New Counterwave Guard posts seem a bit tough

[Rustayne]

So I'm 8 hours into a game, with a friend, on 2 level 8 AI's.  I wouldn't say we have hit a brick wall or anything, but dealing with these guard posts are definitely making it a challenge.  A few of the worlds we have scouted have 2 or 3 of them, and while they do add quite a bit of challenge in them, you need a full fleet to ward off a wave from them.  I have been holding defenses against normal waves, and my friend has been dealing with these pretty exclusively.  The things we have noticed so far is that it is sending a full size wave of all ship types that the AI has unlocked at us in a 1 min  time.  So the scramble to get to that world and protect it is seeming a bit tough.   I don't know how these are really intended to work, but I think the wave sizes are just a bit big for a simple defense left behind to deal with.  We have a defense of about 100 or so turrets in a few of the systems it seems to like a bit, and they just get blown away as if they weren't there. 

[Vinraith]

I love them, or I suppose more precisely I love to hate them. They require some prep, I tend to treat popping one as a sort of mini-CPA and spread forces in transports through my back field to be able to react to them. With the ship counts dropped considerably on AI worlds these things are one of the few things that makes taking a normal world feel somewhat dangerous.

[SgtScum]

I like them too. They add another welcome layer of strategy to the game of what system to roll over and claim or what system to neuter. Besides all you really have to do to deal with them is to make sure you have some spider turrets seeded in the key systems to immobolize them until you feel like dealing with them. You might lose a few backwater systems until they hit your choke but its not like its hard to lay down the infrastructure again with a few engies and a colony ship. Black hole machines come in quite handy for these scenarios too if you get some vampires seeded into the mix provided you play with zenith traders enabled.

[Ozymandiaz]

They are interesting. I usually cope with making a merc fleet on standby in my core systems.

[Rustayne]

They are interesting. I usually cope with making a merc fleet on standby in my core systems.

That is what we are currently doing.  Along with some spiders under a mk1 shield.  I do fear though over time, we will run out of stuff to deal with it.  I think our plan might be taking them all out before we start colonizing the rest of the map.  Playing a 120 map and with the intentions of conquering it all, they do add a new layer of complexity.   It isn't really the infrastructure that I am worried about, so much that we have ships on the back lines.  For some reason the AI's are very cloaker heavy, so it adds it's own level of challenge.  I do love the concept, but I do think it might have killed the way we play a little.  More playing tomorrow, so we will see what we come up with for a way to deal with them.  Got 29 of them left.

[Ozymandiaz]

They are interesting. I usually cope with making a merc fleet on standby in my core systems.

That is what we are currently doing.  Along with some spiders under a mk1 shield.  I do fear though over time, we will run out of stuff to deal with it.  I think our plan might be taking them all out before we start colonizing the rest of the map.  Playing a 120 map and with the intentions of conquering it all, they do add a new layer of complexity.   It isn't really the infrastructure that I am worried about, so much that we have ships on the back lines.  For some reason the AI's are very cloaker heavy, so it adds it's own level of challenge.  I do love the concept, but I do think it might have killed the way we play a little.  More playing tomorrow, so we will see what we come up with for a way to deal with them.  Got 29 of them left.

Taking all 120 planets do pose a different challenge. I had 30 planets in my last 120 game, and thus easier to have a home security force .

Maybe Riot starships to kill the engines of the attackers? Putting them in transports to make them get to location quickly. With 120 planets knowledge should not be a problem . Also some decloaker drones to go with em. (and a support fleet ofc)

Or missiles (tachyons for instance), becuase I bet that extra AIP is pretty much irrelevant to your game

Kind of a tricky situation, with so many planets.

[LintMan]

I think a full wave is kind of brutal.  In one game, an isolated back planet literally as far as possible from my fleet I got hit with a wave of 2000 (!) Mk II Z. Electric bombers with 1 minute warning.  It was the planet I had two Zenith Generators building on, so the wave multiplyers were apparently applied.  That's the brutal part.

[Ozymandiaz]

Hmm, wave multipliers being applied I was not aware off, but that do explain the size of the wave I just had myself.

[Vinraith]

They are interesting. I usually cope with making a merc fleet on standby in my core systems.

Playing a 120 map and with the intentions of conquering it all, they do add a new layer of complexity.   

If that's even possible on a reasonable difficulty setting, it's evidence these need to be made even nastier. The whole point of AI War is carefully picking targets, what makes it distinct from other 4X games is that it's not supposed to be desirable to conquer the whole map.

[zebramatt]

Insofar as the point of these being to make one consider the spread of their fleet throughout one's empire, they're bang on the money.

However, I can see an argument for scaling - to a degree - the time until the wave hits, based on the distance of the target world from the world with the guard post. 

[CogDissident]

I think a full wave is kind of brutal.  In one game, an isolated back planet literally as far as possible from my fleet I got hit with a wave of 2000 (!) Mk II Z. Electric bombers with 1 minute warning.  It was the planet I had two Zenith Generators building on, so the wave multiplyers were apparently applied.  That's the brutal part.

Yeah, the counterwave guardposts really do punish players who leave zenith generators and other important resources unguarded. I do kind of wonder how the AI even gets the wave "to" there, since all other waves have a gate or something that is plausable that they come through.

[Rustayne]

They are interesting. I usually cope with making a merc fleet on standby in my core systems.

Playing a 120 map and with the intentions of conquering it all, they do add a new layer of complexity.   

If that's even possible on a reasonable difficulty setting, it's evidence these need to be made even nastier. The whole point of AI War is carefully picking targets, what makes it distinct from other 4X games is that it's not supposed to be desirable to conquer the whole map.

We are very good players, or at least I like to think we are.  We do take a bit of time just planning our move, and our games do last a bit.  Making them nastier will only discourage this more, which I'm sure we aren't the only ones playing this way.  It is still manageable to do, but it is alot harder then it used to be, which is completely fine by us.  I think the frustration comes from the fact that you need a full sized fleet to deal with them.  On top of that, a few of the planets having 2 or 3 of them on 1 planet kind of makes it feel more like a grind to take out.  This is true on a few planets that have fab's on them, which even in a normal game style, we would take due to their usefulness.  Core bombers and Star Beam's are nice ships to add to your fleet.

As far as lintman states, it is true that you get dealt the wave multiplier with these.  We have been experiencing that a bit with a few of our planets since we started using TSM's.  A couple of the planets that have them on it have seen 2-3k of ships, which definitely gets to be brutal.  I have a few ideas on how we might deal with this that we are going to test out today, and if they work out pretty well, I'll let ya all know.

[SgtScum]

They are interesting. I usually cope with making a merc fleet on standby in my core systems.

The MkII merc parasites are a true blessing. I use them to take the ai ships away from them on warp waves and chokes to use for a reserve defensive fleet. This frees my buildable fleet to go kick ai arse.

[Rustayne]

So after expensive playing today, (12 hours or so) we have found that 1 EMP 3 + 2 merc fleets in transports, for the most part deals with the counterattack waves.  Sadly for us, the Zenith descendant has gotten wise to our tricks, and now sends 200 or so auto bombs at us.  We haven't found a way to really deal with those yet, but we got at least 12 more in the NW area of our X map to deal with, so I'm sure we will find something interesting to do.  Now that we have our economy setup really nice, they aren't really as much of a threat as they were at the beginning.  We now have the capability of using mk3 and mk4 ships if we need them, and those do help alot.  Also with logistics placed on all the major roads, we get where we need to go very quickly.

[LintMan]

The MkII merc parasites are a true blessing. I use them to take the ai ships away from them on warp waves and chokes to use for a reserve defensive fleet. This frees my buildable fleet to go kick ai arse.

I love the merc parasites also.  Actually, I like all the newly-expanded merc ship options.  It'd be pretty cool if more were added - perhaps one or two randomized ones.