AI Awareness Query

[Fitz]

Hi

First time posting, so be gentle please

In my current game I have been working to secure a group of 10 planets with a nice single planet chokepoint, all has been going according to plan. Since it is now time to take the Mark 4 planet to seal off the chokepoint, I wanted to start scouting in detail what was on the other side. I got a big shock when I noticed that the 2 planets bordering the furthest out I had scouted had an unusually high number of ships, it turns out that they are marked with "AI Alerted to your presence - Reinforcement Likely". The planet next to them has only 2 starship scouts.

Is this normal behaviour for planets to go on alert when there has been no hostile action in the neighbouring system?
Does the starship scout act differently from normal scouts by triggering nearby planets to go into alert status?

In case it is relevant I am using version 3.0.6.0.

Have posted a screenshot to help explain.

[x4000]

Welcome to the forums!  Don't worry, people here are generally not going to bite your head off -- new players are always welcome.

This is actually a really good question, and I am a bit surprised no one has asked this yet.  The general topic on AI Alert is in the wiki here: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_AI_Reinforcements#AI_Alert_Level

However, until just a minute ago, that had an omission that basically covers your case: starships count as 25 regular ships for purposes of alerting other planets (Golems count as 50, but that was noted there before).  Given that the AI goes on alert when there are around 50 human ships on a planet or an adjacent planet, that triggered them to be on alert.  They saw your forces massing, in essence, and freaked out.  If you withdraw those scout starships, or even just one of them, they will go off alert on those second two planets until your fleet comes back.

Good question!

[Fitz]

Thanks for the warm welcome x4000 and the great response.

Sounds like an easy solution for me to move one of those scouts and carry on with the plan. It does seem that I've made things slightly more difficult for myself on those 3 planets but that's not a huge deal (I hope!).

[x4000]

My pleasure!

I'm sure you'll be fine -- there are strategies for dealing with that here, if you run into trouble:  http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Taking_High-Level_Planets  Hopefully those help.

In some respects, if you ever want to take that Mark IV planet anytime at all soon, you've now made that easier to do by spreading out where the reinforcements have been landing so far.  You could always place a couple of scout starships in some really irrelevant place with a lot of connections to useless planets, and trick the AI into spending some of its reinforcement points way off over there.  Basically the idea of a decoy, making it harder for the AI to guess where you will really attack from, etc.  So you can use this effect to your advantage, if you want.

[SmileyFace]

[snip] starships count as 25 regular ships for purposes of alerting other planets (Golems count as 50, but that was noted there before).  Given that the AI goes on alert when there are around 50 human ships on a planet or an adjacent planet, that triggered them to be on alert. [snip]

Hmm, nice to know! I had no idea that scout starships counted towards AI threat. In fact... why do they? They are non-combat ships! Is the AI really so scared of us? It had better be

Anyway, I sometimes use scout starship to view tough systems, where smaller scouts just don't live. This knowledge will save me from accidentally triggering an alert state.

[x4000]

[snip] starships count as 25 regular ships for purposes of alerting other planets (Golems count as 50, but that was noted there before).  Given that the AI goes on alert when there are around 50 human ships on a planet or an adjacent planet, that triggered them to be on alert. [snip]

Hmm, nice to know! I had no idea that scout starships counted towards AI threat. In fact... why do they? They are non-combat ships! Is the AI really so scared of us? It had better be

It's just because those are "starships," which the AI assumes are all combat ships.  Even the scout starships do have some combat value now, so it could be considered dangerous to some degree.

Anyway, I sometimes use scout starship to view tough systems, where smaller scouts just don't live. This knowledge will save me from accidentally triggering an alert state.

Sure thing.  My trick for that is to send in about 20ish scouts all together, and then when they all run away outside the main part of the system, they'll be cloaked and pretty much invincible.  I then just take all but one back out of the system (assuming more than one survived), and can use them elsewhere.  Really inexpensive way to leave scouts all over the place for the sake of visibility, when you want to.

[SmileyFace]

True on the last part. I send 6+ scout mkI's and if that cloud doesn't make it, I send in a starship. In other words, I tend to do everything I can to avoid paying research to scout. That's just what I do Now that scout starships have more combat value in the latest patch, though... Those scout mkII's are looking all the more attractive. Changes are good!

[x4000]

Ah, I gotcha -- yeah, the research savings could be significant, there.  I tend to be the only one on my team to unlock scouts, and so that gives me a bit different perspective, I guess.  In multiplayer it is easier to specialize with things like that without having our offensive capabilities hurt too much.  My dad tends to get MRS and Forts, my uncle tends to get high level engineers, I tend to get scouts, and so on.

[ShadowOTE]

Yeah, the extra knowledge is invaluable. I tend to go for forts, MRS, spiders, and orbital 3's as my early unlocks, followed by ships in multiplayer, since forts balance out not unlocking turrets until very late game as my contribution to defense. Since we play on maps with lots of choke-points, spiders are ridiculously awesome, so everyone gets those regardless of their unlocks.