The Orion Nebula

Yes. Retreat could be the trigger. One should be able to test that.

I've noticed an AI flaw that will cause it to automatically self destruct ships that are immobile.

I've noticed an AI flaw that will cause it to automatically self destruct ships that are immobile.

That is not a flaw. It is intentional. They do not want you to capture them.

I've noticed an AI flaw that will cause it to automatically self destruct ships that are immobile.

That is not a flaw. It is intentional. They do not want you to capture them.

Well it does this even if you CAN'T capture them. It'll even do it if your ships are defenseless and they have you in firing range.

Just a little observation...

When you disable an Antaran ship they usually self-destruct themselves right?
Well, if you have really inferior ships (we're talking laser frigates and such)and NO starbases/planet guns they will sit quite happily disabled on the spot firing all the while until the battle ends.
Weird.

You mean immobilized ships?

Erm.... As far as I can tell they automatically blow up when immobilized as long as one of your ships is in the blast area.

Yep, I mean immobilised ships.
Yep, I mean immobilised Antaran ships

If you have low-tech ships and somehow manage to knock thier engines out they'll just sit there letting you do whatever you like.
All they do is fire on anything that wanders into thier arc.
You can board to your hearts content, although every time i've seen this its been at the very early stage so your +10 troops are going to be lucky to even kill one of thier defenders.

Just for comparison i tried using destroyers, then cruisers (i couldn't build battleships fast enough ).
The same just sitting there happened with DDs, but not the cruisers where they *did* blow themselves up every time.

It's as if these small ships are just percieved as so little of a threat that the Anties just sit there having a picnic waiting for all these annoying buzzing things to leave them alone

So your observation seems to contradict what other players recall...

I just played a game recently and I observed exactly what Tifi observed. I was running Orion95.exe with 1.3 patch.

Hey if your still having trouble doing this I just successfully pulled it off:
Each ship was fitted only with Battle Pods / Assault Shuttles to a total of 39 AS's going at the one frigate. My troops were @ 30 bonus vs. their 100.
No Shields / No Computer
No Troop Pods (they don't benefit AS's - plus if you want to do this early game you won't want to waste time/space immobilizing it not even including their D. Field).

Oh also, if you do pull it off be sure to save before you scrap the ship, you might get junky tech like Quantum Detonator.

Hope that helps!

Tricks to Evolutionary Mutations



Pick -Ship attack and def for starting picks when you get evo mutation you can unselect these + the 4 picks for Evo mutation and any other unspent picks from start. This will give (at minimum) +8 picks.


Have fun. ^.^

You could think this is losing six pick points, but the high gravity pick will be a great help, far better than the +40 ground combat pick. If you're not creative it will also help you because it will make the gravity generator really less usefull, so it won't hurt you too much to purchase the tractor beam technology.

When I want to capture antarians ships, I try to cumulate creative and high gravity world.