When does a planet become "Alerted to your presence"

[XRsyst]

When does a planet become "Alerted to your presence"?  I recognize the obvious scenario of when you boarder an AI planet, but what about if you were to go three jumps in to destroy a data node and leave, never to return again.  What then?  So if I send raid ships around the galaxy destroying datanodes, will I make every system I visit aware and prone to all the bad stuff that can happen when they are aware?

[Fleet]

Another case where AI planets can be put on alert is if you have a major force (not knowing where the line between minor and major is drawn) on an adjacent planet. For example, if there is a map with planets

A---B---C

And I have A, the AI B and C, and I send a "major" attack force to B, C will be on alert, even though they have control (cmd station) of planet B.

[Doddler]

As far as I'm aware there are two cases.

1) The AI does not control an adjascent system.  Since the AI doesn't re-capture systems, this is unreversable and those systems will always be on alert.

2) You have a large fleet in the system or an adjascent system.  If your fleet leaves, they'll return to their unalerted status.

Actually I guess minor factions can probably alert them too, but I'm not sure if devorerer and dyson sphere alert the AI.

[triggerman602]

i believe the line for major force is 50 units.

[x4000]

Doddler is exactly right. Also, the cutoff is around 50 units, as trigger says. And, minor factions that are hostile to the ai will also tend to alert it. A few oter things like golems also cause alert extra fast, but it goes down when they leave.

The tactic of going and complety destroying a planet way off in a Podunk area is actually not a bad idea if it borders a lot of useless ai planets; that will put them all on alert and potentially divert some reinforcements to there, instead of to planets you are more interesting in. But just destroying data centers or warp gates won't bump it up permanently or anything.

[triggerman602]

but once it is alerted it stays alerted permanently until the com station is destroyed?

[x4000]

but once it is alerted it stays alerted permanently until the com station is destroyed?

Other way around.  Okay, I added this to the wiki to help clear this up in case others come by wondering:

The main cause is being near planets that the AI perceives as being hostile. Any AI planet that is next to a human planet OR a neutral planet will be on alert. When an AI planet is on alert because of being next to a human/neutral planet, that AI planet will be on alert for the rest of the game (since the AI never recaptures planets from human players).

A second, more temporary way for the AI planets to come on alert is based on being near to scary forces. If a human player has a force of at least around 50 ships (or one golem) on a planet, then all adjacent AI planet will temporarily be on alert. As soon as the human forces move on, the alert level will go back down. Hostile-to-the-AI Minor factions such as the Dyson Sphere, Marauders, Resistance Fighters, Rebel Human Colonies, the Devourer, etc, will also cause the AI to go on alert until those forces have moved on. In the case of the Dyson Sphere or Rebel Human Colonies, which do not move, those adjacent planets are likely to remain on alert permanently.

[TheStratovarian]

If you use cloaked starships, does this help the alert level go down, say for example. You have a few ships waiting on one wormhole side, that cloak the ships leaving from a raid or attack, can you hide the forces to let the ai stop building up if you wanted to marshall forces in secret using the ships to hide your starships and other places?

Say in the first, You attack B, from A, and remove B, but enter with cloaking starships to assault C, can you use them to hide a command center going up? (so you can assault C without a massive buildup, especially if a tech 1 world victory, to have a tech 4 behind it.)

If not, would using the ships to skip through B in transport/ cloaked ship to Hit C work. (I really favor using the planes for hit and run attacks on defenses, and love the cloaking, but find the world line doesnt work well at times.)

Sorry if I asked oddly, but I never really thought about them much. (I love hitting a command center too with a massive minefield waiting beyond the gate, oh how much fun that is to watch them all go boom)

[x4000]

Cloaking doesn't affect when the AI goes on alert, because it still knows those cloaked ships are there, if not exactly where -- same as what you know about cloaked AI ships that come to your planets.

However, transports do indeed help, because the AI has no idea what, if anything, is in those transports.  So using the transports to do deep raiding will keep the enemy planets from going on alert.

Good question!  And, welcome to the forums.

[Collic]

Oh interesting, so as far as the ai is concerned if you sent a fleet using 5 transports, it just has 5 ships passing through. Good to know