How do CPA and exos work now?

[Kahuna]

I haven't really played AI War after the changes to threat behavior. How do CPAs and exos work now? Is the only way to defend against them to play on a map where you can have only 1 choke point? Will they now try to go around my whipping boys?

[keith.lamothe]

Exo behavior is basically unchanged (until the group's target dies, at which point it becomes more like normal threat), and the CPA-released threat won't go threat-fleet until 30 minutes after spawning.

After that they can take a broader look at where to hit you.  I haven't heard anything about it making single-chokepoint obligatory, though.

[Kahuna]

Where do AIs get the ships for CPAs? Only from Barracks, Reserves Special Forces and threat? How much would destroying every Barracks in the galaxy, both Reserves and Special Forces affect CPAs sizes? Also how fast do the Reserves grow? If I destroy all Reserve ships how long would it take before they're maxed again?

[Cinth]

I don't think you can deplete the reserves without assaulting a HW. I haven't run a full length game at a higher difficulty yet, but at 7/7, hitting a core world dropped reserves to 70% before they stopped defending there.

Clearing out the Barracks and free threat (and clearing AI worlds) will severely dampen CPAs. Idle observation tells me that the reserves only match what gets sent out, not what gets called for in the announcement.

And I didn't think SF ships would be included for CPA (could be wrong here).

Anyway, that's what I gathered from my last full playthough.

[Kahuna]

I don't think you can deplete the reserves without assaulting a HW.

True. But the reserve ships will become free threat so they will attack me. Then I'll just wait behind my minefields and turrets and laugh at them.

[Cinth]

The only time reserves can join an attack is when they are part of a CPA. Reserves called up for other reasons (core/home world assault) will be reabsorbed into the reserves.

[keith.lamothe]

Reserve ships deployed as part of a CPA will become threat that way, but the normal reserve defensive spawns are never supposed to go threat; they're supposed to stay on their planet and fight until the deployment is over, and then get reabsorbed into the reserve.

Where do AIs get the ships for CPAs? Only from Barracks, Reserves Special Forces and threat?

I don't recall off the top of my head if SF is eligible for CPA duty, and threat is not considered in spawning CPAs (since all a CPA is, is releasing guards into threat).

Guard ships are the traditional source of ships, and they're just the ones sitting around a guard post or whatever.  But that source is probably eclipsed by the barracks and reserves now.

How much would destroying every Barracks in the galaxy, both Reserves and Special Forces affect CPAs sizes?

If there weren't enough guard ships, the CPA would come up short and just free what it could.

Also how fast do the Reserves grow? If I destroy all Reserve ships how long would it take before they're maxed again?

I don't have the numbers in front of me but if you have advanced logging on it will log the additions to the reserve in the special forces log file.

[Kahuna]

kk thanks.