Have reprisal waves gone too far?

[TechSY730]

Sadly, I don't have a good auto save, and the host did not have logging on, but I did, so only main thread logs.

But, do these reprisal waves seem reasonable to you (the grav drain one shows up repeatedly because we were save scumming)?

Generated from the attached save. To get these waves, send invaderhive's army minus the golems at the gravtic station next door. The amount lost to do that was giving reprisal waves of the kinds we saw.


EDIT: Just to save you the trouble of digging through logs, we got, in quick succession:
~3000 Mk. II fighters and 15 or so starships
~3000 Mk. II bombers and 10 or so starships
~1880 Mk. II spire gravity drains and 5 or so starships

At difficulty level 8 and 220 or so AIP.

No reprisal wave warning was given, at all, so I have no idea what reprisal "level" this was.

[vigilo confido]

Also, it seemed the AI was collecting salvage from a neutral planet at full force.

[TechSY730]

Actually, how big was your army?

I was seeing 10000 strength of your army, minus the golems. If you really lost that much, maybe we did deserve what we got thrown back at us.

(BTW Keith, I responded about the EMP thing in the main thread)

[vigilo confido]

Nearly all the starships survived and a lot was lost after the AI lost it's gravitic command station.

[keith.lamothe]

No reprisal wave warning was given, at all, so I have no idea what reprisal "level" this was.

It will show "Reprisal Level 1" for at least a short time after you cross the threshold and before it announces the reprisal wave.  And the reprisal wave will be announced with a timer and the word "Reprisal" in the alert line.  If you didn't see at least that alert line, it wasn't a reprisal wave but something else.

Also, it seemed the AI was collecting salvage from a neutral planet at full force.

It can't collect without an AI command station on the planet, the code's pretty heavy-handed about that.  If you have a clear case of it doing so please do point it out to me

[TechSY730]

Also, it seemed the AI was collecting salvage from a neutral planet at full force.

It can't collect without an AI command station on the planet, the code's pretty heavy-handed about that.  If you have a clear case of it doing so please do point it out to me

Actually, I think that is wrong (source: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Post-7.000_Beta#Prerelease_7.013_Revised_Salvage):

Previously player ships dying on neutral planets (planets with no command station at all) would give salvage to the AI. While this is often fine it's also very punishing when the planet was the player's just a moment ago and now there's a huge pile of casualties during the overrun, etc. Also problematic in other cases. Now player ships dying on neutral planets only give salvage to the AI if there's at least one normal (i.e. does NOT include Special Forces Guard Posts, and does NOT include Wormhole Guard Posts though they wouldn't still be there anyway) AI guard post left on the planet. So once you clean an AI planet the AI never gets salvage from there ever again.

So, AI can gather salvage from neutral planets if they still have some "non-special" guard posts there.

While that would certainly explain what we saw, it does make me wonder. Where is our salvage efficiency boosting structure that is independent from our command stations?

Come to think of it, how are the AI's salvage rate and efficiency calculated? Mk. of its command station? Number of guard posts? Some combination thereof?

EDIT:
Oh, and what happens when there are AI guard posts on that planet, but there is also a human command station?

[Toranth]

EDIT:
Oh, and what happens when there are AI guard posts on that planet, but there is also a human command station?

People question your sanity?
More seriously, that's an interesting question.  What *should* happen?

[TechSY730]

I think there should be consistency. Either both players get some way to maintain some level of salvage income on neutral planets (aka, something that can gather salvage independently of command stations), or neither player can (aka, when the AI loses command center, it loses salvage too, just like it does with us).

That said, I wonder if the new change for 7.036 (completed command station needed to gather salvage, regardless of any other salvage getting structures) applies to AIs too? If so, that would mean the although guard post count would buff salvage rate on that planet for the AI, it would lose salvage all together once the AI command station goes down, the same as it would for our Spire cities.
If so, that would mostly "fix" the issue.

Still unsure about the relation of the number of guard posts, difficulty, and command station type in terms of AI's net salvage efficiency on a planet.

[Wingflier]

From my experience, reprisal waves have been rather weak (on difficulty 8 ), and really only served as needed extra metal after losing some important units.

[vigilo confido]

Not when you lose 5K ships when most of them were lost after the command station went down. A 20K reprisal wave is pretty deadly.

[Nodor]

In my latest game (difficulty 9)   Reprisal waves 2-3K bombers.   Normal waves 400 bombers.   To be fair, Mad Bomber is not an ideal baseline for wave sizing.

I'm viewing reprisal waves into whipping boys as "fleet rebuild support" but it does mean I invest heavily  in defenses immediately.

That's to say, I'm handling reprisal waves.    The Fallen Spire related Exo's are defintiely not "easy" relatively speaking.

[kasnavada]

In another 8/8 game, I had one of those planets with all guard posts near the AI command station... at one of the planet near the AI core. So, of course, 2-3 shields, at least one fortress and so on. Basically, it's nearly impossible to kill those without triggering a massive retaliation as your losses are basically your fleet if you want to make a dent in that. I had to come back 3 times before finishing it. Thankfully, I had a botnet in that game to handle the 12k+ ships in retaliation...

This particular defense pattern might need to be re-evaluated with the reprisal waves...

[Peter Ebbesen]

From my experience, reprisal waves have been rather weak (on difficulty 8 ), and really only served as needed extra metal after losing some important units.

You aren't losing enough ships, then.  >D

For the full experience, try a fleet wipe in enemy territory.

[Nodor]

From my experience, reprisal waves have been rather weak (on difficulty 8 ), and really only served as needed extra metal after losing some important units.

You aren't losing enough ships, then.  >D

For the full experience, try a fleet wipe in enemy territory.

I'm finding fleet wipes in enemy territory more beneficial for metal income than partial wipes.

[ErictheRed]

I'm not enjoying the salvage/reprisal attacks very much.  There are situations in this game where you are forced to sacrifice your ships in order to achieve a result.  I don't think the salvage makes up for the variable AI reprisal wave that hits you when you sacrifice (I've had everywhere from 200 to 2000 enemy ships in my current game with the same AI reprisal level showing).