Another one on auto mining.

The miner will happily upgrade stations inside other Areas of Influence. It seems that the programmed behaviour of measuring and comparing time taken to upgrade and distance away before choosing which to do does not take into account Areas of Influence. End result can be the miner build's deep inside another AOI, and after completion the station will flip to the AI controllng that AOI.

On the face of it, it would seem the solution would be to exclude other AOIs from auto mining which should be a relatively easy test to insert. There could be a rare occurance where a human player is "on the move" and advancing into other AOIs, and mining stuff in advance of arrival of main force may be feasible - but thats so rare it could be discounted in auto mining and the player mines manually in that case.

The other aspect of this is auto mining too close to potential AOI's in the early game where there is little likelyhood of the AI following up and establishing a covering planet and extended AOI. I have noticed some AI miners beavering away right next to me in the early game, which is suicidal as not long after my AOI will expand and poof, it flips. Thats a scenario a human player would avoid. Much harder to programme that I acknowledge, but for what its worth its something to think over.

Regards
Zy

Zydor,
I am having trouble reproducing the behavior in your first post even with the same scenario set up.  Do you have a saved game where this was happening?

In your second post, are you referring to AI ship miners or your own miners on auto-improve.  Your own miners on auto-improve DO take into effect AOI, and not build in others' influences.  They will build in areas that are under no one's influence.

I dont have a save game at the precise point at which it was happening the last time - however the game during which it occured, I sent in another report due to a separate crash - see attachments to my email to gc2bugs tues 21 Nov 0518hrs(its a .co.uk address - wont give full addy here for obvious reasons)

In that sav game, which was saved about 5-10 turns after the miner incident due to the crash, look at the very top corner of the map at the Sivil and Antares Star Systems. You will see two groups of two mining stations there under Terran control - it was those two groups. Probably too late now tho (you can see the miner concerned about 5 sectors away on the top left edge of the map) - I will try to reproduce it again, and if it occurs get some sav games of it at the instant it happens.

Regards
Zy

One other thing about miners:

No matter how many engines I place on them, they will drop down to Movement: 1/1 after Improving an existing mine. The information screen (double-clicking on the ship) shows correct movement as well as the fact that I have multiple engines on the vessel, but, when viewed on the map, they show Movement 1/1. I have just downloaded the upgraded Beta program, so it may be corrected.

All in all, a wonderful game! I love every bit of it!

Sam

No matter how many engines I place on them, they will drop down to Movement: 1/1 after Improving an existing mine.

*Any* ship that enters an asteroid field will have its movement speed cut to 1 until it finishes a turn outside the field.