That's a lot of ships...

[Delwack]

I think these speak for themselves:


I'm not exactly sure what they are, they aren't threat?  or at least not all of them are.  (16k != 9k). 

I also ran into an interesting thing when this many carriers appear.  Sometimes if you pop a carrier, and there are 3k+ ships on the planet already, bringing it up to 4k or 5k ships, the computer will actually place everything back into a brand new carrier, while my ships are shooting at them! 

[Faulty Logic]

They're special forces. They attack you if you go for a planet the AI cares about (CSG, Golem).

[Delwack]

I find it slightly odd that special forces are sitting there on top of a wormhole that leads to one of my worlds when they don't attack in general.  I'm going to guess they couldn't get to where they wanted to?  Also, I'd guess the odd carrier behavior (where the carriers re-appear right after you pop them, taking the ships that just spilled out and putting them back into a brand new carrier when total ship count on the planet is too high, even though you are shooting at them) happens only to special forces since those carriers don't combine their carried ships into higher marks when popped, as far as I could tell. 

That's a lot of special force ships.  Cleared them out once already before engaging and destroying the first AI homeworld a few hours ago, that was a pretty massive battle on it's own.  They seem to multiply at a very rapid rate after the additional AIP.  Since they don't cross into human-owned worlds, it seems quite possible to 'trap' them, even if by accident as appears to be the case here.  (special forces did not respond/show up to killing the 2nd AI homeworld, even though it was a fairly lengthy battle.  I guess they were all stuck there.)

I didn't really notice it before, but there are quite a few areas where the AI is cut off from the rest of it's planets.  If special forces are spawning on multiple planets that are 'cut up and carved out' like this, do they create their own little pools in their local area, or do they all attempt to reach their 'rally point' anyway, and if they fail, just kind of stand there looking menacing but not doing much? 

[Mánagarmr]

SFs usually camp wormholes for one reason or another. I have no idea why, but they tend to do that. But the carrier popping thing was odd. It's supposed to bake them into guardians, not make another carrier

[zoutzakje]

wow that is a massive amount of ships indeed. And I here I thought I was unlucky with just 3k of Special Forces. It's a good thing that they seem to stay on AI only worlds though. At least so far. What difficulty were you playing? I'm preparing myself for some 9/9 games I've started and I think the SF will be my biggest reason for concern.

[Kahuna]

With 2 players and 476 AIP I'm not surprised at all.

[Delwack]

wow that is a massive amount of ships indeed. And I here I thought I was unlucky with just 3k of Special Forces. It's a good thing that they seem to stay on AI only worlds though. At least so far. What difficulty were you playing? I'm preparing myself for some 9/9 games I've started and I think the SF will be my biggest reason for concern.

7/7 2-player game.  first AI home command was dead, second one had it's guardposts stripped and only had the station itself, along with it's standard final defenses (2 Mk V FF, the fort).  Was glad we didn't have to deal with that force.  That would not have been pleasant.