Can a player take over a Neutral AI Empire?

geoschmo · #1 February 24th, 2005, 05:24 PM

Even in the demo the neutral AI is restricted from warp travel. There have always been flukes that happen occasionally allowing a neutral to get a ship out of his home system from time to time. They isn't consistant and can't be duplicated on demand, but it happens just often enough to keep alive the idea that there's some way for neutrals to leave their home system. My feeling is it's probably some obscure code bug that Malfador just wasn't ever able to track down.

Baron Munchausen · #2 February 24th, 2005, 05:35 PM

I once gave a communications link to a couple of neutrals I was in contact with, hoping that they would open a trade treaty and improve both of their economies and also mine as I was trading with both. Instead they went to war, and started trying to send ships to each others' systems! This was funny, but also showed how imperfect the restrictions on neutrals are/were.

geoschmo · #3 February 24th, 2005, 05:42 PM

That's funny! That's almost as funny as the neutral that built a star destroyer, and then used it.

I never actually saw that, but I heard it happened to someone once. It might be urban legend though.

Baron Munchausen · #4 February 25th, 2005, 01:48 AM

Yikes! But that illustrates another problem with the way neutrals are handled. They shouldn't build stellar manipulation ships at all. They are described as being unable to use warp point technology to travel, so how would they be able to use it to open/close warp points? And of course any tampering with their own star is suicide. They should be restricted to planetary techs, and perhaps even the tektonic bomb is too much for them to have.