Fallen spire, 8.3/8.3, first city exowave woes

[Peter Ebbesen]

A full cap of all normal forts costs 1.17 MILLION energy. You can build a full cap of every single per planet turret, excluding Mark V versions, for only 729,600. You can throw in a full cap of HBC turrets, which are per galaxy cap, for only an additional 79,800. This is BELOW the energy cost of the forts, and while I didn't crunch the numbers DPS wise I am certain that it easily out does the forts. To top this off, turrets have a Turret hull type, which almost nothing gets a bonus against. (H/Ks are the only thing I can think of that does.) Also, no turrets get penalties to damage against any type of hull, and every single per planet turret gets a bonus against a set of hull types, with Spider/Sniper turrets getting a 5x and the others getting 3x bonuses. So, all combined, turrets have lower energy costs, higher combined DPS, able aim at more targets due to sheer greater numbers, and have no hull penalty/have hull bonuses. Uh... Keith, I think Forts just got rendered moot by turrets. Whoops?

Fortunately, forts still retain an enviable role in defence, even if it not what their name would suggest. They are not hardened defensive positions, they are mobile long-range turrets.

Their attack range is so long that they can usually cover the entire area the AI fleets will traverse, so long as one positions them wisely. Even if one gets one of the good systems with an entry wormhole near a border and cunning places the station opposite, a fort can be placed near the middle of the system offset enough from the road of death the AI traverses when going for the station that it will have to deviate significantly to get the fort into range, while still covering the entire road.

The only turrets that provide the same type of functionality are the Spider and Sniper turrets - all others, including the missile turrets, are much shorter ranged and have a low time-on-target against enemy ships in-system, growing ever lower the better the system is defended with gravity turrets and other means of slowing down the AI fleet advance in-system. Forts thus properly deployed in a system provide a much greater damage over the duration of the enemy stay than equivalent cost turrets of the non-Spider/Sniper varieties do, but only when properly deployed and supported. (Get those Gravity 3 turrets.)

Those standard turrets provide much larger dps for their energy cost while they engage, certainly, but they have very low time on target before they are destroyed if you use them in a blocking system - longer time if you set up an enfilade in a defensive depth setup).

And with regards to forts vs. Spider and Sniper turrets, those turrets, nice though they definitely are, are all hard-countered by anything that is immune to sniper shots, but the forts attacks are not sniper shots, so they'll happily fire on anything thus defended.

Finally, forts provide excellent repair cover in case teleporting engineers have not been unlocked, slaved to a control group and then always present where they are most needed, and supportive repair cover when the engineers have been unlocked.

In short, forts are pretty damn good at the niche they fill, they are not made obsolete by the turrets, their energy costs aren't outrageous for their damage, and they supplement turrets well, but they are definitely supplementary to the Spider/Sniper turrets. Their main problem in a FS game is that they are galaxy-capped, so even when one has the energy, they have to be concentrated in one or two locations to make any significant difference in the defensive setup, giving them a fairly small niche.

[Peter Ebbesen]

These two are the direct consequences of the fact that my game has been very resource starved. I didn't use any trader toys yet because my income was low, and I needed it elsewhere. And the econ stations and harvesters unlock were only done lately, in an effort to increase said resource income. I did plan to put down toys and unlock more turrets when I had a better income.

1) If you feel you lack metal resources, increase your AIP and they will come. Harvesters are nice but unless you have lots of territory they don't compete with economic stations, and between Habitation Centers and Salvage, you should have metal income enough for anybody.

Fun thing for you to consider - you can build several Habitation Centres in a single system, should you so desire. Yes, it comes at the cost of a city slot, and all else being equal you don't want to do this as you'll prefer to maximize number of shipyards, but it is an option, and a strong option if you are trying not to increase your AIP and still feel you need a boosted metal income.


2) Given that you can pause development of trader toys just like you can pause everything else and given that all trader toys except for the Superfortress have very low energy costs, you should always purchase the toys you want for the homeworld (possibly excluding Superfortress) the first time the trader visits. Pause construction on all, select the one you want to build first and slave it to a control key. Then, whenever your resources are capped, hit the hotkey, start construction, and abort it a few seconds later when your resources have been sufficiently depleted. Once completed, hotkey the next toy and repeat. You'll have completed your trader toys sooner than you thought possible simply by reducing your resource waste. (And since you have positioned them under their own shield immediately behind the shields covering your home system, even with 0hp they won't get hit should anything actually manage to penetrate deeply enough to take a potshop at the home station's forcefields.)

Now, after all is said and done, this game has suffered a rather interesting amount of setbacks. But I don't want to abandon it yet. I think I'm going to try to salvage it once again. I will probably go on a conquering spree to reduce my fronts (contradicting my every instinct of keeping the aip low, I tell you , and setting up the defenses over multiple systems, trying your suggestions in the meanwhile.

Thanks a lot for the suggestions, once again.

Good to hear. We'll make a conqueror out of you yet!

Also - something pretty obvious I forgot to mention - once you are swimming in energy, there's absolutely nothing preventing you from beechheading ahead of your planets the exowaves will hit, should you want to win a bit more time for attritional tactics, though this is rough on such beechheads and you should expect to rebuild them all once the exowave has been dealt with, so probably only relevant for you once you feel you are swimming in resources. (Getting all those economic stations down and getting a much larger salvage cap will help a lot with that.)

[Zincat]

Thank you, Zanewolfe, for the answer and the time you put into looking at my save. I appreciate it, really. Also thanks to Peter for answering me yet again.

This is one of the biggest issues I've seen with your save. When playing on FS funneling the AI into defensive chokepoints is a MUST, whether they are in-depth corridors like Peter suggests, or building massive superchokes designed to face tank the like  I do, you MUST funnel the AI or the exo forces will destroy you. Typically you want to start funneling the AI before you even build your first Spire City. This is done by destroying Warp Gates, so that waves and exos can only come from the direction you want them to come. Easiest method I have found is to neuter the AI worlds where you don't want the AI to spawn exos/send waves from, going back 2-3 hops at least. This also greatly reduces/eliminates any potential border aggression from those locations, because a neutered world can support MUCH less units. Admittedly on the map you are running its not going to be easy, there isn't a simple way to really narrow things down to just 2-3 ingress points that I can see. I usually play around maps where I can do so easily, (Maze and X are my favorites) because I always run with 4-5 exo sources turned on. Peter's advice seems to help a great deal though.

I have completely unfurled the map and looked at it from every direction. No matter what I do I cannot reduce the number of entry points below 5. This is.... far from optimal for a fallen spire game. I really doubt I will be able to build the galactic transceiver under these conditions. I think I will aim for building the galactic capitol and winning after that.

One thing for future games, when building Spire Cities, if they are going to be a dedicated chokepoint/an ingress into your territory, you want to build them pure defensive. One Habitation Center and five Spire Reactors. For cities that are NOT going to be in direct line for the AI, build them with one Hab and five Shipyards. This might delay how quickly you build up your FS fleet, but it maximizes both the defensive power of Spire Cites, while also maximizing how many shipyards you can build. Reactors do NOT need to be on the same planet as the shipyard. If you have 10 reactors across 2 cities, you can build 2 more cities with 5 shipyards each. And since shipyards can NOT mount modules, they have no place on the front lines.

I am aware of that. In my other FS game, a few months ago, I did precisely that. Here, with 5 entry points, I will try to put a spire city on each.... and so it's hardly applicable. I think I'm probably best served having somewhat similar cities. Unless I manage somehow to neuter so far that they only keep coming from 1-2 directions. I will certainly try this later on. If I manage, then i will surely do this in order to have better spire cities on the critical defense points!

A lot of things about my technology unlocks, and turrets vs economy vs forts

Point taken, as I said above. Part of it was due to me being resource starved, due to having too few planets. So I unlocked a lot of things for economy, hoping to get out of the red...

1) If you feel you lack metal resources, increase your AIP and they will come. Harvesters are nice but unless you have lots of territory they don't compete with economic stations, and between Habitation Centers and Salvage, you should have metal income enough for anybody.

Fun thing for you to consider - you can build several Habitation Centres in a single system, should you so desire. Yes, it comes at the cost of a city slot, and all else being equal you don't want to do this as you'll prefer to maximize number of shipyards, but it is an option, and a strong option if you are trying not to increase your AIP and still feel you need a boosted metal income.

Ehh, I'm about to go on a conquer spree. Which will bring my aip to numbers never seen before by me (except when the galactic transceiver WAS built in the other game and fun stuff destroyed just about every ai planet XD)

2) Given that you can pause development of trader toys just like you can pause everything else and given that all trader toys except for the Superfortress have very low energy costs, you should always purchase the toys you want for the homeworld (possibly excluding Superfortress) the first time the trader visits. Pause construction on all, select the one you want to build first and slave it to a control key. Then, whenever your resources are capped, hit the hotkey, start construction, and abort it a few seconds later when your resources have been sufficiently depleted. Once completed, hotkey the next toy and repeat. You'll have completed your trader toys sooner than you thought possible simply by reducing your resource waste. (And since you have positioned them under their own shield immediately behind the shields covering your home system, even with 0hp they won't get hit should anything actually manage to penetrate deeply enough to take a potshop at the home station's forcefields.)

Fun thing is, I actually did put a couple down, paused, before building the second city. The exowave that came, armed with some nice energy bombs, destroyed them all from under the forcefields of the home systems... and left my home command station with 5% health. That was a close shave XD

Also - something pretty obvious I forgot to mention - once you are swimming in energy, there's absolutely nothing preventing you from beechheading ahead of your planets the exowaves will hit, should you want to win a bit more time for attritional tactics, though this is rough on such beechheads and you should expect to rebuild them all once the exowave has been dealt with, so probably only relevant for you once you feel you are swimming in resources. (Getting all those economic stations down and getting a much larger salvage cap will help a lot with that.)

I always beachhead into hard targets, when I can. I had also considered this, but resource starving prevented me from doing this.


Anyway, for now the plan is as follow. As said, no matter what I do it's impossible to reduce entry points below 5. I can neuter planets beyond, but we will see if that actually prevent exos from coming from there. One warp gate guardian would be after all all that's needed, and they spawn like rabbits. So, what I will do is

- Rearrange my defensive planets more to the way that Peter suggested, with defenses in strafing places where they can attack the enemy hopefully without being destroyed.
- Conquer about ten planets on the left side of the map. This will reduce my entry points to 5, and give me planets which I don't have to defend where I can employ those nice econ 2 and econ 3 stations. The difference in energy and metal should be significant. Also, with this I get more planets in between the entry points and the home world, and on each of these planets I can have defenses set to whittle away the enemy
- Use those 30 techs or so that I gain. More turrets unlock, perhaps the logistic mk2 station too. And keep some for later on when I build the galactic capitol which requires a lot of tech
- And of course use the superterminal. Those 10 planets will bring me close to 500 AIP. I don't know how much I can manage to reduce the aip, considering that I don't have that many spire ships, but I do hope quite a lot.

We will see how it goes with this

[Peter Ebbesen]

Fun thing is, I actually did put a couple down, paused, before building the second city. The exowave that came, armed with some nice energy bombs, destroyed them all from under the forcefields of the home systems... and left my home command station with 5% health. That was a close shave XD

That sounds as if you made the mistake of putting them under the force fields covering the home station and thus taking damage when the home station or its buildings got shot at rather than, as I advocate, putting them under their own forcefield behind the home station - so far behind that the home station forcefields do not overlap at all - such that they are will only be damaged if something shoot at something covered by their own force field.

Well, either that or the AI had unlocked sniper ships or something that chose to target your unfinished trader toys, which were located at a range that none of the normal AI ships would be able to reach normally.

I guess there are other possible reasons - it may have been a "You had to be there" situation - but generally speaking, so long as you make sure they are located far enough back not to be affected whenever something shoot at the homestation or its immediate vicinity, they are safe.

Anyway, for now the plan is as follow. As said, no matter what I do it's impossible to reduce entry points below 5. I can neuter planets beyond, but we will see if that actually prevent exos from coming from there. One warp gate guardian would be after all all that's needed, and they spawn like rabbits. So, what I will do is

- Rearrange my defensive planets more to the way that Peter suggested, with defenses in strafing places where they can attack the enemy hopefully without being destroyed.
- Conquer about ten planets on the left side of the map. This will reduce my entry points to 5, and give me planets which I don't have to defend where I can employ those nice econ 2 and econ 3 stations. The difference in energy and metal should be significant. Also, with this I get more planets in between the entry points and the home world, and on each of these planets I can have defenses set to whittle away the enemy
- Use those 30 techs or so that I gain. More turrets unlock, perhaps the logistic mk2 station too. And keep some for later on when I build the galactic capitol which requires a lot of tech
- And of course use the superterminal. Those 10 planets will bring me close to 500 AIP. I don't know how much I can manage to reduce the aip, considering that I don't have that many spire ships, but I do hope quite a lot.

We will see how it goes with this

Ask yourself why you mind having 500 AIP, and once you fully realize that it is a historical fear that has no place in the game as it currently works at these sort of difficulties regardless of whether you are playing Fallen Spire or not you, it will set your feet squarely on the path to conquest.

[ZaneWolfe]

Ask yourself why you mind having 500 AIP, and once you fully realize that it is a historical fear that has no place in the game as it currently works at these sort of difficulties regardless of whether you are playing Fallen Spire or not you, it will set your feet squarely on the path to conquest.

While the main game is going to be fixed so that AIP matters, in FS AIP is completely irrelevant after 2-4 cities, depending on your game. AIP does NOT add to exos, and it stops adding to defenses at 200 or so. (Though that may have changed given this new patch.) I've had the AIP so high in an FS game that the AIP FLOOR was over 1000. Pro tip, the floor is 1/5 your total AIP. FS is ALWAYS going to be about conquest. Whether you're aiming to take the entire galaxy back, like me, or you're trying to get enough territory to secure your borders and funnel the AI, you are going to have massive amounts of AIP. Rather than looking at he map and going "How many planets can I take before the AIP is dangerous?", you need to go "Ok, where do I want to force the AI to attack? Got it. Everything behind this/those location(s) is mine then." I find that I get 25 planets MINIMUM every single FS game.

[keith.lamothe]

FS is ALWAYS going to be about conquest.

That's the idea, but, (as Peter's recent AAR detailed) with the reinforcements-redirecting-to-waves on high AIP it got to the point where a full galaxy conquest on diff 9 was not really all that feasible.  The waves (nevermind the exos, the WAVES) just got too punishingly huge.

That particular issue has been addressed, since then

[Zincat]

Well, I thought I would report on how the game goes. It's basically finished in the sense... that I more or less lost. I mean, I am going to kill the AIs the normal way, but I cannot really go further along the fallen spire campaign in any sensible way.

There are 2 main reasons:
1) Fallen spire 6/10 apparently is rather hard indeed, and the waves keep increasing
but mainly
2) I cannot reduce the number of entry points below 5. This means that my galaxy capped defenses AND most importantly my spire fleet cannot cover all the entry points.

This is the final unfurled map


The normal exowaves that I'm seeing have 4 different waves, more or less, each of total strength around 80000. Each of those has 1-2 hunter/killers, 1-2 golems, 6-8 dire guardians, 6-8 or so other large ships (spirecraft siege towers, spirecraft shields etc), plus between 30 and 60 starships. This is enough to come on top against a  spire city unaided by the fleet, warheads, or massive concentration of galaxy-capped stuff. And there's 4 of them each time.

I set up 5 hard chockepoints in the systems underlined in red. All the systems underlined in green instead are fitted with mk2 or mk3 logistic stations and all the spider, sniper and missile turrets I have. I have to say, they are quite effective in thinning  out threat, killing a lot of ships while they approach. But the exowave do not take enough damage and reach my hard chockepoints still too strong.
The home system also has a full complement of trader toys, minus the ion cannons. Since there are so many entry points, it made sense to put them there.

So, when the last 2 timed exowaves came, I managed to kill them, but I had to use a lot of warheads AND I took immense damage. My fleet was entirely destroyed, as well as one spire city razed to the ground. Rebuilding all of that took time and so I had little time left to do other stuff in between the waves.

Now, considering that the waves keep getting worse and worse, I think I'm finished because the time it would take to build the fourth city, retrieve the fifth shard, build the fifth city and then the galactic capitol would likely mean the exowave surpass the level at which I can still defeat them.

Regarding tech, I ended up unlocking mk3 logistics, mk1-4 sniper, spider and missiles, and mk3 grav turrets. I do have some tech I was saving up for the galactic capitol. But there's nothing really to spend it on that would change things in a significant way. And besides, since I have significant defenses in 14 worlds I am still rather energy starved, and the metal income is just 2000/second.

I wanted to report in this thread, as a thank you for those who answered me and gave me tips.

A few considerations:
- The staggered defenses over multiple systems, aided by logistic stations, are immensely useful against exowaves. Sure, a lot of turret dies, but they do their job. If I did not set the defenses up that way, I would have died long ago. I now laugh at what I considered a hard exowave at the beginning of this thread.
- Logistic stations, especially mk3, are extremely useful in this regard. Not only they are more or less equivalent in damage to the military ones(because the enemies stay inside the same system twice as much), BUT they also allow you to gain a lot of time, which can be used to move the fleet, rebuild things, move galaxy capped defenses etc. Having one system with logistic mk3 and serious defenses before a hard chockepoint system really allow for a lot of time. They are also immensely useful during shard recovery chases
- Fallen spire 6/10 is rather brutal. I mean it
- Ai progress is indeed much less important during such a game. But I would not call it irrelevant, because the ai unlocked some high health, annoying ships in my game, and built a LOT of them. Sure, they could not survive against my spire fleet... but they took time to kill, and that left me with LESS time between the exowaves.
- I must bow to Peter on the matter of most useful turrets. When setting up defenses over multiple systems, spider, sniper and missile turrets are indeed king, because of their range. Also, they have bonus against medium, which is what most of the dire guardians are.
- And finally, I probably started the fallen spire campaign too early, and then took too much time to reach the point I am now. This, combined with the 6/10 spire difficulty, increased the exowaves too much. Got to be faster next time...

Well, that's it, I think I will take a break on this particular game, and perhaps come and finish it later in a conventional way. I don't think the ai worlds can really stand up against a 3-cities spire fleet, the way the FS ships are now. Could probably roll over them rather quickly.

[keith.lamothe]

Congratulations on getting that far

Yea, it looks like a combination of things:
- FS set higher than 4/10 (the balance target)
- HW pick is in one of the less defensible parts of the map
- Map type is already a particularly defense-hostile graph topology
- Difficulty 8.3, while not extreme, is far less forgiving of settings like the above than, say, diff 7

So yea, you can win it by just kicking down the AI's front door with your capital fleet and a bunch of warheads, but you don't have the defensive position to follow the campaign all the way through since it's primarily a "defend well enough to win" victory condition.  But winning by offense is still open

[PokerChen]

The only remaining defensive extension that you could consider is to scrap your lowest mark duplicate turrets to give you the energy to build on the most popular AI exo-wave spawning systems... it's a bonus if you have cross-planet waves turned on. Although, I wouldn't build on Moatadm unless you've effectively neutralised the adjacent homeworld.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Well, I thought I would report on how the game goes. It's basically finished in the sense... that I more or less lost. I mean, I am going to kill the AIs the normal way, but I cannot really go further along the fallen spire campaign in any sensible way.

There are 2 main reasons:
1) Fallen spire 6/10 apparently is rather hard indeed, and the waves keep increasing
but mainly
2) I cannot reduce the number of entry points below 5. This means that my galaxy capped defenses AND most importantly my spire fleet cannot cover all the entry points.

Question:

Have you tried a large scale campaign of eliminating warp gates?

I am not sure of this functionality, but it seemed to me as if the exos spawned at warp gates near your territory and then go after specific spire city or homeworld targets. If that is the case, then if you kill off all warp gates near all of your chokepoints but one, I would expect all of the exos to arrive near that one and go for it as their shortest path to either homeworld or spire cities would go through that chosen chokepoint, meaning that you could stack nearly all your global-cap defences there and have your fleet there as well at the start of the wave, helping to deal with everything - or nearly everything.

This would require you to make that one chokepoint or a planet near it the single entry point for normal waves, but surely that would be an acceptable tradeoff? (If it worked).

Note that I have not tried this, it is merely how I guessed the functionality worked based on my single Fallen Spire game. If they spawn at any AI warp gate rather than merely those close to you and don't take a shortest path approach to their target, then the odds increase that some will take an apparently long way around to hit you where you are vulnerable, and you'd have to go on a larger warp gate elimination campaign to increase the odds of their paths going the way you want.

So that said, rather than throwing in the towel at this point, I do think that attempting to control things through warp gate elimination is the way to go: Just do it to a depth 3 to start with to see if it makes any noticeable difference and, if it does, expand as necessary.

Even if I'm right, it might not do much given the openness of the map you've chosen, but it would surely be worth trying out if you haven't done so already.

- Ai progress is indeed much less important during such a game. But I would not call it irrelevant, because the ai unlocked some high health, annoying ships in my game, and built a LOT of them. Sure, they could not survive against my spire fleet... but they took time to kill, and that left me with LESS time between the exowaves.

That's why you go and eliminate them by hacking when they show up rather than dealing with them in combat. Spire Stealth Battleships, for instance, are as good as an immediate "Go hack!" order.

[keith.lamothe]

Have you tried a large scale campaign of eliminating warp gates?

Operation "Warp Grid? What Warp Grid?"

[Zincat]

Have you tried a large scale campaign of eliminating warp gates?

I am not sure of this functionality, but it seemed to me as if the exos spawned at warp gates near your territory and then go after specific spire city or homeworld targets. If that is the case, then if you kill off all warp gates near all of your chokepoints but one, I would expect all of the exos to arrive near that one and go for it as their shortest path to either homeworld or spire cities would go through that chosen chokepoint, meaning that you could stack nearly all your global-cap defences there and have your fleet there as well at the start of the wave, helping to deal with everything - or nearly everything.

This would require you to make that one chokepoint or a planet near it the single entry point for normal waves, but surely that would be an acceptable tradeoff? (If it worked).

Note that I have not tried this, it is merely how I guessed the functionality worked based on my single Fallen Spire game. If they spawn at any AI warp gate rather than merely those close to you and don't take a shortest path approach to their target, then the odds increase that some will take an apparently long way around to hit you where you are vulnerable, and you'd have to go on a larger warp gate elimination campaign to increase the odds of their paths going the way you want.

Have you tried a large scale campaign of eliminating warp gates?

Operation "Warp Grid? What Warp Grid?"

I was under the impression that they can spawn at any structure that gives the Warp Gate to a planet. So, for example, a Warp Gate Guardian as well. Am I wrong in that? Because, if they can spawn from any War Gate Guardian, it's probably futile as I likely don't have the time to do that before I'm killed. I'd have to fully neuter a lot of worlds, I don't know if I can manage

IF instead they only spawn at warp gates proper, then it's another matter. And it might be worth trying it out.

That's why you go and eliminate them by hacking when they show up rather than dealing with them in combat. Spire Stealth Battleships, for instance, are as good as an immediate "Go hack!" order.

Well... that's assuming there is something to hack to make the annoying thing go away. Or is it granted that there a design backup for unlocked ai ships somewhere?

[Peter Ebbesen]

Have you tried a large scale campaign of eliminating warp gates?

Operation "Warp Grid? What Warp Grid?"

Just taking gate raiding and neutering to its logical conclusion.

Well, it seems a reasonable approach to me, given my knowledge. It might be entirely wrong, of course, and the exowaves might not spawn/pursue targets as I estimated they did, but did not rigorously test for, but it would be a shame to just give up when possible avenues for victory remain!

I was under the impression that they can spawn at any structure that gives the Warp Gate to a planet. So, for example, a Warp Gate Guardian as well. Am I wrong in that? Because, if they can spawn from any War Gate Guardian, it's probably futile as I likely don't have the time to do that before I'm killed. I'd have to fully neuter a lot of worlds, I don't know if I can manage

When I say Warp Gate, I mean any structure/unit that grants the warp gate ability, not just the structure.

Why are you allowing Warp Gate Guardians to live? They are a blight upon the galaxy and should be destroyed whenever you have the chance, such that you rather than the AI remain in control. (It would be really helpful if there was a filter for WGGs so you didn't have to do a custom search).

ANYHOW, that is easy for me to say as it is something that is undoubtedly much easier when done as part of regular operations rather than, as it would be in this case, having to perform a lot of cleaning up under time pressure due to having been deficient in that regard up to this point.

I just don't see any reason for allowing the AI any control of the tempo or direction of the game if I can avoid it (any game, really - AI War isn't special in that regard), and mostly I can.

That's why you go and eliminate them by hacking when they show up rather than dealing with them in combat. Spire Stealth Battleships, for instance, are as good as an immediate "Go hack!" order.

Well... that's assuming there is something to hack to make the annoying thing go away. Or is it granted that there a design backup for unlocked ai ships somewhere?

If they are unlocked by AIP progress, all I've seen until now suggests the answer is yes - they'll even erect a new design backup server somewhere else (any random AI world except AI homeworlds seem valid targetrs) with the design if you destroy the one a design is currently on. If your AIs have them from start as part of their personality, I don't know.

[PokerChen]

Peter's suggestion makes a fair amount of sense if your map topology allows a certain target warp-gate that the AI prefers to spawn in. When given a clear choice, exo waves will prefer to spawn at the closest accessible wormhole to their target. E.g., if you designate one warpgate 4 jumps from your HW and leave all other entry points at 6+, then it's likely that every exo wave targetting your HW will probably jump in at that point.

Looking at your map, Nuto may be your best (least worst) choice as an ingress point - clearing warpgates 2 deep from Fisash and Suozupunu, and one deep from other Non-Nuto ingress points will be probably do.

If they are unlocked by AIP progress, all I've seen until now suggests the answer is yes - they'll even erect a new design backup server somewhere else (any random AI world except AI homeworlds seem valid targetrs) with the design if you destroy the one a design is currently on. If your AIs have them from start as part of their personality, I don't know.

Every design the AI has at the start of the game or gains due to AIP will have a corresponding design backup server, until you hack it or you take the planet without hacking it. I have not seen respawns myself after I took the planet said design was on, or I was being inattentive because I had no interest in said design.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Every design the AI has at the start of the game or gains due to AIP will have a corresponding design backup server, until you hack it or you take the planet without hacking it. I have not seen respawns myself after I took the planet said design was on, or I was being inattentive because I had no interest in said design.

I used the respawning mechanic to amusing effect during last weekend's "What AIP memo" challenge game - unfortunately, I didn't manage to get all the remaining designs in the galaxy on to one server park as I moved into the endgame, as it seems there is a limit and when I destroyed the second to last location the last legal location in the galaxy (the planet from which waves were sent to my homeworld) ended up holding only held 8 designs rather than the accumulated 13 or 14 I was expected.

But at least I was able to design download all 8 designs in one hack, sending my HaP balance plunging from ~1k to -11.5k.