilight of the Arnor, that will be done (I hope)!

They seem to work well in Galciv1 and DL. They even clonize in Galciv1!

I've seen minor races build fleets of warships in Dark Avatar and do quite nicely. It seems to be a different story in TA, where I've witnessed similar things to those being reported here (like the Dark Yor having their planetary orbit full of freighters but not seeming to trade with anyone). In TA, I recently saw a Carinoid colony ship (yes, a colony ship) warping about the galaxy but going right by colonizable planets, including a juicy Class 26 planet that I gladly took myself.

Yea that'll happen. *rolls eyes*

Just a bump to say that it now seems to have gone the other way. The minor race planets in my current game are devoid of ships. Their AI should be modified so that they maintain a minimum of two defenders, and upgrade those as that becomes possible.

It would be nice if you could actually use minors as pawns. But no; a minor race is at war with my enemy, so I give them ships. And the ships just sit there unused for the entire game until the stupid minor is wiped out.