Subset Games Forum

This isn't technically a bug, but I would propose it's a failing, and I feel like I'm noticing it a lot more recently. I'm using 1.5.13, but I think it was in the previous versions of 1.5.X

I've only seen this on hard, but I haven't been playing the other difficulties, so I'm not sure if the difficulty effects the logic.

The logic for enemy crew teleporting seems to revolve around some sort of valuing based on the melee ability of the crew, this makes sense. What doesn't make sense is there doesn't appear to be a threshold for "not worth it"/"Counterproductive". This is primarily targeted at Engi teleporters or Zoltan teleporters without a clonebay.

Example case (which happens often):

A pirate or mantis ship contains 3 crew. One is engi, the rest are mantis. A mantis is the first teleporter, leaving another mantis on helm and the engi. Let's say the first mantis is beaten down and teleports home to run to the medbay. Knowing this, you shoot the medbay as it runs in, disabling it and probably killing the first guy. The engi is still doing its business. Eventually the teleporter cycles up again, and since the engi is not the one of the helm, it teleports over.

I've sat and thought about it, and there's never a case where an engi teleporter for the AI is ever a good idea. It's just better off fixing things on the ship. And for a zoltan, I would propose that's likely also true, even if they have a clone bay (that being the only time its maybe marginally useful).

Here's a screenshot. You can (barely) see there's 2 humans. The first one is damaged from the first teleport, and he's on the helm. The second one is over manning the engines at full health, and here comes the engi crewman, about to teleport over. He shortly dies, and the clone bay eats an Artemis. His life was not well spent.




Summation: The logic would be better if it just exempted engi and zoltan (no clone bay) from the list of viable teleporting crew.

Well maybe the Mantis has no levels in fighting and the engi is max?

This is sort of the same thing as the enemy not volleying it's weapons. The AI is intentionally dumb. I don't have a problem with them sending over Engi boarders as it keeps things interesting. What is more of a problem I think is that the Enemy will often only teleport one of it's crew back and leave the other to die if they are in different rooms. But like I said, the AI is dumb.

The logic for enemy crew teleporting seems to revolve around some sort of valuing based on the melee ability of the crew, this makes sense. What doesn't make sense is there doesn't appear to be a threshold for "not worth it"/"Counterproductive". This is primarily targeted at Engi teleporters or Zoltan teleporters without a clonebay.