(Most or all of this issues are already known, so this is going to be more of a rant than anything else. Bear with me for a bit
)
For my current 8/8 game, I decided to take Grav Driller and Neinzul Viral Enthusiast (for the achievements) on a Simple Hubs map. It was this setup that made me realize just how annoying Gravity Drills can be.
- Units (including minor faction ones) don't know how to avoid them.
I've got fifty-four allied roaming enclaves that I can't cut loose on the AI because they will almost inevitably get stuck on some random Drill planet and not be able to get home in time for that huge incoming wave on my homeworld. Player-controlled fleets are just bad, but at least I can manually route them around such planets. - They can't be put in Stand Down mode.
After capturing a Drill planet, I wanted to have my Spire fleet go do something else, so I figured I'd turn the drill off until said fleet had left. Turns out Gravity Drills don't have a Stand Down button. BRILLIANT PLAN FOILED. - They have too little HP (for some purposes).
The planet in question happened to be one of my planned whipping boys, so I put a pair of forcefields over it. I later came back to find those forcefields covering empty space. No traces were left of the perpetrator, but I just know it was those damn Eye Bots. My fault for letting the AI roll Eye Bots, I guess.
So, to sum: it'd be nice if they could Stand Down, had a bit more HP (480k is really squishy), and the pathfinding AI tried to avoid Grav Driller planets if it could help it. Worth Mantising?
(As for my current game, I think I'll just blow up any Drill that gets in my way. It's FS anyway, a little extra AIP won't hurt.)
