5) My HAP was nowhere near overspent, in fact the hacking that spawned the 5k Raider IVs was only the second "research redirection" hacking attempt in the whole game. However I was also keeping up a "sensor hack" in the same system at the same time!
This was almost certainly the cause of those extremely large waves. There really isn't any other way in the game to get starships thrown at you like that, other than as a hacking response.
The Sensor Hack triggers repeatedly, and costs more every time you do it. If you had it going the entire time (10 minutes) you were doing an ARS hack, it would've cost you about 60,000 HaP total.
The Sensor Hack costs 10 for the first hack, 15 for the second, 22.5 for the third, and so on. But it adds up - after three hacks, you've spent a total of 47.5 HaP.
It has a 30 second hack time, and lasts for 35 seconds. If you plant a Sensor Hacker and just leave it alone, it will trigger every 30 seconds, refreshing the cloak time to 35 seconds every time it triggers.
If you had 500 HaP going into the hack, it would've lasted only about 4 minutes before you started to go negative on the HaP.
But as for dealing with 5000 AI Raid Starships, well... I understand your reaction. I know it, all too well...
