Question about reinforcements

[allmybase]

I was reading the wiki about this and there is a couple paragraphs that go like this

"At each planet that is reinforced, the AI player will get ships at every command post and also at the command station. The number of ships added at each post/station is based on the AI Progress. There is no cap as to how many ships an AI player can have at any given planet, although the AI will sometimes choose to turn excess defensive waves to offensive purposes (the "Attack Forming at Planet X" warning).

There is ship cap per planet with the AI: 250 x the number of command posts and stations, with a minimum cap of 250 and a maximum cap of 2500. After that number of ships per AI player is reached they won't keep reinforcing. They'll fill up all the planets on the map to that degree and then stop. They won't reinforce to any non-alerted planets unless all of the alerted planets are full up, in which case they will reinforce any other planet they control. It is possible for a single reinforcement to send the AI over the per-planet limit, but no further reinforcements will be made once the per-planet limit is passed per AI player. "

What confuses me is that it says in the first paragraph there isn't a ship cap, and then it says there is a ship cap in the second paragraph.

Also it seems to be that frequently a lot of people here mention planets that have something like 3000-4000+ ships, when in the second paragraph it says the cap is 2500. How is this explained, is it because of patrols?

And also I'm confused as to how to reroute special guard post patrols. There is kind of a "crossroads" planet that divides east from west, I have taken out every spec guard post within 2 jumps of this planet (like 8 or so spec guard posts), and they are still sending spec guard patrols through (I am certain they are spec guards because when I abandon this crossroad planet they cross between west and east not going towards me but towards some far off guard post). How does the AI choose which spec guard posts to go between? Is it possible that they are patrolling from one spec guard post on the far east going to the far west in which case I can't reasonably hope to dwindle the number of patrols unless I find every last guard post in the galaxy?

[eRe4s3r]

Actually, that wiki page would be a bit confusing, because i am FAIRLY certain that the game actually enforces ship caps on planets for the AI at some insane value (5000+ ).

However, these ship caps are explained to be PER AI - remember you always play against 2 AI's, this means 2 AI's means twice the ship cap. So each AI gets a 2500 cap based on guardposts and command station. I do thnk 5000 is a limit at which the game starts to "up-convert" ships ie, higher level to replace lower level ships.

As for spec-ops, you have to kill off a whole branch - on a cross-road world that means.. you have a problem

This is also where the deep raids originally came from

[x4000]

Sorry, that was confusing.  I've removed the line "There is no cap as to how many ships an AI player can have at any given planet, although the AI will sometimes choose to turn excess defensive waves to offensive purposes (the "Attack Forming at Planet X" warning)." which is wrong and outdated.

The next sentence, with the "minimum cap of 250 and a maximum cap of 2500" I have also changed to "minimum cap of 250 and a maximum cap of 2500 (per AI player)," which is the case as eRe4s3r says.

Also it seems to be that frequently a lot of people here mention planets that have something like 3000-4000+ ships, when in the second paragraph it says the cap is 2500. How is this explained, is it because of patrols?

Just as an added note to the above, those caps don't include the patrols, which might push it even higher on occasion.

And also I'm confused as to how to reroute special guard post patrols. There is kind of a "crossroads" planet that divides east from west, I have taken out every spec guard post within 2 jumps of this planet (like 8 or so spec guard posts), and they are still sending spec guard patrols through (I am certain they are spec guards because when I abandon this crossroad planet they cross between west and east not going towards me but towards some far off guard post). How does the AI choose which spec guard posts to go between? Is it possible that they are patrolling from one spec guard post on the far east going to the far west in which case I can't reasonably hope to dwindle the number of patrols unless I find every last guard post in the galaxy?

AI ships will route between any special forces guard posts that are there, no matter how far apart there are.  If you had only two left in the galaxy, on opposite ends, they would route between those.  To keep them from patrolling through a crossroads planet you'd need to destroy all the special forces guard posts on one side of the crossroads.  Same thing is true of trains.  Normally special forces ships (and trains, actually) prefer to go between planets that are about 3 hops away from their current location, and if that fails, then they would go to ones 2 hops away if possible, and otherwise they just pick one at random, wherever they might be.

One important note, though: special forces ships are only added to the galaxy when a planet containing a special forces guard post is reinforced.  So if all the on-alert planets have no special forces guard posts, then the number of special forces ships would eventually dwindle to extremely low values.  So you can affect their overall numbers that way, or the routes they take by destroying nodes in general.

[allmybase]

Thanks for your replies, they are always so detailed, quick, and useful   

One day I will be able to put it all to good use and defeat the AI...just not today 

[allmybase]

Oh so wait a second, guard posts work for both AIs? So if there is 1 guard post, it reinforces both AIs for a cap of 250 each? Even though guard posts are clearly individually owned?

[eRe4s3r]

yes ^^

1 AI Guard Post used by = 2 Sub-AI's ^^ Doesn't matter who owns them.

Though.. it does not apply the same for warpgates and raids.

Actually, i am not so sure whether "yes" is actually right or not.. x4000 knows

[x4000]

My pleasure, allmybase.

And yep, eRe4s3r is right on all points, as well.  Though the warp gates being restricted by AI player is an unintentional effect -- that's supposed to apply for both of them, too, and is on my fix list.  The same general idea applies in multiplayer for the humans, too, incidentally: each player can get 2,000 knowledge from every planet, no one is ever "out" early even when they lose their home command station, each player has their own separate limit of energy reactors per planet, etc.  There's a lot of sharing of stuff along those lines between teammates, for humans and AIs.

[eRe4s3r]

Fixing that would remove an huge bother too, atm you need to maintain 2 outside defended worlds open for raids. And make sure that the warpgate belongs to the right AI. Not so easy in a huge enclosed empire ^^

[x4000]

Yeah, I know.  If it's not already in bug reports, could you log that there?  That way Keith will remember to look at that sooner than later, too.

[eRe4s3r]

Well i just made a topic, i haven't really checked whether it was reported yet though ,p

Kinda lazy ^^ 

http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,4688.new.html#new

[allmybase]

I need some more clarification:

I have the core AI planet down to 2 core guard posts and 1 command center. In theory that means 500 units cap per post which is 1500 total.

However, the number of units on that home planet has steadily been climbing.

They are at 2200 mark V ships and it's going up, not to mention they're adding more turrets too.

Is there some special higher cap on home planets? Do their turrets also just not count against their unit cap?

[x4000]

Actually, and the wiki should mention this (updates wiki):  this also includes the perma-cloaked wormhole guard posts, which don't die until the command station dies, usually.  So planets with more wormholes have higher ship cap intrinsically.

So most likely that is why the numbers were not adding up for you; I forgot to mention that before, my bad.

[allmybase]

How many of these perma cloaked wormhole posts are there, one per wormhole or more??

The count I got was to over 3000 ships, which would indicate 6 or more guard posts --> 1 was the command station, 2 were core guard posts, and I suppose one is the exo galaxy and the other is in the entry wormhole, but still that's just 5, and they were over 3000 and climbing.

[x4000]

Usually there is just one, but actually in some cases -- the really defensive AI types -- they can have two per wormhole.  On higher difficulties, there can actually be as many as three per wormhole.  If you want to check it to be sure, you can save, then detonate a tachyon warhead to see what is there, then load your save to spare the AIP.  I expect it is working just fine, but there are a lot of little nuances in there especially with the home planets.  I may be forgetting some other small rules in there, I'm not sure -- I'd have to look at the code to tell for certain.

[FrostyThePyro]

The only reason i knew about the worm hole guard posts was because of emp warheads.