As the old saying goes, if I had a dime for every time this was brought up

"Eventually" you start noticing neutral mines captured by the AIs, but it seems more in passing than any priority. They don't really seek them out. I've been able to get my Vasari scouts to neutrals right inside enemy territory and capture some mines to spy on that grav well, and never lost them

 *nudges*. FIX!

that could only work so long as the 'auto capture' routines do not take precedence over the 'auto expore' routines. otherwise you would have a ship that you want to scout (to gather intel!) sit around an extractor, waiting to am to accumulate for the capture. also, with scouts constantly jumping around like crazy, do you think there is even enough am left for them to do it?

maybe a new stance such as 'auto search and capture neutral mines' would be better. which could theoretically also be used for the colony ships of the other races. though I would be hesitant, since they demand a much higher resource investment and I can already see them rushing into enemy territory to capture a neutral mine that may just as well get instantly recaptured by a rival ship. I kinda think of the ultra stupid collectors of a certain pioneer rts. basically, while attractive on the surface, I doubt the ai would ever get to be programmed for it to work. at least for the colony frigs. vasari scouts are cheap, who cares if a few are lost somewhere?

yeah, I just didn't want to bring up that too, bc it would get way to complicated.

still, the basic idea is not bad per se. I think, tweaking the 'auto explore' command to 'auto explore and auto capture neutral mines if you happen to be in the same grav well as one and if you happen to have sufficient am etc.' would be nice. stupid as it sounds though, I wonder, whether this would not constitute an advantage over other races, since as described, something similar is not really possible. on the other hand, it just fully exploits an advantage they already have and make it less micro to do so.

that depends. if I set a scout on 'auto explore' I want it to explore. if I want it to automatically capture stuff, I would pick another option. don't underestimate the value of timely intel.

and as annatar wrote, in some grav wells you have pirates too. you would not want your scouts to wait for am to generate if it means they get destroyed.

but hey, an option to automate capture to a degree. of course I'm in for it. we just discuss what the best way to it would be and point to potential problems of premature solutions.

I have an idea, what if mines could be "captured" by the broadcast centers. Just give the mining extractors a %, just like planets and if it falls to zero, the extractor changes hand. It would make more sense, especialy when you have an extrator right in the middle of an enemy empire.

Your thoughts please??

2 small suggestions to make the AI a much better *player*

make it take mine in ucgw's as mentioned

make it launch it's strikecraft when just traveling through a grav well- placing a carrier fleet in a sun's grav to take out ½ the AI's fleet before it even get to where it's goinng is a little silly:)