Small Problem

[Nodor]

Multi-player Fallen Spire Campaign.  Looking at taking the homeworlds.   They seem to spawn about 35 motherships and 115 or so hunter killers.   (8 ish difficulty, 3 players, 1100 AIP, 120 planets etc.)

Screenshot:  http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=603934423

Any strategic or tactical suggestions for obliterating this kind of force?  The ongoing 100+ carrier threat gain per 10 minutes makes attrition as the primary process of whittling this force down impractical, as it gains 40-50 carriers of "fodder" every 2-3 hops.

[Pumpkin]

Well, AI War is a game where a player can lose hours before realizing it. With 1100 AIP, the AI is fully aware of human threat and is actively allocating resources to their total destruction. I'm sorry for you three, but mankind is doomed because of your mistakes. Remember that at the beginning of each AI War game, mankind may live happy in deep space, surviving in spaceships, away from the AI. When the game begins, you (players/commanders) decide to go for an assassination campaign: using AI technology against itself before it realize you're trying to cut it out of your galaxy's sector.

Even with the spire campaign you are still playing an assassination game. By helping the aliens you're accepting to steer the AI faster for a better firepower, but the AI still has the resources to crush both humans and spire refugees. Your only chance of winning is by destroying the two sub-AIs managing your galactic sector before the central AI allows enough resources to kill you. Or by getting help from elsewhere, but shh!

Why doesn't the AI kill you from the beginning? Just because it has business to do somewhere else (minor spoiler: something else is requiring all it's military power in another galaxy). Yeah, I know, going on 120 planets for a large Spire empire is tempting. But AI War isn't about conquest. It's about assassination and survival.

TL;DR:
Sorry, pals. You lose hours earlier.

[Lord Of Nothing]

Well, if you've got a good chokepoint (i.e. the map allows for a good chokepoint and you've got Z-trader) and you really mass everything up on that, you might be able to kill that fleet, and once it's dead, since it's only charged by exos being sent at you, it'll be a lot smaller next time. (Radar jammer mk2 to shut down the hunter-killers, in particular, along with mil-command 3 to double your firepower, and armour booster to double your fleet shield health. Keep your whole fleet perfectly stacked and at extreme range with repeat movement orders to conserve firepower under the spire ship shields as long as possible...) If not, i'd say transceiver and the Imperial spire fleets are your only hope.