Threat and the "Threatfleet", and more

[keith.lamothe]

Right, the third attempt that was ongoing when I wrote the previous has now been won after an epic 24 hours and 12 minutes at 638 AIP and 32 planets controlled.

Congratulations, reaching the first win is always a journey.

Either that, or, more likely, you've only enabled truly dastardly AI acts on higher difficulty settings than 7.

7 is fairly easy in general.  On 8+ it starts doing things like synchronizing exos with CPAs, etc.  But it also in general gets a lot moar of everything.  As you saw, the AI simply can't beat you in an evenly-matched tactical situation.  It's relatively smart, overall, but the realities of the defensive game establish horrendous kill-to-death ratios in favor of the player.  If the AI was allowed to build turretry and defenses anything like the humans were, the humans would probably never win a game outside of major cheese.  So that's why most of the changes past 7 are in the magnitude category, a few particularly dastardly tricks aside.  Though often a lot of the deviousness of the AI is in the "emergent" effects of its behaivors when it has enough force for them to actually work.

To be honest, the reason you had any serious difficulty at all was because you turned on the alt-champ-nemesis stuff, which is a feature literally introduced this last Monday, and thus a very first-try sort of balance.  In other words, you walked into something way harder than 7 was supposed to be.  And still won, which I suppose shouldn't surprise me.

On the other hand, you had the full benefits of alt-champion-progress, too, and all those mod forts and splinter faction starships and such can sure help.

something like 2x120 frigates in the last wave and were best defeated with my full navy in support of my homeworld defenses.

240 nemesis frigates didn't do the trick?  Those defenses must have been vicious indeed.

By contrast, the cross planet attacks, that I'd read about before starting playing and which sounded dangerous, turned out to be pitiful. At a time when the AI was throwing 7-11k regular waves against me and hundreds of shadow frigates in the exo raids, it was still only adding a negligible amount of 2400 ships to the cross planet attacks.

7,000 ship normal waves?  As opposed to reprisal, etc.

Anyway, odd, as CPAs are generally supposed to be at least 4 times the size of waves (and do scale with AIP), though perhaps some of my recent wave math changes have altered that.

Either way, a 2,400 ship CPA sounds reasonable for mid/late game on 7.  On 10 it'd be more like 10,000.

In a game without superweapons (and thus without any response like those nemesis exos) CPAs are generally the main thing that can cause an AI win, or at least signal the beginning of the end by taking out key capturables.

So, final verdict after first victory? A fun game, and one I can see myself playing on and off for the next several years, just like other enduring favourites that I do not play all the time, but play intensely every few months.

Glad you enjoyed it

I do want to learn more, as way too many things were countered simply by funneling everything to my homeworld death trap of bonus starbases from alt-champion, all the modular forts, superfortress and all other fun Zenith Trader unlocks, a few extra forts, area mines, turret-Vs, counter snipers, etc. everything funneled down an area-mine lane of death.

Yea, sounds like you found most of the "make things die" levers and buttons.

If you want a situation where chokepoint defenses of that magnitude aren't as universal a cure, I'd recommend a Crosshatch or Honeycomb map (pick a planet not on the edges) with Hybrids 10/10 (just the normal, not the advanced, unless you want still more pain) and Beachheads.  Though Beachheads are rarely played with because of just how much of a gut punch they can be.

So I'll definitely play a fourth game now with higher difficulty setting or more minor stuff enabled to add difficulty. The received-wisdom "stay at minimum AIP on the highest difficulty settings" doesn't really appeal to me - as you know, I like to conquer, and the more the merrier, so any advice on what would be a reasonable setting for me next?

You want to paint the map?  Fallen Spire.

FS games involve some very different mechanics, but the journal entries in the game should give you the necessary information.  And it was basically added so that not all games have to be guerrilla war.  You can easily hit 2000 AIP in a FS game and not be up a creek.

7.3, 7.6, 8.0 (what on Earth is going on with the fractional difficulty increases?) - or would you advise me to go higher?

The fractional difficulty levels... well, as perhaps you've heard when certain code is explained, "historical reasons"   I don't suppose we really have to keep the labels the way we do, but the 1 to 10 scale basically works.

As for what I'd advise... it depends, are you ok with possibly needing to restart midway because you now understand the mechanics (especially FS, but also just the more severe difficulty) better?  If so, and given the extreme nemesis attacks you managed to kill, I'd say diff 9.3.  Maybe even 9.6.  If you'd rather be reasonably certain that you can win without major backtracking (some savescumming still likely), then probably 8 or 8.3.

Fallen Spire - it says it adds a whole new way to play, more campaign oriented, which sounds interesting. Does it also up the difficulty?

It gives you new tools and new forms of opposition to go along with it.  Those nemesis-exos you saw are actually the latest twist on the exo mechanic that was first invented for FS's implementation in late 2010.

a) allows me to conquer a lot so long as I am superior at defensive strategy rather than pretty much requiring a minimal-but-powerful-for-the-size realm

FS.

b) makes the AI threatfleet or other aggression methods more strategically dangerous, either by increased prowess or by increased uncertainty rather than merely by increased magnitude?

Hybrids are worth trying.  They're not massively powerful individually, but they grow in number over time and hunt you quite deliberately.

There's also Cross Planet Waves.  That will let those normal-wave attacks approach you with the benefit of full Threat logic, rather than being catapulted directly into the teeth of your chipper-shredderdefenses.

No Wave Warnings is also useful to ratchet up the uncertainty and increase the need for scout-picketing and situational awareness (there are some alerts you can set up to help not having to manually eye-check stuff).

Turning off Show Unexplored Planets can also be fun to increase the sense of uncertainty at least until midgame.  It's kind of a matter of taste.


Anyway, if you want just one game setup to scratch those itches before moving on to other pastures (for the time being, at least), then it's necessary to back off a bit on the "make single-point defending really hard" goal in order to ensure the "conquering" goal is best met.  Here's my suggested setup:

# Planets: 100 (could go higher, but the game will take longer)

Map Style: Clusters - Simple (not as chaotic as crosshatch or honeycomb, but FS + those is a bit much)

Campaign Type: Conquest (it could be no other)

Available Ships: Complex (with all 12 of the buttons below it enabled)

Combat Style: Normal

Unit Cap Scale: Low (to lessen lategame lag with FS; Normal may also be ok)

Visibility: Full Fog of War

Show Unexplored Planets: On (this time, anyway)

Minor Factions:
- Fallen Spire 4/10
- leaving the rest off, as champs and golems and spirecraft skew things; not really in a bad way but for this purpose...

AI Modifiers:
- Schizophrenic
- Cross Planet Attacks
- leaving the rest off; I would suggest No Wave Warnings but I think that would also hide exo warnings, which would be unkind

AI Plots:
- Hybrid Hives 10/10 on one AI player, but not the other unless you really want a lot of them hunting you
- leaving the rest off; Avenger wouldn't make much difference and the rest can all be pretty brutal on FS, though Hunter would be ok

First AI: Diff 9 Special Forces Captain / Bouncer
Second AI: Diff 9 Mad Bomber / Reservist

Normally I would think the above a bit too stiff a challenge for a relatively-new player, but, well, there's a report here from a few thousand dead nemesis champs that you aren't to be trusted.

EDIT: It strikes me that I am seriously derailing this thread from its original topic, but your post practically begged for a followup; My apologies if such thread derailment is frowned upon in your forum.

On the contrary, derailment is the standard fate of threads around here.  I am one of the chief offenders.


Anyway, I hope you enjoy the game, whatever settings you wind up picking

[Peter Ebbesen]

On the other hand, you had the full benefits of alt-champion-progress, too, and all those mod forts and splinter faction starships and such can sure help.

Absolutely. Mostly for the purposes of helping to ignore the regular waves, I suspect. I followed Kahuna's guide from the forum for a basic sensible defensive setup, augmented it with gravity turrets along the entire road of death, and further augmented it with, well, with just about everything else I could get my hands on except for a few force shields and all the forts that helped guide the threatfleet down the avenues I wanted through weaker defended non-essential systems as I expanded.

...And then I put Ion Cannons and Weapons Jammer II, Planetary Armor Inhibitor/Booster, Counter Spys, and a Black Hole machine under a separate forcefield behind the command station, such that they were protected from being damaged when the command station forcefields got pounded, and slapped down the two Orbital Mass Drivers in the gap between the two forcefield stacks, where I also had the various spider, sniper, and missile turrets.... And yes, it is entirely possible that OMBs aren't reduced in damage when under a forcefield, but as I ordered the location of all the Zenith trader stuff within the first 20 minutes of this game, and had never encountered OMB's before, I didn't feel like risking it.

...It goes without saying that the credit for the basic setup goes to Kahuna - any mistakes and areas with room for improvement are my own.

The Spire fort got a 1xShield, 3xPhoton Cannon, 8xImpulse Reaction Cannon setup and the Zenith fort a 1xShield, 3xHeat Beam, 8xParalyzer setup - and both were placed in a gap in the minefield line from the wormhole to the command station, such that they covered even the closest of approaches to the command station's forcefield with their short range weaponry. They got a clear firing range that way both up and down the minefield with maximum time on target for spire beam, maximum number of targets for zenith beam. Slap the Neinzul fortress someback closer to the wormhole near the tractor beam trap and with 1xShield, 3xBomber Bay , 8xInsanity Inducer, and hilarity ensued. It is entirely possible that there are stronger combinations available - in particular it was tempting to make the Neinzul a Doom Machine fort and place it to cover the last stretch, and did I really need a shield on the forts? I think not, but... well, better safe than sorry.

I am not sure how much the bonus starbase weapons added; Everything extra is good, of course, but are they reduced by forcefields?

something like 2x120 frigates in the last wave and were best defeated with my full navy in support of my homeworld defenses.

240 nemesis frigates didn't do the trick?  Those defenses must have been vicious indeed.

Only with the navy in support, and by the time of that wave my fleet had reached around 3.5k ships in size. Every single wave sent against me the frigates managed to reach the massed forcefields stacked on the home command, though severely depleted in number by then. I am pretty sure that without the navy in support, they'd have killed off the command station despite my static defenses.

By contrast, the cross planet attacks, that I'd read about before starting playing and which sounded dangerous, turned out to be pitiful. At a time when the AI was throwing 7-11k regular waves against me and hundreds of shadow frigates in the exo raids, it was still only adding a negligible amount of 2400 ships to the cross planet attacks.

7,000 ship normal waves?  As opposed to reprisal, etc.

Yes. Just loaded up my last save at 23h52m, with one homeworld down, 1158 total AIP, 560 AIP reduction, for 598 balance, and sped up time - the two next regular waves were 6k, 95 starships (the Tank, 7) and 8.9k, 80 starships (Vanilla, 7) - schizophrenic waves on. Also - and I don't know if this is factored in - I had 88 HAP balance at the time, so have spent 1070 HAP

I recall reprisal waves as being more dangerous than normal waves earlier in the game, but by the last 6-8h of the 24h game, I could pretty much ignore all waves and reprisal waves did not stand out.  I do know that the largest wave I encountered was 11k ships, because that one made me return to watch what was going on at the command station, but whether it was reprisal or normal I do not recall.

Anyway, odd, as CPAs are generally supposed to be at least 4 times the size of waves (and do scale with AIP), though perhaps some of my recent wave math changes have altered that.

Well, they were 2300-2400 in size the last few hours, so something must have changed. If they'd tried to free up some 24-44k ships for the threatfleet, then the CPA's would have been considerably more interesting and I'd definitely have had to shore up my defenses with my fleet to avoid attacks of opportunity taking out irreplaceables.

Either way, a 2,400 ship CPA sounds reasonable for mid/late game on 7.  On 10 it'd be more like 10,000.

I really must disagree with that one - at least for this particular late game on 7.

Look, let me attach the last savegame from immediately before I killed of an AI, and you'll see everything from the cheesy starting position on a randomly generated map* to the values that matter for the CAP calculations.

* Single ingress point for AI to enclosed group of systems, yes, I did greatly skew the starting setup in my favour. In my defense, I expected a stiffer opposition and thought I'd need all the help I could get.

EDIT: Do note that the few forcefields on the home command station at the save point is not representative of the state when exo waves came in; I always destroyed a few forcefields where they were least needed out in the field to stack on the command station to take on the waves, "just in case". There's no such thing as defensive overkill when your life is at stake and you've chosen to defend a single chokepoint rather than engage in defense in depth.

------

Okay, I snipped all your great advice rather than quoting.

It sounds like that 9/9 Fallen Spire setup you advocate is a go when I find time later this week, with a restart when I am crushed or realize that I should have done things differently from the start. Or, worst come to worst, backtrack to earlier saves, though it just isn't the same.

I'll keep the wave warnings on. As I have frequently noted at Paradox, I am not a glutton for punishment (despite evidence to the contrary).

[Kahuna]

AI Plots:
- Hybrid Hives 10/10 on one AI player

but not the other unless you really want a lot of them hunting you

Funny.

[keith.lamothe]

...And then I put Ion Cannons and Weapons Jammer II, Planetary Armor Inhibitor/Booster

Ah, yes, the Zenith Trader does make for much nastier chokepoints in general.  It also sells stuff to the AI, but in general human players with a sufficient surplus of metal and deficit of shame get a much better deal.  The AI's benefits make the difference between "normal" and "that was a really annoying planet to take", where the human's benefits can make the difference between surviving an attack and not.  I'm considering adding additional counterbalance to that faction, but perhaps it's best to wait until Salvage balance shakes out, as obviously there's a ton of metal investment involved.

I am not sure how much the bonus starbase weapons added; Everything extra is good, of course, but are they reduced by forcefields?

They follow normal rules there, yes (unless non-player-controlled units are exempt; I don't have it in front of me).  And their seeding puts them close enough to home base that the coverage is probably inevitable.  So I'm not sure how much their actual guns lend to a major fight (though 5 of them probably contributes at least an extra fort's worth to overall Death Per Second, even forcefield-gimped).

But the ships you can build at those starbases, particularly on that high an alt-progress intensity... should be pretty significant.

Bear in mind that the only forcefields that apply said debuff are the ones you build from the SUP tab (the normal line, and the hardened line).  Mod-Fort forcefields to not apply this debuff.  Nor do the various forcefield modules in Fallen Spire, or champ FFs, etc.

Well, they were 2300-2400 in size the last few hours, so something must have changed. If they'd tried to free up some 24-44k ships for the threatfleet, then the CPA's would have been considerably more interesting and I'd definitely have had to shore up my defenses with my fleet to avoid attacks of opportunity taking out irreplaceables.

I don't think Diff 7 AIs have 24k guard ships to free, even at that AIP.  The strategic reserve and special forces combined could put a dent in that number, though.

Either way, a 2,400 ship CPA sounds reasonable for mid/late game on 7.  On 10 it'd be more like 10,000.

I really must disagree with that one - at least for this particular late game on 7.

Look, let me attach the last savegame from immediately before I killed of an AI, and you'll see everything from the cheesy starting position on a randomly generated map* to the values that matter for the CAP calculations.

I don't mean that it was reasonable in context of what you'd done, just that it sounds like what the Diff 7 math would produce.  I will take a look at the save to check, though, thanks.

As for what it _should_ have been... well, we don't want Diff 7 to murderize people.  10k threat all at once will murderize most new players.  That said, if they had managed to rack up 600 AIP that wouldn't be out of keeping.

I think you had such huge waves (11k is absolutely _bonkers_ for what Diff 7 normally is) is the recent rule where excess AI Reinforcements (defensive spawns) strength was redirected to waves.  Perhaps it needs to redirect some to the next CPA as well, so that the CPAs don't become weaker than waves at high AIP.

It sounds like that 9/9 Fallen Spire setup you advocate is a go when I find time later this week, with a restart when I am crushed or realize that I should have done things differently from the start. Or, worst come to worst, backtrack to earlier saves, though it just isn't the same.

Sounds good.  7.025 came out this morning, with the change to give hacking a short-term residual post-response you suggested (I think it adds a lot to the theme of "digging yourself a hole", or "your mouth is writing checks your butt can't cash"), along with various other important changes.  I did a fair bit of testing but there's always the chance of StupidProgrammerException crashes; if so those will probably have been found and fixed by Tuesday evening. You don't have to update, of course, but I think overall it will improve the fun.

I'll keep the wave warnings on. As I have frequently noted at Paradox, I am not a glutton for punishment (despite evidence to the contrary).

Ah yes, a fine distinction which could easily be lost on me.  In that light, Kahuna's hint about the excessiveness of 10/10 normal hybrids is probably apt.  I'd forgotten that the numbers I'd seen in RockyBST's recent "it's full of tens" AAR (where the AI difficulty was in the 7s, but basically nothing else was) don't reflect what they hybrids would do on Diff 9.  I think you'd still do fine vs hybrids-10 but to avoid them potentially detracting from the main theme (conquest) you might dial those back to 5 for the first time with them.


Have fun storming the castle!

[Peter Ebbesen]

Okay, this is weird. First attempt with Keith's settings and 5/10 hybrids, Spire Corvette ship choice to stay in character, abandoned due to... boredom.

EDIT: Game played under 7.025.

I don't blame the game for that, I blame my own overly logical nature and, perhaps, still not understanding enough of the deeper game mechanics and the long-term implications of my choices.

• With the setup suggested, attacks could theoretically come from anywhere where the AI had a path through which to assemble a threatfleet, so there'd be little point in killing warp gates unless I wanted to settle somewhere.
• It was a goal that I not attempt a single chokepoint/homeworld setup again (and besides, Zenith Traders were disabled so as not to encourage this), which meant that I would have to go for defense in depth, which meant that the number of warp lanes to the homeworld were not, in and of itself, a huge concern. What mattered were the size and content of the pocket of connected AI worlds left unconquered next to my homeworld.
• Likewise for other areas of connected AI worlds - cut them into pockets of a manageable size with intact jumpgates, and half the job is done. There'd be no attacks from a pocket unless the AI thought it could win.
  
• I had observed that worlds adjacent to the homeworld were frequently of lower mark.
• I was pretty sure had worlds very close to the homeworld had less good capturable items (adjacent or twice removed). Though my observations (3 games) were too few to really warrant such a judgement, it is how I would have designed it myself to not make things too easy for a player.

Yes, I'm afraid it should be bloody obvious where this is going to somebody who knows the game, but I didn't think quite that far. I went for a 6 lanes homeworld deep in one of the clusters, one from which sensible chokepoints could be built 2-3 jumps out.

And then I carefully did not conquer my neighbours and attempted to avoid killing any SF guardposts, because I thought having most AI reinforcements as mark 1-2 ships was a grand idea, and the Special Forces captain gain lots of mark 1-2 ships and sending them through my territory almost equally grand, though I did destroy their static defenses. I did this while only slowly expanding after having sent out my fleet on devastating raids to destroy the guardposts of the mark 3-4 planets next to those I expanded to, and periodically harvesting the mark 1 and 2 ships in the large pocket adjacent to me, to be sure that that bunch of planets on alert kept getting what I hoped was the bulk of AI reinforcements, and harvesting hybrids outside. And so on and so forth. This made for very safe expansion, as I didn't spend extra AIP on taking down warp gates except for the worlds I settled.

The main problem being, this was methodical and slow. Very slow. Because it goes without saying, that NONE of that threat ever attacked my planets due the to AI sensible realizing that it didn't stand a chance, so I didn't get any scrap unless I sent out the fleet with Riot Starships to collect the enemy and pull it back to be destroyed, gambling to gain more scrap that was destroyed in the excursion.

Which meant long boring buildup between sending out my fleet to harvest and whacking off the next layer of AI defenses - defenses that I lacked sufficient knowledge to deal effectively with and had in many cases to kill by the BFMI approach (Brute Force and Massive Ignorance). Even reprisal waves merely joined the threat and, as such, were there to be culled at will.

And before anybody says it, yes, I realize that this is the position players must have been in for years before the introduction of the salvage mechanic, but then, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if such rather boring downtime where you just fastforward while watching rebuilding is one of the reasons the salvage mechanic was introduced in the first place. As a new player, I've only ever played the game with salvage, and I love that mechanic. 

I also went on three shard retrieval missions and built a refugee outpost, and that's when I called it a day.

I can't blame the AI for any of its choices - giving the settings, I didn't notice any obvious mistakes. Whenever a pocket did start to grow threatening through too many normal+wave+reprisal reinforcements, my fleet was close by and homing in to give it a whack, so the threat assessment for any nearby planet was that the AI would lose.

But never attacking and always being whacked is, if possibly, even more inefficient a long-term plan for the AI than charging into prepared defenses and feeding the player scrap.

Because in order for the AI to always charge into prepared defenses, it requires the player to either defend strongly everywhere (impractical), send his fleet to defend against every individual wave, or to go around killing warp gates to target the AI's aggression against strong defenses, and thus racking up AIP that he can ignore under the Cross Planet Waves pocket-plan.

So - and this may sound ridiculous - I suspect that Cross Planet Waves, given my approach, may actually have lessened the difficulty rather than as intended increasing it by increasing uncertainty.

I know from the forum that there'll be exogalactic strikeforces later on from continuing the Fallen Spire questline, and I am not at all sure that my painstakingly slow expansion method with culling the weak and encouraging the AI to spend its reinforcements there while gradually chipping away the rest and killing the high mark planets to create pockets for the AI will stand up to the AI in the long run - perhaps I'm setting myself up for something really nasty by letting these pockets of harvestable jumpgate areas in my rear (though if not immediately lethal, it should be possible to wipe our warp gates as needed at such time), but I lack the patience to find out given the navy rebuilding times, when I'd much rather spend it on finding out how to more efficiently defeat some of those interesting defensive positions I've been encountering.

(Seriously, 2xSniper IV guardposts in different positions at a planet, one under a forcefield 160 million strong, and coupled with multiple Ion Cannons and Tachyon Sentinels? That's just cruel to encounter three planets from your homeworld coming straight from 7/7  )


So I'll try again, but this time with normal waves rather than Cross Planet Waves. Perhaps upping the hybrid difficulty to compensate for the lack of the difficulty CPW were supposed to represent.


The two first spire chases were awesome. The third one (refugee ship) I was a bit too well prepared due to it luckily spawning on an AI planet right next to one of my two chokepoint planets, which meant that once it reached the first jump under navy cover it was home safe as all pursuers ran straight into the remnants of the fleet backed up by heavy prepared defenses. I have hopes that the rest of the Fallen Spire campaign can live up to the thrill of those two chases once I can concentrate more on smashing things and getting smashed rather than on harvesting weak pockets of threat.

Wish me luck. I'm feeling confident, and that usually means overconfidence is just one small step away.

[keith.lamothe]

Odd.  Sorry about the boredom.  It's not supposed to bore you to death, it's supposed to kill you to death

But yea, it may be a personality conflict: it doesn't normally occur to me that because a player can spend a ton of time doing relatively routine threat cleanup, that they will.  Perhaps it would have worked better if it had put all those wave spawns and such in the Threatfleet (as opposed to normal Threat), because the TF hangs back about 3 hops into AI territory until it thinks it can take you.  So you can sally and pick a fight with them if you know where they are, but it would at least be less trivial than picking off the individual groups.

That said, the TF logic only works for ships that have a clear path to an AI homeworld, so your tactic of cutting off the pockets would have made them revert to normal threat.  Which presents you with the opportunity to gain advantage via tedium, which is no good.

So yea, I guess CPW is a bad option in your case.  I may revise it later, but it's probably best not to beat that hornet nest right now.

And it's safe to say FS has a lot more where those chases came from...

[Peter Ebbesen]

Odd.  Sorry about the boredom.  It's not supposed to bore you to death, it's supposed to kill you to death

Hah! Good one.

But yea, it may be a personality conflict: it doesn't normally occur to me that because a player can spend a ton of time doing relatively routine threat cleanup, that they will.

If it makes you feel better, I felt bloody stupid doing so, but it is the most efficient way I could devise of achieving my goals based on my knowledge at the time, and I am a very logical sort of person, so I adapted it because that would leave me free to concentrate my learning on all those new and interesting guardposts and the ships I hadn't seen on 7/7 using normal ships.

I was particularly amused to see what happened to my bombers first time an AI sent in tackle drone launchers. They may not be the most deadly ships, though they were surely deadly enough, but they are definitely the most hilarious weapon I've seen used yet.

Perhaps it would have worked better if it had put all those wave spawns and such in the Threatfleet (as opposed to normal Threat), because the TF hangs back about 3 hops into AI territory until it thinks it can take you.  So you can sally and pick a fight with them if you know where they are, but it would at least be less trivial than picking off the individual groups.

That said, the TF logic only works for ships that have a clear path to an AI homeworld, so your tactic of cutting off the pockets would have made them revert to normal threat.  Which presents you with the opportunity to gain advantage via tedium, which is no good.

So yea, I guess CPW is a bad option in your case.  I may revise it later, but it's probably best not to beat that hornet nest right now.

Presumably it works well enough for the other players, who like playing with it, and I have a hard time seeing anybody borderline sane playing with it and using my tedious approach for the duration of the game.

Realistically, I only continued with it for several hours to see if my plan really worked beyond the very early game because I do so love to find loopholes in AI logic, and I am sane (allegedly). So regardless of how it did seem rather easy to abuse, and regardless of how advantage through tedium is a big no-no in game design, it is hard to see this as anything but a very, very, minor issue.

Presumably most people will enact CPW for a difficulty setting they think they have a good grasp of and will play with it in the spirit with which it is intended rather than immediately trying to discover ways to turn it into a player advantage.

And it's safe to say FS has a lot more where those chases came from...

That sounds great!

Let's see... Hybrids 5/10 didn't become a danger during hours of playing, and Kahuna sounded as if 10/10 would make them spawn like mad and dominate the game, so perhaps 7/10 or 8/10 next attempt to ensure that the focus is still on the Fallen Spire.

[keith.lamothe]

I was particularly amused to see what happened to my bombers first time an AI sent in tackle drone launchers. They may not be the most deadly ships, though they were surely deadly enough, but they are definitely the most hilarious weapon I've seen used yet.

Yea, when I originally had the thought of "a starship that fires bolas" it caused one of those "may the world quail in terror" developer-smiles.

Presumably most people will enact CPW for a difficulty setting they think they have a good grasp of and will play with it in the spirit with which it is intended rather than immediately trying to discover ways to turn it into a player advantage.

Oh, the cheesemasters of this community will exploit whatever they can.  We ratchet up the pain, and the necessity drives them to push the envelope of new cheese, and so on.

I don't think we see as much thorough-threat-cleaning because while it is effective it is generally not the most efficient path to victory, in terms of time (and sometimes in terms of casualties).

Let's see... Hybrids 5/10 didn't become a danger during hours of playing, and Kahuna sounded as if 10/10 would make them spawn like mad and dominate the game, so perhaps 7/10 or 8/10 next attempt to ensure that the focus is still on the Fallen Spire.

Once you get reasonably far in to FS, the hybrids will mainly exist to tremble before you.  I imagine you saw the spire frigates you can build at the refugee outpost.  As it says somewhere, those are the really small ones.

So I imagine you could crank it to hybrids-10 and still be fine, but 7 or 8 would also be ok

[Aklyon]

Generally, setting something on intensity 10 (AI included, usually) results in Bad Things.
Theres a few exceptions (Resistance Fighters are only somewhat more useful, the Dyson Sphere can either be ineffective or very effective at 10, depending on what else the game has, and the non-nemesis alt-champ option at 10 gives you a battleship hilariously quickly compared to the amount of K/experience you've acquired)

[Kahuna]

Kahuna sounded as if 10/10 would make them spawn like mad and dominate the game

237 Hybrids 50 minutes into the game is quite insane. And that 237 are the only ones I could see since I forgot to enable "Complete Visibility".

I usually play without superweapons though. Maybe Golems and/or Fallen Spire fleet could handle that. But still.. you're probably not going to get many Golems in 50 minutes if at all. You would have to scout for and find the Golem(s) and sneak past the Hybrids with Assault Transports and then repair Golem(s) AND hope the Hybrids don't attack. Then the first CPA comes at ~2 hours (at least on 10/10 difficulty) so you might not have enough time. Depends on how long it takes to find the Golem(s)/Spirecraft.. get there and repair/build them. Also the number of Hybrids would keep rising during all of this. And yes the Hybrids will attack with the CPA. Sure you could pop the Hybrids with a Warhead or two.

Actually.. now that I really think about this..
I always play with Hybrids enabled at 4/10 intensity. And to be honest I think I could crank it up to 5 or 6. I usually just ignore the Hybrids anyway because they just sit next to my planets. They know they would be no match for my Super Cat defenses so they just chill there until a CPA arrives and attack with the CPA. There's usually like ~60 Hybrids all with Mark III modules. That can be really nasty so better unlock those Needler Turrets.

So.. add in superweapons and 6-8 intensity could be fine. Hell.. just go with 10 and pop the Hybrids with a Warhead or two if they get too cocky.

[keith.lamothe]

If that 237 count was on 10/10, bear in mind it isn't as bad on 9.  But yes, intensity-10 anything is usually pretty nasty for someone.

[Kahuna]

Edited. As always ^^
EDIT: I need to get rid of this bad habit (:

[Peter Ebbesen]

Kahuna sounded as if 10/10 would make them spawn like mad and dominate the game

237 Hybrids 50 minutes into the game is quite insane. And that 237 are the only ones I could see since I forgot to enable "Complete Visibility".

I usually play without superweapons though. Maybe Golems and/or Fallen Spire fleet could handle that. But still.. you're probably not going to get many Golems in 50 minutes if at all.

I'll get exactly none, as Keith's suggested setup is without superweapons apart from what the Fallen Spire will provide to avoid detracting from the experience.

So.. add in superweapons and 6-8 intensity could be fine. Hell.. just go with 10 and pop the Hybrids with a Warhead or two if they get too cocky.

Sounds like 8 without superweapons, picking a bonus ship type that has high base damage and/or bonus to heavy damage (just in case)  and, if it does prove too nasty anyhow, then it is time to learn how to use warheads properly.

Or perhaps go with Spire Corvettes again. It is possible that one of the reasons I didn't notice any trouble with Hybrids in the first go was that I unlocked Spire Corvette Mk.II, Force Field Mk. II, and Spider Turrets first, so I had four Spire Corvettes with 4xRail Cannons and 2xForce Fields each, which made for an awesome damage concentration when the Hybrids streamed in along a direct line, and trivial to pick them off when they attempted to retreat.

[Kahuna]

picking a bonus ship type that has high base damage and/or bonus to heavy damage (just in case)

Keep in mind that Hybrids' shields have Structural hull type and you will have to destroy the shield before you can destroy the Hybrids.. unless you use something like Infiltrators which are Immune to Force Fields. Infiltrators are probably the number 1 Hybrids killers. They're good at destroying Guardians and Flag and Leech Starships too. And they're cheap as dirt! Also you can use Normal Transports as cannon fodder. Send them first to absorb the alpha strike. Assault Transports are more tanky and have guns but they're more expensive.

and, if it does prove too nasty anyhow, then it is time to learn how to use warheads properly.

Warheads + Cloaker Starships. Keep the Warheads between the Cloaker Starships so when you go trough a Wormhole a Cloaker Starship goes first then the Warheads and then another Cloaker Starship.

[keith.lamothe]

Observe as player sneakily tip-toes through wormhole, apparently unencumbered by carrying a moon-sized bomb.