Exos have become insane

[Hearteater]

Yes, an Exo gets their speed set to the lead ships+5 (generally the biggest) and if the lead ship is immune to Gravity, so is the entire Exo.  However, once the lead ship dies, this goes away.  You can actually identify the lead ship by finding out which ship isn't getting its speed boosted/reduced.

[Faulty Logic]

Does anyone have any ideas on how I (or anyone) could make the defenses better?

I notice you only have riot mkIs. MkIIs can effectively halve attacking power under the right conditions, and help kill enemy engines faster, enabling kiting. Also, I would recommend having a few spirecraft rams on hand. And warheads.

[Mánagarmr]

Players getting beat by 10/10? I don't see the problem

[TechSY730]

Players getting beat by 10/10? I don't see the problem

It's not that they are getting beaten, it's that they are getten beaten by an almost impossible to deal with situation early in the game.
That early in the game part is what the issue is, as it much more fun to play for many hours just for the AI to put up a extremely hard resistance until it escalates it to impossible levels.

EDIT: I would agree though the 10/10 is sort of a suspect sample. Someone should see if similarly near impossible situations early in the game on 9.3 or 9.6 or something.

[lemons]

I think a better solution would be to stagger out Exo waves a bit. The botnet alone is worth an exo wave (and it usually chews through them fast), but the other golems and spirecraft aren't generally strong enough in a straight up fight to justify doubling that exo wave size. This runs contrary to the purpose of those craft being needed to counter the exo waves; instead of using golems and spirecraft vs exos you use them to cleave a path through the regular AI ships then when an Exo wave comes you hide them in a corner because they are irreplaceable and die in a blink of an eye.

Seeing how Botnet Golems essentially let you have infinity units given enough patience I have a hard time believing the counter can be too strong though. It's just that Botnet + Golems + Spirecraft + normal forces are not nearly able to fend off 3x as big of an exo wave as Botnet + normal forces alone, more like 1.5x. If the 2nd exo started just as the first was ending, and the third just as the second was ending, the difficulty would scale closer to the actual player strength.

I'm also for customized waves for each type of exo wave. Whether the waves should be tailored to counter or be countered by the Botnet/Golem/Spirecraft is up for debate. Of course, if the botnet is supposed to beat botnet waves then by corollary all other waves should be immune to reclamation

[TechSY730]

I think a better solution would be to stagger out Exo waves a bit. The botnet alone is worth an exo wave (and it usually chews through them fast), but the other golems and spirecraft aren't generally strong enough in a straight up fight to justify doubling that exo wave size. This runs contrary to the purpose of those craft being needed to counter the exo waves; instead of using golems and spirecraft vs exos you use them to cleave a path through the regular AI ships then when an Exo wave comes you hide them in a corner because they are irreplaceable and die in a blink of an eye.

Seeing how Botnet Golems essentially let you have infinity units given enough patience I have a hard time believing the counter can be too strong though. It's just that Botnet + Golems + Spirecraft + normal forces are not nearly able to fend off 3x as big of an exo wave as Botnet + normal forces alone, more like 1.5x. If the 2nd exo started just as the first was ending, and the third just as the second was ending, the difficulty would scale closer to the actual player strength.

This is something I have been wanting for a while. Making the different exo sources have something that differentiates their timing, so they don't always activate at once. Sure, sometimes they might, but not always.

[lemons]

If they sometimes activated at the same time it would usually mean you sometimes die from a RNG outside your control. If we simply took a 3x intensity 2 minute wave and stretched it out to a variable 1x-1.5x intensity with varying wave composition parameters over 10 minutes the player would probably have to respond to a few normal AI waves in the meantime, and that is going to be more than enough of a difficulty increase I think. Defending against multiple threats is also a lot more interesting than having every military ship you own pile onto a single world hoping to out-blob the Evo blob.