I was attacking a Yoral colony with a group of Laser Destroyers, and after disposing of their scattered defense fleet, I found myself facing their ground batteries. I noticed that their ion cannons had the same range as my lasers, and after a bit of trial and error I found that my Destroyers were maneuverable enough to fly one tile in, fire off their lasers, and then jump back out of range in a sort of zig-zag motion. In this way, I was about to attack with impunity despite not actually out-ranging the defender's guns. It took about 30 turns to whittle down the armor, but eventually I was victorious, losing only 1 ship to a defense which should otherwise have been insurmountable.

If I weren't in such bad shape playing as the Humans on Hard, I would have declared that to be a stupid exploit unworthy of my play. But I needed everything I could get with so many aggressive neighbors out for my blood.

Has anybody else found something similar like this?

You mean other exploits? Sure, reported them all and hope they will be phased out eventually :
- Force peace on AI (might be fixed with diplomacy updates)
- Buy out Marauder Raiders (might be fixed with diplomacy updates)
- Siege planets with Railgun
- Spin ships with shields to rotate shield segments taking damage
- Lure missiles and small crafts into PD fire with targeted ship
- Eliminate enemy population on planet via planetary bombardment instead of invading it (should be fixed with fallout mechanic)

Regarding your finding though: The defense batteries should fire automatically when you get in range right?
So if they haven't, you might want to consider reporting this as a bug that has something to do with effective range of planetary defense ion guns

The fire when in range thing is a bug for both sides. I cant count how many times my ships have not fired when another moves into range. The sole exception seems to be if its a ship I want to capture...

Spin ships with shields to rotate shield segments taking damage

I don't think this an exploit at all; the ships have 4 shield facings for a reason and it leads to interesting tactics. We just need to teach the AI to use it....

-Will

wminsing wrote:

Spin ships with shields to rotate shield segments taking damage

I don't think this an exploit at all; the ships have 4 shield facings for a reason and it leads to interesting tactics. We just need to teach the AI to use it....

-Will

Agreed with: in order to avoid exploits, the AI needs to be tough to act against them

Thus for me, every mechanic that the AI is not "aware" of is an exploit for the player towards it, even if said mechanic was intended hence the couple of diplomacy features on the list.

Chasm wrote:The fire when in range thing is a bug for both sides. I cant count how many times my ships have not fired when another moves into range. The sole exception seems to be if its a ship I want to capture...

I'm not sure that it's a bug per se, but maybe the gunners are waiting for the "right" time to open fire, since at maximum range, weaponsfire is at its least effective. The thing is that when you dodge back out of range, the firing algorithm missed its chance to do ANY damage at all.