Cleanup drones have no purpose (v3.0.6.0)

[SmileyFace]

I'm not sure where to post this topic. Anyway, clean up drones are pointless. If I take them into an enemy system and they clean up enemy debris, the AI just builds the turrets + mines back in the exact same spots once I move most of my military ships away from the area. Net gain: nothing. The only remedy is to destroy the command centre.

Clean up drones have a tooltip that states they remove debris permanently, preventing it from ever being rebuilt. While this is technically true (the debris is removed), there is no point when the AI will rebuild it very quickly (with engineer mkIII's, no less).

So I'm wondering, is this something that has been fixed in subsequent patches, an oversight or intentional?

[keith.lamothe]

If you kill the command station it won't rebuild them.

Also, I think that if you actually remove the remains the AI has to spend reinforcement points to rebuild the turret/whatever, wheras if you leave remains it can rebuild them simply by using engineers, and can spend those reinforcement points on MORE turrets, ships, etc.

[keith.lamothe]

Also, without cleanup drones you have absolutely NO way of removing a perma-mine, EVER, iirc.

[SmileyFace]

Also, I think that if you actually remove the remains the AI has to spend reinforcement points to rebuild the turret/whatever, wheras if you leave remains it can rebuild them simply by using engineers, and can spend those reinforcement points on MORE turrets, ships, etc.

Wow, really? I had no idea. That is nicely balanced (and great) if so but there is no in game representation of this. Perhaps clean up drone tool text could say something about this so players know they're useful without consulting the oracles, I mean, forum goers?

Also, my initial post was made from the view point that I want to clear turrets away from wormholes, etc as I invade a system. A slow, gradual, yet permanent style of conquering. I know that killing the command centre works but that also necessitates a strong turret defence to handle FRD backwash, which isn't always available (i.e. when I'm low on turret caps).

Perma-mines: That's true. But then, I hate perma-mines so I prefer to pretend they don't exist, hehe

[keith.lamothe]

Wow, really? I had no idea.

I'm pretty sure, placing a brand new AI ship is triggered by the reinforcement/wave mechanism (which is bounded by the point calculation), rebuilding one is handled automatically by remains-rebuilders (by the way, have you tried killing off said rebuilders as they come by?) and since the AI doesn't pay metal/crystal costs it's basically free.  Anyway, Chris would know if I'm wrong on this.

That is nicely balanced (and great) if so but there is no in game representation of this. Perhaps clean up drone tool text could say something about this so players know they're useful without consulting the oracles, I mean, forum goers?

Perhaps a note would be good, we just never really thought about it because remains-rebuilders, well, rebuild remains

[ShadowOTE]

For the record, parasites + engineers (especially high tier engineers) = awesome. No need to unlock tier 3 engineers, just sit on a wormhole and reclaim engineers off high tier worlds

[allmybase]

For the record, parasites + engineers (especially high tier engineers) = awesome. No need to unlock tier 3 engineers, just sit on a wormhole and reclaim engineers off high tier worlds

I wonder if anyone's tried "farming" an army from a MKIV world, like neuter it down to the command post and stick some sort of parasites there to pick up all its reinforcements 

[FrostyThePyro]

For the record, parasites + engineers (especially high tier engineers) = awesome. No need to unlock tier 3 engineers, just sit on a wormhole and reclaim engineers off high tier worlds

I wonder if anyone's tried "farming" an army from a MKIV world, like neuter it down to the command post and stick some sort of parasites there to pick up all its reinforcements 

I have.
It required too much babysiting so i finished it off after a while

[Mánagarmr]

Works better with a high level raid engine nearby.

[AlexV]

I wonder if anyone's tried "farming" an army from a MKIV world

I used leech starships waiting right on the other side of a wormhole and creative 'pinging' of a Core station with a raider to tempt a whole bunch of Core ships to follow through and join my side! It was working great, and I was building up a nice Core fleet for attacking the planet.

Unfortunately it didn't last, as the AI then decided that Starships were a better idea, and I had to try and take the planet while it was defended by a swarm of about 17 spire and zenith ships. Tricky.

[SmileyFace]

Wow, really? I had no idea.

I'm pretty sure, placing a brand new AI ship is triggered by the reinforcement/wave mechanism (which is bounded by the point calculation), rebuilding one is handled automatically by remains-rebuilders (by the way, have you tried killing off said rebuilders as they come by?) and since the AI doesn't pay metal/crystal costs it's basically free.  Anyway, Chris would know if I'm wrong on this.

Yeah I did try but killing rebuilders is far too annoying. They're not on the automatic target list (which is understandable: they're fairly durable), they're small, and they bounce around often. Half of the time they will teleport away before I can finish them off, so I don't bother targeting them.

For the record, parasites + engineers (especially high tier engineers) = awesome. No need to unlock tier 3 engineers, just sit on a wormhole and reclaim engineers off high tier worlds

Parasites + turret-repairing engineers = sweet idea! I haven't messed around with parasites too much yet but the thought of easy mkIII engineers makes me want to! Thanks for the inspiration

[keith.lamothe]

Yeah I did try but killing rebuilders is far too annoying. They're not on the automatic target list (which is understandable: they're fairly durable), they're small, and they bounce around often. Half of the time they will teleport away before I can finish them off, so I don't bother targeting them.

Hmm, so they can be tachyon'd or you wouldn't have seen them; have you tried tractors to catch them as they wander by? You could build tractors on that side or bring a tractor-equipped Riot or some etherjets to hold them down.  Looking at their stats I don't see anything that would make them not be autotargeted though perhaps the logic is elsewhere.  For killing them Infiltrators have a 12x modifier against them; Eyebots have 6x, and Etherjets and Spaceplanes have 2x; haven't checked effective dps.

Anyway, if all that wouldn't work, I'd like to know about it

[ShadowOTE]

Yeah, when I take systems with parasites, I always end up with a huge excess of remains rebuilders and engineers

[SmileyFace]

Yeah I did try but killing rebuilders is far too annoying. They're not on the automatic target list (which is understandable: they're fairly durable), they're small, and they bounce around often. Half of the time they will teleport away before I can finish them off, so I don't bother targeting them.

Hmm, so they can be tachyon'd or you wouldn't have seen them; have you tried tractors to catch them as they wander by? You could build tractors on that side or bring a tractor-equipped Riot or some etherjets to hold them down. [snip]

Hmm, tractors... No I haven't tried that, and that's a very good idea. I'm going to bring some along, eliminate all the rebuilders and see how that helps the cleanup drones.

Edit: Can an AI system make more rebuilders, btw? I've been wondering.

[keith.lamothe]

In the end I'm not sure it's really worthwhile, you could probably get better results focusing your efforts in another way, but if you find it fun to stop the rebuilding, that's worth it in another way.

One thing is that if the AI is always using one (or more) of it's planets-to-reinforce on that world and you're eating up those reinforcements with minimal losses, you're effectively reducing the rate at which it accumulates a critically-high crust of ships; if you keep this up on enough distinct planets you could in theory keep its forces static (though I think it will probably always be reinforcing unopposed some places, and I don't know all the rules about homeworld reinforcements and whatnot).