Strategic reserves

[barryvm]

I hadn't played in a while due to free time constraints and when I started a new game about a week ago I checked the patch notes of the latest (and not so latest) updates and noticed the addition of "strategic reserves" to the AI's arsenal.
I'm now nearing the end of this game and I am assaulting the first homeworld and I've been doing battle with the AI fleet for about an hour now..
Before my assault on the core- and homeworlds there were about 2000 Mk II and III ships patrolling the home- and coreworlds and about 3000 - 4000 Mk V ships on the homeworld themselves. At the start of the attack I got the message "AI is deploying reserves" at 70 % and since I only have lighter ships (cutlasses, etherjets, ...) I decided to wear them down by spamming a gazillion reinforcements while keeping them at bay with a black widow golem and riot control starships.
The problem is I can't figure out which ships are actually the reserve ships and if I can bait them away from the homeworld themselves (the whole point being probably they don't chase after you but stay close to their homeworld).
This is important because there is a wrath lance on the homeworld which can apparently vaporise my fleet in a few seconds so I would prefer to fight them on the coreworlds if at all possible.
Is it possible to lure the strategic reserves on the core worlds to beat them there or do they stay on the home worlds themselves (and how can they be recognized) ?
If not, is it at all practical to destroy a wrath lance through a stealth attack by etherjets or penetrators so I can engage the strategic reserves on the homeworld themselves ?

Any helpful tips would also be greatly appreciated.

[keith.lamothe]

Reserves cannot go through wormholes.  You can provoke them to spawn on core worlds, but not past a certain minimum remaining % that's held in reserve for HW defense.

There's no normal way to know for sure which ships are reserves, but you can:
1) Bait everything else off the planet, process of elimination (in at least two senses).
Or
2) Get scout coverage, attack until reserves spawn, leave, and watch which ships suddenly disappear all at once within the following minute or so as the reserves "reabsorb" them.
Or
3) Press F3 to toggle debug info on and mouseover a ship; if they have a special behavior type (special forces, strategic reserves, threatfleet, or the rarer-and-not-particularly-important planetary-roamer) it will show in the little tooltip next to the mouse cursor.

[barryvm]

Thanks, this explains a lot.

The large amount of ships on the homeworld is probably due to it being a defensive AI (not really sure because it is hidden untill game is won or lost) since most of it came after me and made a retalliatory strike against the planet I  staged the attacks from.
So the "70%" means the AI is still holding that percentage of ships in reserve (hidden from view) untill I attack the homeworld again.
It came down to 6% during one of my attacks so I assumed I'd destroyed 94% of the reserves, but it seems this was wishfull thinking on my part.
I managed to take down the wrath lance with the etherjets so I'll move in for the kill now.

This mechanic and the new guardposts really make homeworld assaults much more interesting (in a a brutal, evil sort of way).

[keith.lamothe]

So the "70%" means the AI is still holding that percentage of ships in reserve (hidden from view) untill I attack the homeworld again.
It came down to 6% during one of my attacks so I assumed I'd destroyed 94% of the reserves, but it seems this was wishfull thinking on my part.

If it's down to 6% that means that if you killed all the reserve ships currently "in the field" and none more were deployed, the AI's reserve would be 6% of its max.  The reserve regenerates over time but slower than it used to, and it won't trigger another AI-HW defense from it until it's at least 25%.

I managed to take down the wrath lance with the etherjets so I'll move in for the kill now.

Congratulations   The wrath lance is a really nasty customer.  Once all the brutal picks of an AI HW are down the rest should be relatively simple (not necessarily easy, but simple).

This mechanic and the new guardposts really make homeworld assaults much more interesting

Glad to hear it

(in a a brutal, evil sort of way).

(australian-accent) That's Arcen for "customer service". (/australian-accent)

[Dichotomy]

Can't you get rid of the reserves by waiting until after a CPA?

[Hearteater]

I don't believe Reserves are affected by CPAs.  Or rather, it is pretty tough to get a CPA to draw on the reserve.  Even if it does, I seem to recall there is a cap below which even a CPA will not deplete the reserve.

EDIT: I stand corrected.  My memory confused and combined rule #1 and rule #3 below.

[keith.lamothe]

Iirc the logs will tell you how a CPA was populated, but for reference:
- The first step of populating a CPA is to try to draw 50% of the target shipcount from the strategic reserve.  It stops drawing ships from the reserve if it would take the reserve below 50% of max capacity, however.
- After that, the CPA draws from various other population sources, which given the number of barracks and such in the game is likely to be sufficient.
- If there's somehow not enough ships to populate the CPA at all, it goes back to the reserve for more, and will take the reserve all the way down to 0% if necessary (and in that case can actually fail to fully populate the CPA).

So the reserve will actually be at least somewhat smaller right after a CPA "releases".  How much of a dent is made depends on a lot of factors, of course.

[Aziphos]

Finally I got how strategic reserves work .
It would be nice for new players if someone who knows the exact mechanic would write an article in the wiki.
I thougt the reserves are being used to defend other systems or even attack after they disappeared from the attacked homeworld...and wondered why the reserves reinforced incredibly fast.

[Diazo]

Heh.

This will be on the wiki, eventually.

I'm still chewing through the unit pages at the moment.

I'm starting to think I need to overhaul the main page so other people can start editing stuff like this in though.

Hmm....

D.

[Winge]

Iirc the logs will tell you how a CPA was populated, but for reference:
- The first step of populating a CPA is to try to draw 50% of the target shipcount from the strategic reserve.  It stops drawing ships from the reserve if it would take the reserve below 50% of max capacity, however.
- After that, the CPA draws from various other population sources, which given the number of barracks and such in the game is likely to be sufficient.
- If there's somehow not enough ships to populate the CPA at all, it goes back to the reserve for more, and will take the reserve all the way down to 0% if necessary (and in that case can actually fail to fully populate the CPA).

So the reserve will actually be at least somewhat smaller right after a CPA "releases".  How much of a dent is made depends on a lot of factors, of course.

I managed to deplete the galaxy of all non-Special Forces ships during my recent 16 homeworld game (not recommended for the faint of CPU).  The AI tried to send a 100,000+ ship CPA at me.  It could only find 30,000, and that included a lot of core ships too.  So, it is definitely possible, albeit highly unlikely.  The best part was I was still at home, so I had only 10 AIP 

So just imagine the waves at 93,684 AIP...

[keith.lamothe]

So just imagine the waves at 93,684 AIP...

Integer Overflow.

[barryvm]

The AI tried to send a 100,000+ ship CPA at me.  It could only find 30,000

What actually happens when it can't find enough ships ?
Do they magically spawn (that would be cheating  )?
Also, just out of curiosity, how do you prevent your motherboard from catching fire ?

[keith.lamothe]

The AI tried to send a 100,000+ ship CPA at me.  It could only find 30,000

What actually happens when it can't find enough ships ?
Do they magically spawn (that would be cheating  )?

It just doesn't get those ships.

Also, just out of curiosity, how do you prevent your motherboard from catching fire ?

What makes you think it doesn't?

His computer's "power" light is not actually an LED: it just lets him see the flicker of the internal flame.