About that warp jammer...

[TechSY730]

Maybe it's because I play with so many bells and whistles, but I've never seen the point in the warp jammers or destroying warp gates. There's always threat, hybrids, exo-waves, freed guard units, antagonised Dysons and whatnot coming from all directions; and waves arrive after an announcement that almost always leaves enough time to ship some defensive units over to where they're needed.

Well, such is my experience, anyways. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong.

Waves by themselves are rarely threatening if you send a bit of support ahead of time.

However, when they are timed with other factors, they can become deadly.

Like I lost my last game where a 2000 ship CPA hit at about the same time as 2 waves of about 900 ships each. (The two AIs, for whatever reason, sent those waves at nearly the same time)

Given I have not yet gone past Mk. II at that point in my game, and was not at a place where I could afford a fortress quite yet, and I foolishly spent a ton of resources during the CPA countdown on my Zenith power generator, I lost quite handily.

EDIT: I had reached mark II in that game, despite what my typo said. Fixed

[Wanderer]

Maybe it's because I play with so many bells and whistles, but I've never seen the point in the warp jammers or destroying warp gates.

It depends on how deep you'll setup satellite systems.  A lot of times I'll grab a satellite Fact IV that will tempt me to open up Warp Jammers to make sure counterstrikes don't go there and respawned Warp Gate Guardians don't get involved.  It doesn't save the poor bugger from CPAs but those are usually 2-3 hours apart.

If it's made so the surrounding worlds won't even alert and thus stay VERY quiet, it could make it worth it, as CPAs will be less likely to path over the satellite system.  Mind, when I say satellite system, I've done 8 planet deep strikes to pop a new world because nothing between them was worth taking.  Traveling defenders to a system that deep can be nearly impossible.

It's not something I'd want under normal circumstances, but occassionally the MapGen is just cruel about certain locations and this improvement would go from 'meh, maybe' to 'oh hells yes'.

But then again, I don't usually play with hybrids on.  I haven't played with Hard Golems in a while either but those exos could, in theory, decide to go satellite hunting.  If they do, well, bye bye satellite.  This improvement would be more a mass improvement for base game, instead of something that would increase survivability of the sub-plots.

[keith.lamothe]

But then again, I don't usually play with hybrids on.  I haven't played with Hard Golems in a while either but those exos could, in theory, decide to go satellite hunting.  If they do, well, bye bye satellite.

Yea, both hybrids and golems-hard/spirecraft-hard exos have a chance to specifically go after fact-IVs.  Warp Jammer won't help you against them, except indirectly by preventing a wave hitting the planet at the same time as one of those other forces.  Which can matter.

[Wanderer]

But then again, I don't usually play with hybrids on.  I haven't played with Hard Golems in a while either but those exos could, in theory, decide to go satellite hunting.  If they do, well, bye bye satellite.

Yea, both hybrids and golems-hard/spirecraft-hard exos have a chance to specifically go after fact-IVs.  Warp Jammer won't help you against them, except indirectly by preventing a wave hitting the planet at the same time as one of those other forces.  Which can matter.

Heh, I know a lot of folks enjoy the Spirecraft but I don't find them fun enough to be worth the exos.  Partially my play style but I don't want to have a 'fleet' of ships I need to protect that heavily because they're irreplaceable.  The golems are generally powerful enough to be irreplaceable AND force me to deal with exo waves.  That and I don't like playing with options that reduce my score, so it's Hard or Nuttin'!

[keith.lamothe]

That and I don't like playing with options that reduce my score, so it's Hard or Nuttin'!

Which reminds me to remove the score penalty from medium-golems and medium-spirecraft.  They're often harder than hard, as I've been told many times

[HellishFiend]

That and I don't like playing with options that reduce my score, so it's Hard or Nuttin'!

Which reminds me to remove the score penalty from medium-golems and medium-spirecraft.  They're often harder than hard, as I've been told many times

Makes sense. I've never played on Hard, but the high energy costs and inability to repair on Medium are definitely very restrictive.

[PokerChen]

That and I don't like playing with options that reduce my score, so it's Hard or Nuttin'!

They're often harder than hard, as I've been told many times

My conclusion after 10 seconds of thought and a game on hard... never played medium.

[PokerChen]

Non-alert status is very intriguing, as it simply re-directs reinforncements elsewhere instead of decreasing it (we don't want that, do we" ). Perhaps we could rename it as a subspace jammer?

If we do this, can we then introduce some interactions to counterbalance that? I've been playing map-styles with a couple of planets that are connected to ~10 others. I'm thinking, for example, that alarm posts, Warpgate guardians, and AI trains should grant planet immunity to this jamming (the AI resorts to other means of direct communication instead of wide-band radio)...

Also, how would it work thematically if we then K-raid? Surely we can't fool the AI by too much. This non-alert should be tied just to the human-planet adjacency, and break if we had too many military ships on the planet.

If you place the planet jammer in a world with ~10 planets, then you get more then 10 reinforcement ticks elsewhere. Some of them going to the ai homeworld. Nasty! You pay a ton of money and reinforcement points for the ability. And non-alert worlds still get a random chance for reinforcements.

And the K-raid mechanic is done separate from planet alert status if I remember correctly.

 The K-raid mechanic is indeed done separately - I'm considering a more rational basis for the warp-jamming, since it currently prevents the normal wave at the player planet without interfering with the AI planet. If the warp-jammer prevents normal reinforcement but not K-raid reinforcement, that would seem somewhat incongruous.

 About the placement against multiple planets, the choice is dependent on play-style. I am willing to try a 50 AIP saving since I often have ~15+ planets on alert anyway and the remaining reinforcements concentrate on planets I can either ignore or take care of with a defensive fleet. One (cold, cold) line of logic using the current Botnet is that since you can harvest the majority of AI reinforcements as your own, herding them to more accessible planets becomes highly advantageous, especially in terms of amount of attention required.