AI War 2:Zenith Miners

Zenith Miners

Short version

When enabled, every so often a Zenith Miner appear from deep space to try to mine out a planet. If it finishes mining out a planet then the planet is entirely destroyed (all units on it will die, then the planet itself will vanish from the galaxy). You can battle the spawned Zenith Miners, or hijack their power to your own ends!

Mechanics

Every so often a Zenith Miner will send a Probe into the galaxy to scout a potential planet. If the probe isn't dealt with, the Miner will appear a few minutes later. The Miner is very powerful and hostile to everything; killing the Miner will prevent it from eating the planet. Otherwise, the Miner will eat the whole planet.

Only the player can interact with a Probe, but any (and every) faction is hostile to a Miner. So you and the AI (or Nanocaust, etc) might wind up teaming up against a Miner.

Probes can be hacked; hacking a Probe can change what the miner will do. The hacks usable on a probe are the following:

• Prevent the Miner from appearing
• Reroute the Miner to a random adjacent planet
• Miner will not destroy the planet, but will instead modify the planet:
  • Modification: All units on this planet are slower than usual
  • Modification: All units on this planet are faster than usual
  • The planet is now a Nomad planet

Killing the miner grants some Science and Hacking Points. If you kill enough Miners then bigger Miners will show up.

Notes

This is based on the Zenith Miners design from AIWC, but with some tweaks. The new Miners are much more interactive, and the AI will actually notice the Miner showing up and fight it.

Has a unique interaction with the Dyson Sphere where it will kill the dyson sphere faction instead of just eating the planet