When weren't they 10m/s faster than us?

Turrets are necessary to give heavier ships something to go at, their own specialty. Charging in, unloading, taking one or two out and limping away.

Good point. Heavy ships have no chance of survival right now. Even if they get a few swarms away, as soon the bots come close its payback time.

I haven't tried this yet, but what do they do if two KOS players enter a guarded sector? Do two sets of bots spawn?

Captial ships COULD exist, just not what you guys think are captial ships...

Whoo. Now strike force vults' tachs do 5000 damage per shot. Way to fix 'em.

They weren't changed.

Why not? :p

Yeah ctish, they did at least 4200 before. It might have been more, that was just my estimation.

Are you sure they do that level of damage? I thought I lasted more than 2 shots ;-)

I'll be fixing the other defbot bugs today, probably. It's absolutely imperative that they give you a Royal Whomping if you let them catch up to you. I'll look at some other ways of achieving this, but if the cheater weapons are the only way, then so be it.

Why not just equip them with Avalons and Mines (aka. insta-nuke), then they are not cheating so much ;-)

Just give them homers and sunflares. Or an advanced gatling if you have to. Let the strike force consist of 20 ships if you want to. But please, no uber-weapons. That really sucks.

They don't know how to properly use weapons that require ammunition, or I would do that. I may look at increasing the number of bots that chase you, among other things.

"Why not just equip them with Avalons and Mines (aka. insta-nuke), then they are not cheating so much ;-)"

-Since they can't use ammo, maybe we need entirely new defbots. Sort of like the Scourges in Starcraft. Insanely fast little buggers that kamikaze on you once they get near. Give them a big 600m splash radius, a short range weapon, and a nice /explode bound to their imaginary fire key. :P

This wouldn't be the sole line of defense, just support for non-uber bots so that they can still give you a pounding while remaining on the same level as the players.

Although I have to admit, trying to flee a swarm of kamikaze bots sounds like fun.
Watching said swarm deploy to beat down a pirate sounds even funner.

I also noticed another thing. You know how an enemy nation send out Observer bots before the Strike Force warps in sometimes? Well on several occasions I've managed to destroy the Observer bot before the Strike Force bots could even warp in. Unfortunately right now they STILL warp in even after you destroy the Observer bot. Was this intentional? I was under the impression that the Observer bot was supposed to act as the eyeball or radar of the Strike Force. It would be nice if the Strike Force would all of a sudden be blind if their Observer were to be destroyed (of course it would have to fly more evasively in that case). But if that's too much... at the least destroying them should prevent Strike Forces from warping into the sector, that is if they haven't already and you've managed to kill the Observer before it.

I thought the Observer was there so that the bots could determine your jump destination... ie. it tries to stay within a 1000m radius.

If you destroy it they should warp to that sector, but if you destroy it and run they should not know where you ran too.

I mean wouldn't you program your strike force to go find out why the observer bot just blew up?

I'm sure that the Observer would radio Central Command that it was under attack, send it's coordinates, and request reinforcements. It's sensors would detect you and would register you as an agressor if you fired on it. Just killing the Observer should not stop the Strick Force from arriving to lend aid to their fallen commrade.

Wouldn't there be a delay if it sent any sort of signal though?

=b

But just for gameplay sake, I think it would be more fun if it was an absolute thing. Kill the observer before strike forces make it in, and you should be more safe. That would be more fun IMO.