Right now both sides take advantage of one particular weakness in the game design. It is a common and effective strategy to fill a sector with enough low level AI defenders to fill all but one or two slots and avoid killing those. This only allows defending players to trickle in one or two players who will always be at a disadvantage. This is such a common tactic that balanced battles with 3+ live players on both sides have become rare. It is frustrating to be stuck in queue trying to reach a battle as your allies get farmed as they single file onto the field. Currently a side's AI defenders hinder defense more than they help it simply because they deny slots to players.
I think that the AI defenders should simply not be part of the region limit, but stay present nonetheless.
The ai spawn rate should be greatly reduced to spawn if the sector is full and agree they shouldn't count to the region limit (they should still be available to see on the galaxy map though)
Is there any way to differentiate between system generated AI and player brought(via fleet command skill) AI? I like the AI not counting against the player cap, but that could get out of hand if fleet ships brought along by players do not count towards the limit.
how about this: -put sector defending/delaying AI that it primarly meant to give players time to join into T1 and T2 Ships -Make T1/T2 unavailable for players -Exclude T1 and T2 from the sector limits -maybe buff t1 and t2 surviability to ensure players need long enough to clear them while players join in for real defense. -AIs should stop spawning after a certain ammount of players joined, maybe once it reached an equal ammount of players both sides once? or defending side was maxed out once? after that, if attacker clears the zone and no new player joins, slow cap starts.
what Narfi says really makes sense. Yes, Evontno, the NO is biased because I think it is pure BS that both sides use the other side's AI against them as a shield. I am not even saying that I don't participate in doing the same thing sometimes. I just want to see the Ai out of the way so that players from both sides can engage in even battles. Simply not counting the AI's to the cap and allowing them to stay is almost as bad as what we have now except that it would always favor the defender instead of the current system which always favors the attacker. I am really surprised how many are voting for that 4th option since that is the one that leads to stalemate and no one wanting to attack.
I put warp form anywhere but: I believe the ai should try to get to edge but if it can't because it is crippled have it self destruct or warp out at the end of either it second or third turn that players are waiting regardless of its location Better idea have the ai not count towards the cap but if the defenders are over the limit (because of the ai ship) it will have it's guns disabled as it tries to flee. The ship should clearly be mark fleeing.
It seems that AI defenders staying, and not applying to the pop cap is the most popular answer, and I personally do agree with that as well. Thus it does not interfere with regular players coming in.
AIs staying can lead to bias in fights, even if AI is not good, it can scout - deals few damage for free. Also it magicly goes in the direction of enemies which are trying to hide. It should be better if overnumbering AIs try to retreat when players number are onpar on each side
I believe that a territory should always have multiple defenders. If players are not present that should be AI, if players are trying to enter, then the AI should make space (but still keep the numbers up and/or return if players leave/die)
