SEIV: Iran Contra Scandal

[Suicide Junkie]

An AI that recognizes you have sent it ships for a particular purpose and cares enough about your relationship to use them only for that purpose?
There isn't any AI in the world that does that.

Now, in SE4, if you gift some ships to an AI that you know is at war with your enemy, but allied with you, well naturally those ships are going to wind their way into fleets and towards the enemy. It helps to fly them to a gathering point and use the default design types so the AI knows to put them in its fleets.

[Dizzy]

Good advice SJ. B4 I gifted the ships, I had fleeted them up and sent them to a planet where that gifted empire could use them mb. I wonder if once they are gifted the last orders I had for them are canceled and new orders are given.

But yeah, at the time, both the other empires were allied to me, but at war with each other. I was gifting to the weaker empire to keep the stronger one in check.

[Randallw]

Keep in mind that even if you gift it to another empire it still obeys the strategy you have for it. This means if the enemy has a few of your ships you can set it's strategy to "Do not get hurt" and they will run away rather than attack you. So if you gift ships to someone make sure to design it just for them, so if they turn on you the ships are useless. As you can see I am paranoid.

[Suicide Junkie]

And, unless you are great allies or there is unique racial tech involved, immediately retrofit any ships gifted to you.

[Renegade 13]

Suicide Junkie said:
And, unless you are great allies or there is unique racial tech involved, immediately retrofit any ships gifted to you.

Why?

[Phoenix-D]

It prevents the aforementioned "run away, run away!" trick and lets you set your own strategies.

You don't have to chance any components IIRC; just design an identical design and retrofit to that.

[Fyron]

For exactly the reason Randallw posted?

You can't retrofit to an exactly identical design, and you better hope the ships don't rely on a bunch of racial techs.

[geoschmo]

Imperator Fyron said:
You can't retrofit to an exactly identical design, and you better hope the ships don't rely on a bunch of racial techs.

I can't remmeber, will it let you retrofit to a design with the same components in a different order? Or is it smart enough to realize that is the same design?

[PvK]

Dizzy said:
... I wonder if once they are gifted the last orders I had for them are canceled and new orders are given.
...

Yes, orders get cleared when ships are gifted to another empire. In simultaneous movement mode, this means the ships won't have any orders for the month they are transferred.