alarm post and alarmist ai type...

[jonasan]

hey folks,

can someone give me a better idea of how the alarm posts work, and how the alarmist AI would use them. I had a CPA of 450 not arrive and then took out the command station on a MK 3 world with 400 ships (which i could have handled). I heard the alarm sound and suddenly my threat jumped from 50 to 850. Then on the opposite side of my tiny empire a fleet of MK 4 ships flew through a hostile warp gate and caused seious damage. had to redirect my defenses using transports, finally finished the MK 4's off on my homeworld by which time the MK 3's had arrived on the other system. flew my defenses (what was left of them) over there and tried to deal with that. barely hung on to my home command station - serious reconstruction to do if this game is to be salvaged.

This is the first alarm i have heard go off - wasn't pretty

does the alarmist save CPA's until the alarm goes off? or does the alarm effect in some other way i dont understand? would appreciate a better idea if someone who has played against this AI type could explain. cheers.

[x4000]

There are two types of alarm posts, and their in-game text (if you have not seen that) is thus:

Alarm Post:
When an AI Command Station is destroyed on the alarm post's planet, or an adjacent planet, all of the guards at the current planet will desert their posts and go on the attack.  If the alarm post itself is attacked and destroyed, there is only a 50% chance of it alerting the guards.

Special Forces Alarm Post:
When an AI Command Station is destroyed on the alarm post's planet, or an adjacent planet, all of the "special forces" ships in the entire galaxy will turn aggressive and attack the humans.  If the alarm post itself is attacked and destroyed, there is only a 50% chance of it alerting the special forces ships.

I think that answers all of your questions, but if you had never been in the same system with them, you wouldn't have had that info.  That's where the F1 help (that cycles the planetary summary) can come in real handy, when you're encountering new style types.

Let me know if there are more questions, outside of that, though.  The CPA disappearing thing was just a bug (should finally be fixed in 3.101), so that's unrelated; sorry for the confusion there.

Hope that helps!

[RCIX]

I happened to alert a SF alarm post at least once, and didn't really notice it too much

I have a question though: do they function like warpgates? Because IIRC, i was getting warps from a planet i gate-raided that had one on it.

[x4000]

Nope, they are not like warp gates at all.  They are simply "freeing" certain ships based on a CPA-like mechanic.

[jonasan]

cheers x,

that explains what happened perfectly - a special forces alarm post in the next system which i had not encountered. couldn't understand where the mk 4's came from being as my AI progress is only 150 ish. Now it makes perfect sense - the special forces guards from a MK 4 world!

appreciate the quick response. (glad to hear it had nothing to do with the CPA bug either)

also, tried Tidalis for the first time last night - just one play session - pleasantly surprised, puzzle games are not often my thing but yours seems pretty interesting...

[x4000]

My pleasure on the response, and glad that makes sense now.  Glad to hear Tidalis piqued your interest, even if it's not normally your sort of genre.  That's always a good sign that we're doing our job right!