Incoming waves not actually attacking me

[MasterGeese]

So right now I've got a threat fleet of 750 or so ships. Nearly all these ships are the result of the ai's periodic waves not actually attacking me, but instead deciding to stare at me menacingly from a neighboring system. I've tried to travel to said system, hoping to thin out the threatfleet a bit before it gets any more out of hand, but the moment my fleet pops into the system, all the threatfleet ships disappear, presumably one system deeper, out of fear of my main fleet.

The threatfleet will inevitably only get larger, since it feeds off waves, and it's only a matter of time before the AI wises up and punches straight through my defenses while my fleet is off conquering the other side of the galaxy.

How do you deal with this situation?

[Aklyon]

Sounds like you don't have any adjacent warp gates.

[MasterGeese]

Sounds like you don't have any adjacent warp gates.

I do, in fact I probably have too many (somewhere around 10, didn't pick a very defensible start )

[Coppermantis]

Did you accidentally select the "Cross Planet Waves" option in the menu? That can result in the behavior you described.

[MasterGeese]

Did you accidentally select the "Cross Planet Waves" option in the menu? That can result in the behavior you described.

Assume that I did and that I didn't fully understand what that would entail until now...

Am I screwed then? The AI is now sending hundreds of ships per wave. On the occasions that I can hunt down the threatfleet, they simply retailiate with a reprisal wave twice the size of what I killed, which dances around between planets. I feel like I'm totally pinned down against the AI's production.

[Aklyon]

Well, there two questions (possibly more) for that:
1. How good are your defenses?
2. Whats the AIP at?

[MasterGeese]

I'll just add the save file...

I think my defenses are fairly good for now, but I'm not confident on them being able to handle several hundred ships + starships in tow. Plus once the threat gets higher I'll definitely want more defenses.

AIP is at 138.

[IIE16 Yoshi]

My completely rookie observation of having the CPA option enabled is that no wave will initially mount an attack when it spawns. Instead, the wave seems to spawn in the system whose wormhole was going to be the staging point for the wave and the wave will hang around there for a while before becoming a part of threatfleet. Because of that, threatfleet will build and build and build to terrifying levels and once your fleet is out of position (position being anywhere within a couple jumps of threatfleet), they will stage their assault and make certain you get to know how it feels to be the AI when you ran over their systems at the start of the game with massively overwhelming numbers.

[Diazo]

Checking the save file, Cross Planet Waves are indeed enabled.

So yes, an AI wave warps in to an adjacent system and then when it arrives at the warp point to your system it does not travel through to attack you as it uses the threat logic to determine it has no chance so it turns around and joins the pile of threat waiting to attack you.

Note that there is a timer on a wave that when it arrives it can't retreat for a set time, but I'm assuming the travel time in the adjacent system runs this timer out so the wave retreats before it even reaches your system.

D.