AI "Champ Nemesis Exos"

[Specialist]

In my most recent game, I ran into the mechanic which is I assume used to balance champions, called champion nemesis exos. It was quite shocking at first, because of the general lack of the way to stop the ball of 20 some champions at a moments notice. I ended up losing almost instantly to the home base rush. However in sharp contrast to this, upon reloading- and with prior knowledge of where the attack would be coming from- a single shield generator over a wormhole and some reallocation destroyed the exo with little to no effort. The extremely long warning time for the exo seems relatively pointless in the face of this, as very widespread fortification would be needed to reliably contain the threat, while a single save scum or lucky guess completely neutralizes the problem. This seems somewhat un-conductive to what I would consider enjoyable play, but what do I know.

So what I'm here to ask, is if someone could give me an in depth explanation of how these exos work. Obviously they rush for the home base, but what controls their strength, how often do they form, is there something I'm missing, etc etc. I've read through almost all the 7.--- patch notes god that took a long time and didn't really find anything useful. Also, if there is a way to modify their strength somehow that I'm missing, that would be nice as well. Thanks in advance.

[tadrinth]

I think they mostly got missed in the patch notes.  They were added as part of the alt-champion-progress feature, and since the regular champion progress has been kind of overpowered for a long time, the nemesis exo was added to the regular champion progress as well at the same time.  I think this is the patch in question: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Post-7.000_Beta#Prerelease_7.023_So_This_Carrier_And_A_MkIII_Lightning_Warhead_Walk_Into_A_Bar...

My understanding is that the exos will always spawn from the AI homeworlds and always beeline for your homeworld.  I think that came up in one of the forums threads.

 I believe they scale with difficulty, the number of player-controlled champions, and the maximum player champion hull size you've unlocked.  IE, roughly with the firepower added by having champions.  Later exos may also get bigger, not sure.

I think they charge using a similar mechanics to the exos for Golems - Hard and Spirecraft - Hard: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_How_Exogalactic_Strikeforces_Work

Just like those other exo types, they can synchronize with CPAs if they are sufficiently charged (I think 60% is the minimum) and you're playing on a high enough difficulty.  In particular, I've seen a nemesis exo attempt to synchronize with a CPA launched by triggering a Core CPA Guard Post on an AI homeworld.  When exos synchronize, they launch at full power but the next launch of that exo is delayed by however much they launched early.  They pretty much have to announce at 50% since they can then sync up and launch at 60%. 

I don't think the nemesis exos are supposed to be all that hard, especially since there's no slider to control their difficulty like most other exo sources.  They're very predictable since they beeline straight to your homeworld, so you can generally ensure you have defenses in their way (well, you might get surprised the first time).  The danger is going to come either from very high difficulties where the exo will be much larger, or from later exos if each subsequent exo is larger, or from the exo smashing holes in your defense for CPAs or other threats to take advantage of. 

[Alex Heartnet]

I don't think the nemesis exos are supposed to be all that hard, especially since there's no slider to control their difficulty like most other exo sources.

At first there was no slider, yes.  Now there is one.

[Specialist]

Thank you for the info tad. Perhaps the idea is that they force you to be careful more then they do serious damage. Alex, I did see those, but I had neither of them on at the time. Also, I think I read something about the exos being brought over from one of those options to the base game, regardless if they were turned on or not.

At any rate, knowledge is power. How does alt champ nemesis work? Does turning it on allow you to control the exo strength, or add more? I haven't played in a while, I was waiting on the new expansion.

[tadrinth]

The exos under discussion will trigger even if you don't enable Alt Champion Nemesis.  I'm not sure what happens if you have regular-progression champions enabled and then also enable Alt Champ Nemesis at the same time, but I suspect the result might be rather painful and possibly involve the AI charging a champion nemesis exo for you having a champion and then another one for the Alt Champ Nemesis slider. 

Just tested, 4 hours into a game at Diff 1 with both a friendly champ and with Alt Champ Nemesis, I had two champ nemesis exos announce.  So, they stack.  That's some potential ow.   

[tadrinth]

The nemesis exos are probably also a lot harder to stop if you've been running around leveling your champion at AIP10 and haven't bothered expanding.  A lot of the AI's responses to champions are designed to counterbalance low AIP champion rushes. 

[Specialist]

Ahhhhh I see. Alright, that makes much more sense. Thanks for the time and info, I appreciate it.

[tadrinth]

For perspective, at Diff 10, with 8 human-controlled Champions, with Battleship hulls unlocked, the first nemesis exo has roughly 100 shadow frigates coming from each AI homeworld.  Roughly 44k strength.  IE, roughly 6 Mark II Martyrs worth of health, or 9 assuming they each have one forcefield. 

I finally got far enough in my Limburger Diff 10 game to see the nemesis exo launch.  First time I forgot it was nearly ready and had my fleet off doing a fab hack, that didn't go so well.  Second try I didn't get my Botnet out of the way fast enough.

[Misery]

I ran into this one myself just now, and.... the main issue for me was that the meaning of this particular announcement wasnt explained.  All the way through it, I'm thinking "What in the heck is an intergalactic whatsit?!? And "champ nemesis"? What new horror is this?  What are they even doing?  Are they gonna attack somewhere specific, or spread out, or....?".   This was after a confusing series of events involving funky movements of ships on AI planets I was watching (not champions though) and a CPA wave that just blinked out of existence for no apparent reason.  And the threat level counter which has been sitting at exactly 600 for about a million years.  And I dont have the alt-champ stuff active in this game.

So I saved a couple of minutes before the thing hit 100%, and waited to see what'd happen.... I had rather expected some giant horde accompanied by some new thing I'd not seen before, but instead... OMG CHAMPION SQUAD BERSERK RUSH!!!!!

This had the side effect of making me notice that my home planet wasnt exactly the most fortified place, so that's helpful at least.  And that turrets dont seem to do a whole lot against those things.  At least, not when it's a big blob of them anyway.   Nothing else seems to have happened after they finally went down, except for one that got away, the stupid thing. 

And then I learned that my own champion had been sitting off somewhere at the time, snoozing in a random spot near some turrets, because I'm spacey that way.  Sigh.