Devourer golem

[TheWordWillSetYouFree]

When they are on a planet with a planetary cloaker they are useless.

I guess that this isn't by design?

[x4000]

Well, I had not ever thought of that, but I don't see another way for that to function.

[RCIX]

Well, I had not ever thought of that, but I don't see another way for that to function.

Install a short-range tachyon beam? makes sense if the devourer had eaten enough cloak detecting stuff over the years...

[x4000]

Tachyon beams don't work against planetary cloakers.

[Lancefighter]

short range EMP effect?

Not sure if that works vs planetary cloaked ships..

[x4000]

Actually, there is only one solution for a planetary-cloaked ship: kill the planetary cloaker.  It overrides everything, everything else.  That's why I said I didn't know how else to really make it work, that would be a bit counter to the design there.  I think that Devourers will just be less effective on planetary cloaker planets, and may just die.  I think that's okay.

[Buttons840]

Does this golem every do anything besides wander around?  Does it every try to clear out a entire sector?

I ask because if the AI was smart, it would just run away, and the human player should do the same.

So the only reasons it's useful is because the AI is incompetent* (in this isolated instance) and tries to kill it, or the human player is to busy to micromanage his fleet out of the way.

If the devouring golem were to stop and wait around; or try to clear every unit in a sector (might never happen because they run away) I would consider it more appropriate.  I've heard it will do this, but never seen it.  But I haven't seen much of this golem anyways.

[x4000]

It has two main behaviors, traveling or eating. Looks like you have only seen traveling. Every time it hits a destination it stops to eat for 10 minutes or until the planet is cleared of stuff it can eat. The ai does not run away because that would then create a constant stream of a few thousand ships coming at you in games with devourers in them (ships that run away will attack you). The devourer, in a meta-game sense, is simply about randomly clearing out swaths of planets, thus creating both problems and opportunities from you. From a story sense, the individual ai ships do not know to run until it is too late.  Incidentally, it is possible (if very unlikely) for them to kill the devourer.

[Buttons840]

I've seen the AI run from it.  Not run through the wormhole but fly to the other side of the sector.

It's fun to play with complete visibility sometimes to see what the AI does.  The AI having no memory is a lie.

[Velox]

     Just as an aside, I really like the Devourer.  From a gameplay perspective, I think that as a disruptive element it may make those stalemated can't win/can't lose games a little less likely, plus I think it makes things more interesting (the "where is it now and what's it doing" factor.)  Also, I'm just kind of fond of the thing.

     Incidentally, kind of neat story: I had the one in my current game dead to rights earlier on - it was in "travel" mode across a planet where I had a superfortress that was clearly going to kill it before it would reach an exit wormhole.  I actually felt kind of guilty (it's just wandering around eating!) so I put the s-fortress in low-power mode and let it go.  The most recent hour or so of the game has been a real struggle to break down a nasty IV world that I let build up too long (crammed full of Z-electric bombers) which ended just now when the Devourer cruised through my staging world onto the target planet and went into eat mode.  Bye bye Z-bombers, and hooray for good karma!