Carriers out of nowhere?

[BobTheJanitor]

In my game, I just had 3 carriers with about 2500 units just come flying in out of nowhere. Like, from the side of the galaxy that I haven't sent any ships to yet. Do carriers have some sort of ability to teleport around that isn't advertised in their description? I think I may have seen some notification about 'carrier redeployed to X' in my message log at some point while I was doing other things. (Any chance we could keep a running log from the start for the whole game, by the way? Might be useful from time to time.) But this is a fallen spire game nearly in to its 13th hour now, so I've been seeing a lot of messages about carriers and barracks being built. Although something appears to be messed up about that as well, because it's built a couple of barracks on the same planet that have 200 units in them, when it's only supposed to build one per planet up to 1200 units and then switch to building carriers. And to add extra confusion, this game was started in 4.xxx. So the game's changed a couple times since I started it. Any clues what might be happening with these carriers coming out of the blue?

Edit: I also recently had a CPA where it's obvious all the ships that were released haven't come in yet. It's also possible this had something to do with it. Would the AI decide to free a bunch of ships on the other side of the galaxy, toss them in carriers, and then fire that from 5 or 6 jumps out?

[x4000]

Most likely that was from a planet that was overflowing.  Once the barracks gets created, then a carrier comes.

[BobTheJanitor]

Most likely that was from a planet that was overflowing.  Once the barracks gets created, then a carrier comes.

Well, yeah. But why is it coming from the side of the galaxy that isn't aware that I exist?

[TechSY730]

Even planets you are nowhere near or have never even visited can get reinforcements, and as such can get filled up. It just typically happens slower than planets near you.

[x4000]

Well, it could very well be a number of things, but most like it's:

1. Various ships that retreated and got redeployed into a carrier when the number of free/threat ships got too high.  That would be contrary to my earlier guess, but it could be.

2. If it was a barracks that then spawned a carrier, most likely it was simply a factor of you playing a long game.  Once the AI is done reinforcing all its on-alert planets, it reinforces other planets at random.  If that happens enough times... eventually you start getting into barracks and carrier territory.  That has to be a dozen or more hours in most cases, though.

[Sunshine!]

I don't know if it's necessarily at random - in one game I was playing (the one where I reported mk3 carriers deploying mk5 units as a bug), the carriers were being spawned only on a single specific AI world.  I would expect other AI worlds to start overflowing and the carriers to come from other worlds, but no, just one specific world on the other end of the galaxy.

[x4000]

It's definitely random.  Clumping does happen, though.

[TechSY730]

I don't know if it's necessarily at random - in one game I was playing (the one where I reported mk3 carriers deploying mk5 units as a bug), the carriers were being spawned only on a single specific AI world.  I would expect other AI worlds to start overflowing and the carriers to come from other worlds, but no, just one specific world on the other end of the galaxy.

Reinforcements to non-alert planets is random. Retreating freed ships may very well develop a pattern. That may be why they keep coming from the same place.

[x4000]

That's also true.

[BobTheJanitor]

I suppose it could be random, but it's not seeming likely. All the non-alerted planets that I have scouts on currently are at around 100 units on average. I just don't get how a planet that I have never alerted could have somehow acquired 2,700 units. I mean, if that's random clumping, I should go play the lottery tomorrow.

[TechSY730]

I suppose it could be random, but it's not seeming likely. All the non-alerted planets that I have scouts on currently are at around 100 units on average. I just don't get how a planet that I have never alerted could have somehow acquired 2,700 units. I mean, if that's random clumping, I should go play the lottery tomorrow.

That's what I am saying. That may very well not be due to random clumping, but rather retreating freed ships frequently choosing the same planet to retreat too. (I have seen no mention that the retreat logic is randomized like the other possibilities presented here are)

From the sound of things, which planet freed ships that are retreating go to may need a bit of randomization, sort of like how freed ships that are choosing to stalk have a somewhat randomized planet selection to stalk. Naturally, the chance of choosing a safe planet to retreat to does not need to be even; it can go up or down based on how well the AI thinks those units can get "back on their feet" on that planet or how important the AI feels the need to keep that planet (like homes or core worlds or something).

[x4000]

The retreat planets are completely random, FYI.  But often at crossroads planets they will wind up getting thrown into a carrier or similar.

[TechSY730]

The retreat planets are completely random, FYI.  But often at crossroads planets they will wind up getting thrown into a carrier or similar.

Good to know. Now that I think back, In my recent games I have found that hub planets tend to get barracks faster than the non-hub ones, so that does make sense.

For certain map types like X or spokes or something, this effect can become very pronounced.

[BobTheJanitor]

Well here, check out the screenshot. This isn't a hub-heavy map. The planet I first detected it on is circled red, and an arrow showing the direction it's coming from. The one circled green is where it was headed. You can see on the right side of the map where alerted planets have been creating carriers previously. Everything on the left hasn't been touched by anything but a scout. The shot might be a little small, but the two unexplored P9 worlds are the AI homeworlds based on the nearby core worlds I've managed to scout. If a CPA massed a bunch of units over there, I don't see a likely crossroads planet where it would have done it. The planet up at the very top of the map is my most recent capture, and you can see the worlds around it haven't been alerted long enough to start building barracks or carriers. Also the carriers had a lot of MkIV ships in them, which was fun to fight off. My guess is that it was formed on one of the core worlds near the AI homeworld for some reason. I guess i just need to get some scouts over there somehow and see what's going on.

Edit: By the way, there were a bunch of teleporting battle stations in one of the carriers, and I am fairly sure (after the number of reloads it took me to successfully fight off 2700 ships) that they are somehow teleporting right through the forcefield around one of my wormholes. At least, every time I had to reload and try again, the carrier would pop, the battle stations would come out, and then suddenly several of them would be one planet over. Said planet isn't connected to any hostile worlds, and the only entrance from this world has a forcefield right over the wormhole.

[Sunshine!]

Yeah, there's a weird kind of thing with teleporting ships, I've had teleport raiders and teleport battlestations jump straight through wormhole forcefields before.