Minimizing Reinforcements

[Elestan]

Just to confirm and summarize what I've gleaned from reading the wiki and forums:

If you want to minimize the number and strength of ships the AI receives via reinforcements, the following methods are effective:

• Take very few systems; each AI receives Reinforcement Points (RP) equal to the number of non-AI-controlled systems, up to a maximum of 15-20 (depending on difficulty), so until you liberate that many systems, the AI's total reinforcements will be capped.
• Take nearly all of the systems; each AI cannot spend more than 2 RP (3 on homeworlds) per cycle on any single planet (belonging to either AI), and cannot reinforce a system once it has more than (250 * #of reinforcement gates) ships in it.  If an AI cannot spend all of its RP, the extra are wasted.
• Keep a handful of neutered low-Tech systems on alert (possibly beachheaded).  The Mark level of the AI's ships depends on that system's Tech level, and the AI must spend its RP on alerted worlds first, so this tactic causes them to receive weaker ships than they otherwise would.

Did I miss anything?

EDIT:  Note that from what the wiki page on this says, neutering systems does not actually reduce the number of ships the AI receives, unless it has so few systems that it's reinforcing all of its systems to the limit every cycle, and thus cannot spend all of its RP.

[Singrana]

regarding that last part (and tbh i dont KNOW this, as there is information both ways on the forums) (remember the game changed over time so some of those may be wrong / correct for THEIR TIME but may be the same or different NOW) i recomend you enable reinforcement logging and read thru the file, for one of the reinforcement events, from reading it myself it looks like most guardposts (not wormhole GP tho) counts 10% as much as the command station for the amount of "budget" that one star system gets if it is selected for a reinforcement event so this sugests that neutering DOES matter for buildup over time (if you beachead the system however 100%->200% reinforcement size should not matter much), remember these individual reinforcement waves are SMALL since they are very frequent, but for systems you clear rarely i guess neutering matters if the above find is correct (the wiki is no more trustworthy than the forums btw i recomend site:arcengames.com in google as an "extended" wiki)

remember that the reinforcement points are used to TRIGGER a budget income, and then a buy from that budget to turn into ships, it is THAT income that varies based on guardposts. so hypothetically a 10 GP system will get twice as much budget per reinforcement point spent on it IF IT IS SELECTED, no effect if the neutered system next door is selected instead, the budget is used to buy ships as long as it is positve, and it can go negative, but then it will stop buying new ships, and the balance is saved for next time it is selected and it then "pays off" any debt it has before it can purchase more ships so in the long run everything evens out

[Toranth]

Neutering a system is useful for reasons other than trying to reduce reinforcements, I think.  Especially since I don't believe it does that anymore...

Basically, since the Guardpost rework a few versions back, AI Guardposts have been a real threat.  If you ever think you might need to traverse a system, neutering it when you have the surplus capacity to do so can you can save time later - when attacking something on the other side, chasing down the Threatfleet in preparation for an assault elsewhere, preparing a potential hacking site, or cleaning up after a CPA, just to mention a few that come to mind.


As for your original question, Yes to all three points (exact numbers may be off, though, due to tweaking over versions).  Neutering and beachheading a few systems adjacent to yours can do a lot to keep the reinforcements and Special Forces under control.