Question about Reinforcements and Border Aggresion and General AI Attack's

[Skyswimsky]

Hey, sorry for my bad english hope its still understandable :/

I read these 2 Wiki pages:
http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_AI_Reinforcements
http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Border_Aggression

So i understand that the Guard Posts basicly define the limit on how much Ships can stay on a Planet, the AI progress states how strong he reinfoces and depending on how much Planets u have(caped at 15 on 7 diff) the AI is able to reinforce a more planets to to its cap(so if he has 0 Ships and 3 Guardposts, he could place 750 Ships on this planet?).
If the cap is higher then the treshold for Border Aggresion, which grows smaller the higher the AI Progress, it free's those ships and attacks, right?

Now i have a few questions to it:
When every Planet is fully reinforced in numbers except one, and this one is a candidate for Border Aggresion it will basicly pour out tons of ships from there and never combines its lower mark ships to higher marks?


And the other Question is how AI Carriers behave or AI Guardians in general(or more like other means of attacking the player), for example i had a Planet once and like every few minutes an 200 AI Carrier dropped onto this planet over and over and over again, that cant be because of Border Aggresion, can it? I mean if i listen to the Wiki the Cap for it would be around 3800, that are 16 Guard posts before Border Aggresion can happen and now that i think about it i never had seen a Planet with so many Guard Posts on it. In general, when i think about this high number (for diff 7) its very unlikely this happens but still here and there are ships attacking me outside of Exo-waves, Cross-Wave and Warp gate attacks...so what are other reasons for the AI to attack a Planet besides Border Aggresion?

[Diazo]

Welcome to the fight! 

Anyways, there have been some massive changes into the run up to the Ancient Shadows release to how the AI attacks you. I'll try to run things down.

(Everyone else chime in also, I'm going to use this thread to update the wiki once it has run its course.)

Border Aggression
This still exists in the game but with the other mechanics I'm going to list below, it is now very, very rare that this mechanic gets invoked.

System Defense
Called "Basic AI Reinforcements" on the wiki, these are pretty much unchanged from what the wiki says. The only difference I noted was that it is no longer true that it only reinforces planets on alert until they are full. It certainly still prioritizes planets on alert, but there is a decent chance now that other planets, especially high-value ones, will get a reinforcement wave.

Also note that this is where Barracks come from if they appear after the game starts. As the number of ships on a planet starts to get really, really high, the AI puts them in barracks. The catch here is I am not sure if ships inside a barracks count towards the planets ship cap or not. I think they do? But I'm not actually sure.

Threat
Threat is freed ships that are sitting around waiting for the chance to attack you. They tend to cluster on the far side of wormholes from your territory. Threat comes from sources such as the survivors of an AI wave that ran away or defenders of a Guard Post you have destroyed.

If after about 30 minutes ships on threat don't see a chance to attack, they change to ThreatFleet and fall back to a rally point to join up with other ThreatFleet ships that look to attack you at a future point in time.

Ships on Threat and ThreatFleet do not count towards a planet's ship cap for reinforcement purposes.

Special Forces
Special Forces are ships the AI holds in reserve that it uses to defend high-value planets. (Planets with an ARS, Adv Fac, Core Fab, etc.) They are deployed in response to a players attacks so their is a small window after the player ships warp in before the Special Forces ships will warp in.

If the Human forces retreat, the Special Forces will return to base after a short while.

Destroying a Special Forces Guard post (and incurring the AIP cost) will decrease the size of the Special Forces Reserve by 5%.

Strategic Reserve
Essentially the same as Special Forces, but only deploys to defend the AI homeworlds and Core worlds. (Core worlds being those adjacent to an AI Homeworld.)
There is no way to decrease the size of these and they tend to be bigger as their first deployment is not until late in the game when the Player enters the Core worlds.

(When I do the wiki I'll see if I can get exact numbers out of Keith, but this is a start.)

D.

[Bognor]

Based on the patch notes and my experience, the strategic reserves will also defend a world with a superterminal, which potentially gives the player a means of reducing their numbers before attacking a home world or core world.  From reading various notes on the same page, I gather there's actually two independent strategic reserve forces, one for each AI.

If we're talking about system defense / basic AI reinforcements, I'd be keen to know for certain
(1) What's the effect of destroying non-wormhole guardposts on the number of ships a planet receives per reinforcement pulse?
(2) What's the effect of destroying wormhole guardposts on the number of ships a planet receives per reinforcement pulse?
(3) What's the effect of destroying non-wormhole guardposts on a planet's ship cap?
(4) What's the effect of destroying wormhole guardposts on a planet's ship cap?

I've seen contradictory answers to at least some of those questions floating around.  Based on this post from Chris in Feb 2011 the answers are (1) reduces it (2) reduces it (3) reduces it (4) doesn't affect it.  There's also this thread from Aug 2011 which gives the same answers.  But I'm not sure whether things have changed since then.

[Kahuna]

If you uploaded your save file I could take a look at it and give better answers.

If I remember correctly AI planets can have up to 1000 guards (defending AI ships). After additional reinforcements are put into
carrier(s) and become free threat. Defending on how much firepower you have on your planet the threat ships may or may not attack you. Those carriers could also be left over ships from CPAs or threat from Deep Strike(s) or Threatening Eye(s).