Replace the AI with a robot that follows you

Unless they changed it, when someone leaves the enemy sees the name of the player of the bot. If you made it obvious that it was a “drone bot” as you say, people would just farm it.

They are still working on improving AI, I check this thread every so often:

The Dev is listening to suggestions there for upcoming improvements.

Yeah, not a solution at all, but some sort of AFK loss forgiveness in ranked would be welcome.