Some quick question.

[Elok]

1- How can we force engineer to repair/build high value target (I mostly want them to repair my mercenary ships).

2- When a planet is neutered, the ship that spawn are gray are doesn't count in "threat". Still, they attacked me and go in a rampage in a CPA. So basically, what trigger them and what's the best way to deal with them?

[Orelius]

1) Change the value in the options screen (I think?) from 400 to a large number should force the engineers to autorepair.

2) Killing ships to prevent a CPA won't help, as the AI will find a way to scrounge up enough ships anyway.  If it doesn't have any in reserve, so it just warps in enough.

The best way to deal with it is just to turtle up.  It's effectively just a large wave with different ship types.

[Elok]

Thx the the first question. I found it.

About the second, the problem isn't to prevent the CPA, but be able to make the CPA pass trough my heavily defended sector. And when I'm neutering a planet, I usually doesn't build defense in all the planet around it.

[Nalgas]

About the second, the problem isn't to prevent the CPA, but be able to make the CPA pass trough my heavily defended sector.

You can't, which is the entire point.  The number of ships of the mark level specified are freed up from anywhere in the galaxy and released as threat.  And that's it.  That's literally all that happens when the CPA occurs.  Once they are free, the AI treats them as it does any other free threat ships, and they can go anywhere and do anything they see fit, which generally results in them attacking you where you would really rather not have them attack you, often in more than onc place and over a period of time, not necessarily all at once or at a specific/predetermined location.  The only way to encourage them to go to your heavily defended planet is to remove the defenses from it, which will encourage them to attack it as it's under-defended.

[Red Spot]

Yes you can! (Its American, not Americant )

Say you play on a map where you have a 'frontyard' and a 'backyard' and you dont want to be all too defensive on the backyard side. Neuter those backyard planets (as in kill all the posts, gate and CC can be left alone .. gates on bordering planet cant ofcourse), the buildup there now will be slow and fairly light. Keep sending in some fleet to keep the numbers fairly low and you'll find the AI taking its CPA ships mostly from the frontyard planets. This may result in CPAs with higher mark ships though, be warned

[Nalgas]

Yes you can! (Its American, not Americant )

Say you play on a map where you have a 'frontyard' and a 'backyard' and you dont want to be all too defensive on the backyard side. Neuter those backyard planets (as in kill all the posts, gate and CC can be left alone .. gates on bordering planet cant ofcourse), the buildup there now will be slow and fairly light. Keep sending in some fleet to keep the numbers fairly low and you'll find the AI taking its CPA ships mostly from the frontyard planets. This may result in CPAs with higher mark ships though, be warned

Well, ok, fair enough.  I suppose that would work just fine if you're playing on a map with two areas that are completely bisected by territory you control.  It didn't occur to me, because that's pretty much never the case with the people I play with, and clearing out ships from one area doesn't do you a lot of good when it's still connected to the rest of the map, and they all come flooding back in from over there to attack you from behind anyway.  Heh.