So I'm playing on a 120 planet map. I've established an small entrenched position, and then started massive deep raiding to grab the advanced research stations, hit data centers, scout, and the like. My starting ship was the Eyebot, and my first unlock was the Space Planes, so yeah.
Of course, this hit and run keeps increasing the threat counts. Usually I just pull my fleet back one planet to bait the AI into attacking, then the fleet returns, keeping the threat level low. Great. AI progress is low, goals are being completed. What could go wrong?
But gradually the threat count creeps up to 500, 1000, 1500, 2000. My scouts are on all nearby enemy planets, but the total threat is 10 here, 5 there, 50 there -- nothing more than a couple hundred. Where is the AI?
Eventually my scouts come across a planet with 1700 threat . The AI had placed a forcefield guard post OVER a wormhole 5 hops from my territory, and the threat ships were just sitting under the forcefield. A Mark IV planet, of course. But no big deal - space planes with radar dampening could slowly (emphasis on SLOWLY) attack the forcefield, freeing ships and falling back to cloak when necessary. And I needed to clear out the planet anyway since it was an important choke point (which is why the AI got so many ships caught there).
So I send in my eyebots and planes -- and the human resistance arrives with 1800 ships. Unfortunately, the human resistance lacks my respect for a gradual release of 1700 ships, so it simply annihilates the planet while releasing a torrent of threat ships all together toward my defenses. A vicious battle ensues as the "1700" assaults me.
Meanwhile, the human resistance goes around the galaxy, destroying everything in sight and releasing more and more ships -- which promptly join the original "1700" to assault my defenses. (Some of those 1700 were destroyed by the human raiders, but not nearly enough -- the attack count on my poor planet was over 800, and that excludes the early deaths due to a partially staged release.)
Threat count is down to 400 (I'm still not sure where all those ships are either), and the human resistance has mopped up most of the known galaxy (and increased my progress by 10 or 15 from destroying guard posts). Not a bad trade all in all, I suppose.
Thoughts:
Getting hit by a multiple waves of 1000+ ships is brutal.
Black hole generators are real life savers, keeping the AI bottle in my chokepoint while reinforcements on both sides arrived (and rearrived, and rearrived).
Should forcefields capture threat ships like that (v4.065)?
