Is this a bug?

[Q]

CW IMO this is a feature not a bug. The advantage of the psychic trait against human players would be almost zero, if there was no possibility to take over ships with master computers. So I am absolutely against a change. I personally would not install any update that would alter it.

[Deathstalker]

Quote from 'History.txt' se4 ver 1.41:

Version 1.37:
1. Changed - Increased cost to retrofit.
2. Added - Command Line option -nd (which should be placed at the very end
of the line) which will prevent any display of dialogs.
3. Added - Exit Code when running the exe from the command line.
0 - Successful.
1 - Invalid Master Password.
2 - Invalid Player Password.
4. Fixed - When downsizing a ship using retrofit, the number of damaged
components display might show too high a number.
5. Fixed - Allegiance Converters should not work against ships with
Master Computers.

Note # 5. Converters should NOT work vs. computers, the high cost of MC should make most fleets unable to have one on every ship though...So maybe this(like intell) was not successfully fixed....


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"And what the hell would you know about sanity?" demanded Beatrice. "There are depressed lemmings on the edge of cliffs who've got a better grasp on reality than you have. And more common sense."--Simon R. Green 'Deathstalker Rebellion'.

"We are all...the sum of our scars"....(paraphrased) Matt. R. Stover-'Blade of Tyshalle'.

[Q]

Just to make it clear: allegiance subverters do not work against ships with an intact master computer (and as far as I know they never did). However if the master computer is destroyed first the ship becomes vulnerable to the allegiance subverter. And IMO this is how it should be.
The cost of a master computer is not a real concern for larger ships. So if you make ships even with a destroyed master computer resistent to the allegiance subverter, the psychic trait would loose its main advantage. And all AI empires, who never use master computers, would get weaker compared to human players. And that's certainly not what I want.

[CW]

Q, one thing that you have forgotten is boarding parties, that's what you SHOULD use against ships with MCs. If you let subverters take over ships with its MC destroyed then the subverters would be too powerful and decisive, besides they are supposed to convert CREWS. In my solo game there are only 5 subverter-armed ships in every 23-ship fleets, and I haven't fired a single round from other weapons for many, many turns.

[Q]

CW I did not forget boarding parties, but IMO they are not very useful. Unless you use tactical combat you almost always end up with boarded ships that are severely damaged and useless. And with the self destruction device its very easy to make boarding impossible and destroy even the attacking ships. That are the reasons I almost never used boarding in SE III and it didn't change for SE IV.
Now is it realistic that the allegiance subverter works on a ship without crew: of course not, but I don't care about realism in a game. And is it realistic that if you destroy the master computer the ship will still be able to fire and to continue to move (even at very low speed) if no crew is on board???
I think the possibility to convert ships with master computers (after their destruction) gives much more challenge to the game: I play at the moment a very advanced game, where I am the strongest empire with more than double the score of number two. However number 2 are the CueCappa and I still loose some combats to them because of the conVersion of my ships with master computers (I use my AI modification of the CueCappa and they combine computer virus with allegiance subverters on their ships). Without that challenge I would stopped this game already.

[Nitram Draw]

Without you being able to capture ships with destroyed MCs the Physic AI races would be at a severe disadvantage. I have yet to see a standard race use boarding or MC's. If it didn't work this way you would remove once of the game balances as everything has a counter, except the Talisman which should be change to 100% to hit IMHO.