Gate Raiding and AI attacks

[orielis]

I'm playing my first real game (difficulty 7, Random Easier AIs). I was up to a total of 8 systems, but have been reading about the importance of keeping AIP low.

I've taken all but one of the systems next to my home world, and that one has basically nothing useful in it. So I figured I'd try to neuter it: I destroyed all the installations except the wormhole guardians, and then I destroyed the warp gate. I was thinking that, since this was the only hostile wormhole into my home system the AI would be unable to send waves to the home planet.

While I was doing all this, the AI reinforced heavily this little fleabite of a planet. As soon as my back was turned attacking another planet, it sent most of those ships through the wormhole to my home planet -- there was no advance warning as there is with a wave.  They broke through my fixed defenses -- lots of minefields and turrets and headed straight for my command station, with a predictable result.

Right now, I'm in an alternative universe where I scraped up ships from all over and barely managed to ride out the attack. The number of AI ships at the fleabite is down to 100 or so.

What I am wondering is whether this type of attack is something I will have to look forward to periodically as long as I leave that enemy planet on my doorstep.

Oh yes, one other factor. Whilst I was clearing the enemy installations off the planet, I also planted a covert knowledge extractor there and sucked up all the knowledge available from that planet. That annoyed the AI as well and, now that I think about it, it announced a reprisal raid would be forthcoming.

Would this have been a reprisal raid? Is there advance warning of where reprisals are going to hit?

I'm just trying to learn as much as I can. This seems to be a nifty game and I have explored quite a bit in the wiki, which someone noted is somewhat out of date.

[Zair]

Reprisal waves happen when you get a bunch of your ships killed in AI space and the AI uses the scrap left behind to throw a fleet of its own back at you. They are announced with the standard 150 second warning and follow the normal rules for wave launches (must be sent from a warp gate, will always pick a human planet adjacent to a warp gate if any exist).

The reaction from the covert knowledge extractor instead causes ships in 'Threat mode' to spawn at the command station of the planet you just finished hacking for a short period of time. If not dealt with, any ships in Threat mode can pool together in AI territory bordering your own and wait for your own mobile units to be far enough away before spilling across the wormhole into your juicy, underdefended planets so they can feed on human flesh and agony.

Ships can also end up in Threat mode if you got their attention by picking a fight with them, then ran away before they all died.

[orielis]

OK, that makes sense. It sounds like if I keep my nose out of that planet, it'll probably sit there quietly for a fair while.

And then, when I'll been lulled to sleep . . . . .

[tadrinth]

Don't suppose you could post a save?  Something is weird here, that can't have been reinforcements that attacked your HW (unless you have the Preemptive plot enabled).  If you had a hack in progress or just finishing (ie, covert K extraction), then the hacking response could spawn things to attack you, but it sounded like you were done with that before you pulled your forces out of the system.

If you cleared ALL the warp gates adjacent to systems you controlled, that could cause waves to spawn as threat (aka cross-planet waves), but you'd still get a wave warning, the planet would just be listed as '???'. 

The reprisal wave should announce and function as a normal wave as well. 

[orielis]

Here is a save from immediately prior to the invasion. If you just let it run for a while, nothing happens.

The trigger is when I send enough of my fleet from Maisido to invade the AI planet Dihararran, The AI then immeidately starts sending ships through the wormgate from Desme to my home world of Bangzon.

The hack was still in progress at this point, but I had abandoned Desme except for a scout and the CKE. The biggest striking element of my fleet was on Maisido concentrating for the attack on Dihararron.

Let me know if that helps.

[Toranth]

On the Galactic Map, under the 'Filter' dropdown towards the bottom, there is an option called "Strength (All)".  This switches the display from the COUNT of ships to the STRENGTH of the ships.  Strength is a rough estimate of how strong a particular unit is.  It's only a rough estimate, because special abilities, multipliers, immunities, etc, all play a big role in adjusting exactly how combat effective a unit is.
But Strength is the base estimate, and it is the estimate the AI uses in its own calculations.

Also on the Galaxy Map, under the 'Displaying' dropdown, there is an option marked "Detected Threat".  I suggest you find or set a shortcut key for this option, as you'll want to use it a lot.  It changes the ship type filter to show those AI units that are currently not guarding anything and looking for a way to hurt you.  Note that Threat ships and the Threatfleet are not the ONLY behavior of AI ships that will go on the attack - they're just the most common.

Combine these two options to figure out where and much deadly the AIs units are.

In your game, the Desme system has 167 AI ships as Threat, with a strength of 1616.  Your fleet in Maisido is about 350 ships for 1900 strength.  The AI usually won't attack where you are stronger, and it is (now) smart enough to look at systems near the target system to see what human reinforcements can be quickly brought to bear.  It used to not bother, which led to a lot of trickery with hiding reinforcements on the other side of a wormhole and easily ambushing the attackers, so now the AI is smarter.

However, when you move your fleet to Dihararran, they aren't in position to defend your Homeworld anymore.  So the AI only looks at the defenses on your Homeworld itself.  And those are... very minor.  Only about 5 or 6 of each turret, and not even 20 mines.  That's about 350 strength.  As you can see, when the AI realizes that it is about 4 times stronger than you, it quickly attacks.

My recommendation is to quickly build more turrets.  You've already unlocked the Mk II Needler and Missile turrets as well as the Spider turrets, yet you've only built a few of each.  Build at least 20 of each.  Even more distracting, you've unlocked the HBC Mk Is, yet don't have any defending your Homeworld.  I suggest you build out ALL the Sniper, Spider, Mk II Needler, and Mk II Missile turrets on your Homeworld, and then add 10 of your HBCs as well.

This pushes your HW defensive strength up to about 4000 or so.  Enough to keep the Threatfleet off your Homeworld, or smash it if it does attack.

It may not be obvious, but most Turrets and Mini-Fortresses have per-planet caps.  How many you have on one planet does not impact how many you can build on other planets.  So, defend your Homeworld well!  Lose it, and that's Game Over, so be careful rather than sorry.
HBCs, Tractors, Mines, and Grac turrets have global caps:  For those defenses, it does matter how many you've built elsewhere.

[Alex Heartnet]

Huh, this is new.  Apparently the AI saw the need to protect Desme from your fleet at Maisido.

also 30 turrets does not a homeworld defense make.  That's half your problem.

I see 1,510,382 metal and 771,994 energy that could be defending your homeworld RIGHT NOW like some inverted version of Planetary Annihilation.  You don't always need to immediately spend every bit of metal you get, but metal not used is metal wasted.

...You are aware that unit caps on most turrets is per-planet rather then galaxy-wide?  Think big.

Also take a look at the CTRLS tab, I made a few tweaks.  Most notably:

Auto-Kite = 1,000.  This makes a HUGE difference in keeping your ships alive.

Auto-FRD Defenders.  Debatable, but cuts down on micro greatly and syncs up well with auto-kiting.

Auto-Build 1 Remains Rebuilder per-planet + Auto-FRD Remains Rebuilders.  Again debatable, but you aren't trying to use advanced defensive tactics.

Auto-Build Engineers + Auto-FRD Engineers = See above.

-------------------------------------

This savefile should give you a better idea of what a defensive setup should look like.  Notice that the AI is no longer attacking your homeworld the moment you move your fleet.

also an attack wave of 87 ships is coming.  how cute.

However, when you move your fleet to Dihararran, they aren't in position to defend your Homeworld anymore.

Strangely his fleet is not in a position to defend his homeworld to begin with.  His fleet is two hops away.  No, the AI apparently feels like protecting Masdo from the fleet next door is more important then attacking undefended human planets.

In your game, the Desme system has 167 AI ships as Threat, with a strength of 1616.  Your fleet in Maisido is about 350 ships for 1900 strength.  The AI usually won't attack where you are stronger, and it is (now) smart enough to look at systems near the target system to see what human reinforcements can be quickly brought to bear.  It used to not bother, which led to a lot of trickery with hiding reinforcements on the other side of a wormhole and easily ambushing the attackers, so now the AI is smarter.

I gotta try this for myself.  What's the cutoff limit for # of systems checked?  Does it detect cloaked units as well?  Could I build a bunch of transports, logistics commands, and space-time manipulators and speed my fleet over to the ambush location?

[tadrinth]

When considering whether it has enough strength to successfully attack a planet, the AI now considers nearby human mobile strength (up to 3 hops out).

http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2014/04/ai-war-beta-7019-oops-mkii-released.html

His fleet may not actually be in a position to defend his homeworld, but the AI assumes a certain degree of human fleet mobility.

When a hack finishes, there is a burst of response proportional to the total response during the hack.  It's usually wise to keep your fleet around until you've dealt with the post-hack response.  It can be dangerous to let ships in Threat mode build up, as you've seen. 

In the top right of the UI, there's an indicator of the number of ships the AI currently has in Threat mode.  When that spikes, it's wise to flip to the galaxy view and use the Detected Threat filter and see what's happening. 

Threat ships left to their own devices will try to group up if they can, and it's easier to clean them up before they can consolidate their strength.  You also don't want them switching to ThreatFleet, which they'll do if they don't see a good opening ofr an attack for thirty minutes.  That causes them to lurk deep in AI space until they see an opening. 

With most turrets now on a per-planet cap, the only real limitation on your turrets is the energy cost.  Turrets are an excellent thing to use extra metal and energy on, as they're very effective in both actually defending and in intimidating AI forces so that they don't actually attack your systems.

[orielis]

Thanks for all the help. I see your point about the turrets, just hadn't realized it was smart to build them out.

I noriced you only built Needler and Missile turrets in addition to the sniper/spider turrets. Are the other turrets not as useful?

As far as the threat ships, if they don't see the chance to attack is it a good idea then to launch a pre-emptive attack to get rid of them or does that simply make the problem bigger?

[Kahuna]

Thanks for all the help. I see your point about the turrets, just hadn't realized it was smart to build them out.

I noriced you only built Needler and Missile turrets in addition to the sniper/spider turrets. Are the other turrets not as useful?

You should always build full caps of all available turrets on all planets. There usually isn't a reason not to.
The top 3 hull types to counter on defense are: Polycrystal, Artillery, Medium. The fourth one would be either Neutron, Heavy or Ultra Heavy.

As far as the threat ships, if they don't see the chance to attack is it a good idea then to launch a pre-emptive attack to get rid of them or does that simply make the problem bigger?

If your fleet is strong enough to destroy the threat without heavy losses then yes it is a good idea. Although I always just ignore all threat and let them do whatever they want. I really like strong defenses so I don't care if they decide to attack. My defenses can always easily "auto stop" a couple of thousand ships. So I just ignore them and get the salvage if they decide to attack. If you unlock a lot of ships instead of a lot of turrets then clearing the threat once in a while might be a good idea since you don't have the defenses to auto stop huge attacks. You would have to use your fleet for defense anyway so might as well get rid of the threat in advance. On the other hand if you wait until they attack and destroy them on your planet you will get the salvage. So really just pick your poison and see what happens. Depends on situation too.

[Toranth]

What Kahuna says is generally correct - Whenever possible, you should build all caps of turrets on all your planets.  He's written a good guide to defenses (and other parts of the game).

The main reason I was suggesting Needler and Missile is because those are the two types you had unlocked Mk II for.  Mk II are twice a powerful as Mk I, but cost the same energy to maintain.  So, unless you are building both Mk I and Mk II, build the Mk II first.  Then add Mk I turrets later.

You have plenty of Energy, though, so you should have little problem defending your planets.

As far as the threat ships, if they don't see the chance to attack is it a good idea then to launch a pre-emptive attack to get rid of them or does that simply make the problem bigger?

Whenever possible, destroy threat preemptively.  This is doubly true when the threat is still scattered - as it is in your game.  If you wait long enough, the free Threat ships will form what is called the Threatfleet.  Threatfleet is a single gathering of all the older Threat ships into one coordinated group.  This is harder to deal with, because a) the Threatfleet is a concentrated fleet of ships that will support each other, and b) the Threatfleet moves back a little ways from your planets, and so will hide in AI space, making it riskier to attack.

[Kahuna]

He's written a good guide to defenses (and other parts of the game).

Thanks^^
I'm about halfway trough rewriting it. Will try to update it in a week or two. Just need to edit and partly rewrite the "Defense" section. Screenshots are ready. Just saying.

[Histidine]

Is "full caps of all turrets on all planets" really viable without requiring enough Matter Converters to send your metal income into the negative? (Well, I could save some power from my usual setup by omitting the miniforts, but I still can't imagine that being enough.)

[Kahuna]

Well it's true it depends on your play style and skill and difficulty levels. If you have 20 planets then no.. but if you can afford to capture 20 planets theb you're  on a difficulty level where you really don't need strong defenses anyway.

Also please see my calculations about Mini-Forts here http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15795.msg179907.html#msg179907

[tadrinth]

Is "full caps of all turrets on all planets" really viable without requiring enough Matter Converters to send your metal income into the negative?

In one of Kahuna's games, I think that's more just what's required to keep the AI off the lawn.  For people not playing against red-hard AI types on Diff 10, full caps everywhere are overkill if you have good chokes available.