Intended behavior on destruction of Command Station

[iamlenb]

Is it intended behavior for the replacement of a command station to trigger mobile builder self-destruction?  Didn't have a colony ship there to test.

[TechSY730]

Yes it is. This is to prevent game-breakingly easy ways to rebuild command stations on far off outposts. I admit it is a bit of an awkward way to go about it.

[keith.lamothe]

If you're literally just replacing the command station by building a new one without scrapping or losing the first one, I don't think it's supposed to do the auto-kill-mobile-builders-and-colony-ships-thing.

If you lose the station or scrap it, then yea, the mobile builders (and colony ships) go bye-bye.

Edit: in the "replacement" case above, the first command station is quietly removed, you don't wind up with two on one planet.

[Red Spot]

One thing I did notice is that only 1 colony ship gets nuked when you lose the CC on a planet, mobile builders all seem to get killed.
(I will give this a rundown tonight and post a Mantis report if this still applies in 5.0.)

[motai]

i find it odd that builders inside a transport are affected by this in general. it does shield them however as only half of the colony ships or turrets inside the same transport die. that may be the effect you are noticing that limits the destruction

[iamlenb]

Looks like any time a command station is destroyed, it takes the mobile builders and colony ships in the same system with it.  Does it sound reasonable to change the behavior not to trigger self-destruction when an existing station is replaced with another type/upgrade?  It's a bit tedious to run a transport through the wormhole just to keep my spare colony ships and mobile builders intact.  I think that replacement/upgrade SHOULD trigger if there's enemy presence in system, to prevent building in one corner, then upgrading in the other corner while the AI goes back and forth.  On the other hand, playing "Keep the Command Station Away From the AI" is a pretty popular metagame in AI War, I've heard.

[zebramatt]

To clarify: placing down a new command station to automatically replace an existing one (without scrapping that one) should already not trigger the destruction of colony ships, mobile builders and the like. Only scrapping or the destruction of the comm station should do that.

If that is not the case, it's a bug.

[Red Spot]

Just tested this.

Using the following setup:
-Econ 2 CC
-5 Colony ships
-10 Mobile builders

Replace CC =>> All say "boom!".

Kill CC =>> All say "boom!", but now you also lose energy-generators.


Putting 4 Colony ships in a transport together with all Mobile builders:

Replace CC =>> 3 Colony ships lost, 1 survive // 4 Mobile builders lost, 6 survive.

Kill CC =>> 3 Colony ships lost, 2 survive // 5 Mobile builders lost, 5 survive.


I'll put it on Mantis.