Waves running away and threat. (Request for comments)

[Diazo]

Okay, I'm seeing something odd that I want to run past you guys to see if you have noticed it.

I'm perhaps only seeing this because one of the AIs I'm fighting is a stealth type, but here goes.

Because I decided on a super-low AIP game, I have not gate raided any warp gates and I'm using part of my mobile fleet to intercept waves.

This means I don't usually have tractor beams or gravity turrets in the systems that get attacked and so it gets to the point that about half the wave dies and then the other half runs away, especially the cloaked waves. On a 500 ship wave once the battle is over, my threat count in the galaxy might have increased by 200 from ships from the wave that got away.

It is one of the reasons threat has been such a huge deal in my current game, I'm at about the 12hour mark in my game and I've spend 2 to 3 hours of that game time just chasing down threat, several times my threat count in the galaxy has gone above 1000.

First, has anyone else seen this effect?

Second, how would you deal with this? I don't have the ship cap to tractor beam every wormhole (my homeworld alone has 13 hostile wormholes at this point in the game) and I need as much as my fleet as possible for offensive operations.

I suppose I'm asking for what threat has been doing to you guys recently? There were changes to how it works a few patches ago but I'm thinking I'm seeing an edge case here because of how prevalent cloaking is in my current game.

D.

[zoutzakje]

how would I deal with this? Very simple. I would take the extra AIP and do some gate raiding. Immediately. Extremely low AIP games are actually tougher than somewhat higher AIP games. Getting weak waves everywhere is tougher than getting stronger waves at a single chokepoint.
And 2-3 hours out of 12 for killing threat seems reasonable to me. Killing threat is more important to me than making progress. I know how out of control things can get with high threat.
As for cloacked threat. I don't know much about that, as I don't play against cloacking opponents very often. I don't like cloacking ships that much (for both the AI and myself). The only reason I have cloacking ships enabled is because of scouts.

[Diazo]

Heh.

Ya, I will be going back to the chokepoint defensive setup next game I play, probably with warp jammer assistance.

Not an option for my current game however. I'd be looking at have to gate raid 20 to 25 gates and I can't afford 100+ AIP at this point.

Here's the map from the AAR thread for reference.

One of the reasons I tried this however was because I wanted to do something different and not just play another chokepoint defensive setup.

I think against anything except a cloak type AI I would have be fine, but the cloaking is throwing me a serious curve ball.

However, the point of this thread is to see what threat is doing to other people after the changes to how the AI handles ships loose on threat a couple patches ago.

D.

[TechSY730]

Decloaking options for humans are rather limited, especially in ship cap. Thus when facing a cloaking AI, reducing the number of inpoints is almost maditory due to there not being enoughl decloakers (both mobile and stationary) to go around.

Not sure if this is or isn't a balance issue to be looked at.

[Hearteater]

Ideally I'd find were the threat is hanging out and bait it in.  Finding cloaked threat can be a pain, especially if they have tachyon units like Sentinel Frigates or Micro Fighters.  But once you've killed off any Tachyon Guardians adjacent to worlds you control, send through a Tachyon Drone.  Make sure you already have a scout in place.  Note the threat levels at each enemy planet.  Then build up a stack of tractors, gravity and tachyon turrets under force fields next to that wormhole and try and bait the AI into attacking.  If the threat is spread out, you might be able to consolidate it by dropping a Fortress on one planet so that threat moves to a better location.  Also consider using cheap, high-cap units to attack the threat pile.  The AI seems pretty comfortable about counter-attacking when it normally wouldn't attack otherwise.

[Diazo]

Hmm.

Not sure cloaking itself requires a rebalance. Maybe double check that ships loose on threat that are cloaked show on the galaxy map when 'show threat' is selected.

I don't think they are in my current game, but I am running out of scouts so I have unscouted systems with threat in them so I can't tell how much threat is unscouted.

I'm pretty sure I'm fighting the Stealth Master AI type and that is rated a medium AI so it should be more difficult then an easy type AI.

This thread is more about how much time I've been chasing threat around the galaxy. To me, threat was a way to handle ships that got loose from the guard post being destroyed and so on, I don't think it was intended for ships sent as part of a wave to run away and join the threat count.

Having said that, I'm not sure it's a bad thing for ships from waves to be doing that, it was just something I had not seen before as between tractor beams and gravity turrets, waves in previous games never had a chance to run away.

D.

[zoutzakje]

oh that's just normal behaviour. Ships that run away from waves ARE threat and they will always stalk a wormhole at some point. It's annoying that they run away and is sometimes hard to prevent. But a good gravity + tractor turret setup will keep most 7/7 waves in their place. In my 9/9 game just now it happened to me that a large part of a 707 mk II missile frig wave escaped. I savescummed a few times to figure out a way to prevent them from doing that. A forcefield on the wormhole and placing a lot of mines (which I hadn't done yet) did the trick.
If that still doesn't work, parking your fleet at the enemy side of the wormhole works also. First let your defenses do what they do best and wait with your fleet in case ships try to escape.
Of course all of this works best if you have gate raided and have a turretball placed somewhere. In your case I assume your defenses are spread thin and uncapable of holding waves without fleet support, which makes preventing waves from retreating tougher.

[Minotaar]

If you defent with the fleet anyway, just keep engineers around and build some temporary defenses out of spare forcefields and tachyons right on the spot, then scrap them. Annoying, but surely would be less annoying than hunting them afterwards 
Also, mobile tractors could help (on the Riots mainly).
And yes, the behaviour is intended, for sure.

[Tridus]

The shotguns on the Riots work really well to hinder this too. If it's not immune to engine damage, even the Riot I's will cripple the movement of a wave.

Fun one is to mix that in with the translocation shots on a Millitary Command Station. It throws them all over the sector with crippled engines. Most ships get thrown out of weapons range and are easy pickings at that point (not so much with Zenith Bombards...).

[Wanderer]

Dealing with cloaked threat is a different issue than standard threat, and that's a lot of your issue.

Primarily: Cloaked ships park longer.  I've watched cloaked ships just SIT.  You can't bait, can't get them to move, nada.  This is particularly obvious when you 'free' a planet and the cloaked ships just SIT there.  Try it vs. an AI Eye where the cloaked ships at the command station just never move.

You have to carry Brave Scout Starships with you to deal with them.  Ship the scouts into different systems to 'wake' the cloaked threat.  This will help get them into your systems where you can deal with them with your fleet.

[TechSY730]

Dealing with cloaked threat is a different issue than standard threat, and that's a lot of your issue.

Primarily: Cloaked ships park longer.  I've watched cloaked ships just SIT.  You can't bait, can't get them to move, nada.  This is particularly obvious when you 'free' a planet and the cloaked ships just SIT there.  Try it vs. an AI Eye where the cloaked ships at the command station just never move.

You have to carry Brave Scout Starships with you to deal with them.  Ship the scouts into different systems to 'wake' the cloaked threat.  This will help get them into your systems where you can deal with them with your fleet.

That's a slightly different but related issue.
There are some known bugs with The AI being too timid with cloaked ships, even in safe situations. This is most noticeable with cloaked zombies, but it can also crop up with cloaked non-zombie threat.

It would be nice to get this fixes soonish, as it is extremely aggravating to deal with.

[zoutzakje]

Cloacked ships are a pain to deal with in general. End of story.

[rabican]

This happens all the time to me. I don't do gate raiding and usually play pretty wormhole rich maps so defense gets spread and can't crush waves. Resulting in over 500-1500 threat all the time after mid game.

Usually i just ignore this , its fine. 

[SenorPez]

Depending on how fortified my defenses are and how nasty the other side of the wormhole from which the wave is appearing is (I don't play with Cross-Planet Waves on, which might affect this slightly), I'll sometimes cross-jump part of my response fleet through the wormhole and park them on the wormhole, supported by a Mobile Repair Station.

This generally has two effects:

• It siphons some threat out of the existing system, as the AI will react to my incursion and the ball of ships will start thinning them out. The cloaked MRS is a wonderful addition.
• Any wave ships that try to escape will get vaporized by the ball, preventing them from adding to threat that could cause bigger problems later.

When things get too hot for the ball, they'll head back to fortified safe territory, having accomplished what they set out to do. It's not something I use all the time, but when the ball can hold out long enough to prevent the wave from beginning the Threat Snowball effect.