Cross-planet attack fizzled?

[TheMachineIsSentient]

I received a warning that a cross planet attack was coming my way. The wave meter jumped by 400. I was curious as to how this would happen, as I had done some pretty diligent gate raiding, so unless the AI was planning to fly a long way, there would be no sudden warp-in and attack by my estimation.

As soon as the timer was up, the threat meter jumped by the exact amount of the Cross planet raid, but I did not get attacked. I'm assuming that someday I will. Is this normal? If I didn't raid gates, would I suddenly be attacked or would it take a while like it is right now? Lastly, seeing as I have 400 ships incoming, should I try to learn where they are all coming from or just wait?

[TheMachineIsSentient]

One additional question... when planets around me are reinforcing, but I destroyed their gates, where are they coming from and how do I stop it?what would be the point of stopping the gates?

[wyvern83]

Cross Planet Attacks are separate from Waves and do not come from gates. Gate Raiding will not effect CPAs but will effect wave origin locations per usual.

Reinforcements arrive at guard posts and command centers so to make sure a system will not longer grow you must denude it of these as well as the gates. I hope that's helpful.

If you see ships massing up for the CPA you might preempt it and destroy some of them early if you id the correct staging area. (at least I think you can) Your CPA will fly the "long way" to where the AI thinks will be effective place to start. Some of the CPA may bide their time. In my game I think I still have part of a CPA prowling around long after the rest of it was obliterated. 

[Blahness]

In a recent game with The Word, we had a CPA... vanish.  The 3200 "wave" counter... didn't translate into threat.  It just vanished.  I wish I had saved beforehand so I could replicate it.

[superking]

my first large CPA scared the hell out of me (1800 ships, i had baout 700) but in practice they dribbled through my wormholes over a period of 5 minutes in a manner that rendered no threat to me whatsoever. That was at difficulty 7.6...

[x4000]

The thing that Blahness is referring to is a bug, but the rest are not.  The Blahness issue there was something that was happening in 3.060 betas, which we thought we had stamped completely out, but which apparently still happens on some rare circumstances.  We don't yet have a save that will let us demonstrate this, and we haven't seen it ourselves since that was fixed, and reviewing the code did not turn up any obvious culprits, so on that one we're sort of stuck waiting for someone to send us a save from before a CPA emerges and disappears (no threat increase).

But, as I said, that's pretty rare.  What's much more common, and by design, is what TheMachineIsSentient is reporting.  First off, I think there is some confusion here about how CPAs actually work.  This wiki topic will hopefully clear that up.

Now: that said, and hopefully read, the reason that a CPA might be more focused or more diffuse is hopefully clear.  If you are really strung out in the galaxy, CPAs are likely to be the bane of your game, the most challenging thing in it.  If you are in certain other types of positions, they may be less of a threat, just logically based on how they work, above.  But to win, you have to expand at some point, and that's when CPAs become the most threatening.

But yes, the only immediate effect from a CPA countdown ending is that your Threat meter jumps up by the value of the CPA, and suddenly there are hundreds or thousands of angry AI ships out in the galaxy hunting you... what happens from there will vary heavily from map type, your position, the AI's position, decisions the AI makes, etc.  The AI ships will try to clump together, but if they are so spread out at start they never even see their peers, then you're more likely to get a dribble as wyvern83 notes.


Also, to add to wyvern83's explanation of reinforcements (which was excellent and correct), let me also point you to the wiki topic on that one, which lays it out in immense detail if you want.

[ShadowOTE]

Another possibility: hungry devourer golem. This is especially common on tree maps when you are positioned somewhere the golem passes through fairly regularly. We've seen half a CPA or more just disappear because the golem stumbles across them in transit 

[x4000]

That would definitely do it.

[misterC]

And for the gaid raiding, if you leave one gate, then you know waves will come from that wormhole.

That makes sure you can survive raids better, because you don't have to build up more defenses beforehand or move ships there.

[Doddler]

I've seen this kind of thing in all the games I've played.  It's not always just with CPAs but CPAs make it most obvious.  I'll have like 10-20 threat, CPA will up threat by 1000 or so, I'll kill the 700-800 ships that come at me, and threat will sit 200 with the ships nowhere in sight (if I don't attack the AI, this threat will never go away even after hours of waiting).  They never attack, I'm not sure what happens.  After 10 hours or so in game and 3 CPAs I had about 700 threat that would never materialize into an attack.  The ships are out there because you'll find that when attacking AI worlds that you are killing some of the ships that count as threat.  I figured that they were being put in cold storage before they could attack, waiting on portals for their friends to come before launching an attack and no friends show up, or just really confused about where they should be attacking.  I don't really know.  All I know is that as the game progresses threat will eventually creep up with ships that will never attack you.

[wyvern83]

I highly recommend reading anything you can get your hands on for this game. The wiki has alot of great information, though keep in mind that some of it gets dated with new releases and it doesn't have everything yet. I read maybe 80% of the wiki and quite a few posts in the forums before deciding to buy the game and I still find it helpful. (learned about scrapping the other day from a post and had hitherto not known it was implemented)

In response to Doddler, Great Idea! Cold storage could definitely account for this kind of behavior.

Also, I like to leave scouts on border worlds so I keep tabs on CPAs. Using the galactic map I watched my CPA of 600 group up in three dispersed locations. Once the attack started I tracked their progress with the map and though two groups attacked I saw the third peel off for parts unknown without entering my bordering system.

I suspect they went around to join the 2nd beachhead but that group attacked before they arrived so I suspect, like Doddler is suggesting, that they went into cold storage on arrival; having insufficient numbers on their own for an attack.

[TheMachineIsSentient]

Thanks for all the answers here. I did read the wiki, but I think I understand better now hearing other people's experiences. I think I have the motivation now to actually leave a warp gate on a planet, so as to direct the flow of an attack. I'm not going to worry too much about CPAs, as it seems the real summary of this feature is, a bunch of ships show up in the universe that may or may not fly in your direction when the timer is up.