Marauders are still devastating.

[chmjs]

A while back I think the marauders were tweaked substantially. Consequently I now find them a major pain in the back side, they are very strong and turn up very often in my games. I would like to ask the developers if this was what they intended or are they just unbalanced at the moment?

[Minty]

I wouldn't say they're devastating, as such. More an extra bump in thr road, encouraging people to set up proper defences or to properly support their assaults. FAR better than their old "Wait, I missed the Marauders spawning, and they've popped already?" kind of power-level.

[chmjs]

It is more the frequency I am bothered by. They turn up every time I invade an AI planet.
In turns of helping you learn defence I am not so sure. Since they not come through worm holes turret defences are useless and the only solution is to keep a small fire brigade force hanging around. The management of which can be annoying.

[keith.lamothe]

The frequency is already back to the way it was since version 3.120 and earlier, I'm not sure what else to say there.  The marauder counter goes up by 1 every 80 seconds, and the counter has to be at least 15 to have any chance (a 4% chance, I think) of spawning, which is checked just after each increment.  The chance goes up by 4% with each additional point on the counter, until it's 100% at 40 or  higher.  Or something like that, I may be off on the actual percents.

Anyway, that means there's a minimum of 15*80 = 1200 seconds = 20 minutes between spawns, and a maximum of 40*80 = 3200 = 53ish minutes.  That's on difficulties >= 5 and < 9; diffs < 5 have much more frequent spawns (low cap is 2, high cap is 9) but much smaller, wheras diffs >= 9 have larger but less frequent spawns (low cap 30, high cap 80).

Are you seeing spawns more frequent than that would indicate?

They are supposed to be a significant event, even a major event in some cases.  If you find yourself carefully considering whether you want the challenge of enabling them when setting up a game (while still feeling tempted to do so), we've accomplished our goal

[chmjs]

I tend to see them every time I invade an AI world. Granted I am quite a slow player so I imagine this is every 30 minutes or so. They tend to come in numbers of around 8. In my present game on quite low difficulty the always come and sometimes also attack my own worlds too. Given the data you have given me it seems a little high.

[chmjs]

In fact at the moment I see them every time I come in contact with the AI including when they launch cross border aggression. I have attached the save file In question.

[keith.lamothe]

In my present game on quite low difficulty the always come and sometimes also attack my own worlds too. Given the data you have given me it seems a little high.

What exact difficulty?  If it's less than 5 they'll come super-often, but only a (relatively) few at a time.

[chmjs]

Ah that will be it, the difficulty was 4 as I was trying out the new ships.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, that would do it.  If you'd prefer I can just drop that low-difficulty-bracket and have anything less than 9 have a lowCap of 15 and a high cap of 40 (currently you're working with 2 and 9, respectively).

That means you would see them way less often but there would be quite a few more when they happened.  There are other things we could do to tone them down for lower difficulties but in general you're probably not having to worry very much about the normal AI on diff 4

[chmjs]

Yes that would be great as instead of being a constant inconvenience they can now be a rare but major concern. I for one like that idea.

[keith.lamothe]

Consider it done

[chmjs]

Thanks for the great support as always.