Question on Lightning Warheads

[The Cosmopolite]

First, very good game with some really excellent ideas in it. The AI progress concept is a gem.

That said, I have a question about Lightning Warheads: if you use one to destroy a Data Centre is it intended that there be no AI progress reduction?

I destroyed a DC with such a warhead and only saw the uptick from the warhead death and the hover-over readout showed zero reduction (it was the first DC I'd found on the map). I've repeated it a couple of times from a save game and no reduction.

Is this perhaps a safeguard against reducing progress at range too easily and should I use more conventional means?

Cos

[Kalzarius]

I saw this a long while back and was going to report it, but when I next destroyed a data center (with ships), the AI progress dropped as it should have.  I hadn't connected the lack of progress regression with the use of the lightning warhead. I'm inclined to say this is a bug, but if it's not, it should be documented somewhere in-game.

[Lancefighter]

This seems to follow along with turrets being destroyed not leaving remains..

[Aegis]

Don't warheads(lightning) boost AI progression by 20, and cancel out a DC? Or did the progression only rise instead of cancel out?

[The Cosmopolite]

The Lightning Warhead is listed as causing AI progress +2 on detonation and this I observed as happening. As I understand it, if the DC is destroyed it should show in the hover-over that AI progress reduction is 20 and this didn't happen. Effective AI progress just stayed at the total figure (+2 for the warhead, of course) and I had no other reductions in play at the time.

If someone else has observed this, I'm going to conclude this is probably fairly consistent, whether a bug or not, and stick to raid starships and the like for long-range work unless there is some word one way or the other on it being by design or not.

Cheers,
Cos

PS. I am still enjoying the game very much and still in the early stages of learning strategies. I'm impressed by the adaptability of the AI.