The revenge of the human marauders?

[Wingsofdomain]

For eight hundred years....we have thought against the AI. Thinking they are the enemy. But then came the Human Marauders.... The are faster, better, cooler, and more awesome... Why do they push us so close to extinction?

Seriously... Those guys blow up everything... and then I mean EVERYTHING! They desotry the AI planets they destroy mine, and after they destroyed one the rage around destroying everything in there past though without destroy command stations. But 15min a human marauder left my former planet I can still see them rage around on the AI's planets? There's nothing I can do to kill 'em. They did even kill my spirecrafts? And without the arc formation function it's almost impossible to not let the buzz bombs area damage all of your ships. Or maybe I've got this wrong....the golems are actually made for killing Human Marauders? xD! or..... NUKES!

[Mánagarmr]

They're pretty much in the realm of "stupidly overpowered" right now, and will likely get a nerf in the next release

[Wingsofdomain]

Yeha haha I hope so...unless next expansion is called revenge of the human marauders

[BigJake]

They haven't been giving me much trouble, actually.  Since their buff, they'll only pass through my systems incidentally on their way to mess up the AI some more.  They seem to pretty much ignore me unless I fly up right next to em.

[Echo35]

They're pretty much in the realm of "stupidly overpowered" right now, and will likely get a nerf in the next release

Yep. I had started a game just yesterday. I had two planets, it was still very early in the game. A wave of AI and Human Marauders showed up. I killed off the AI, but the dozen or so Marauders managed to completely kill me.

[Wingsofdomain]

They're pretty much in the realm of "stupidly overpowered" right now, and will likely get a nerf in the next release

Yep. I had started a game just yesterday. I had two planets, it was still very early in the game. A wave of AI and Human Marauders showed up. I killed off the AI, but the dozen or so Marauders managed to completely kill me.

Just like my story. xD I actually started a new campaing becuase of them.

[Josep]

My experience (on 7.0/7.0, v4.054) has been similar. After watching my diverse fleet get trounced repeatedly by 15-24 marauder ships, I found a new strategy:

Abandon the planet, let the marauders torch everything, and then rebuild. I had force fields around the key command centers (AI was using teleporting ships, so force fields served duel usage), and once the marauders split up, they flew relatively harmlessly through the rest of my space. Once I started getting fleets of 700 ships, I could usually take out the marauders without too many losses, but they'd still carve up an AI planet in an impressive fashion. If I could just figure out how they pick their targets, there are some more AI planets I'd like to see torn apart by them. (The AI seems to respond poorly to them because of it's activation logic; their frigates often stay at a distance and just destroy once ship or guard post after another.)

[PineappleSam]

If I could just figure out how they pick their targets, there are some more AI planets I'd like to see torn apart by them.

The spawning logic for human marauders previously was that there had to be at least 100 enemy-to-AI and AI-allied ships on the planet, unless the difficulty was set to 8 or higher, in which case it was just completely random.

* The spawning logic has been changed so that on AI planets or neutral planets, there must be at least 100 human military ships present (so that marauders are more likely to show up during big attacks); and so that on human planets there must be at least 10 AI-allied military ships on the planet. The AI difficulty level no longer has any impact on this.
* Thanks to Lancefighter for pointing out some inconsistencies in the old logic.

1] Fill transport with 100 military ships
2] Fly to an AI planet that's been a thorn in your side
3] Drop the ships off
4]
5] Marauders!

[ShadowOTE]

Yeah, they're pretty tough. I saw them duke it out with a tier IV world and fight to what was effectively a draw (albeit after I wiped out the heavy defenses). Part of the problem is that they're like fighting a huge fleet of flagship line starships - small problem if you can't outnumber them massively.