New Player - Raid engine help / clarification

[Weteor]

@lance

yeah it went really fast after I've found that core time travel post that hit with a 803 min counterclock wave

[Colonel J]

Found this on a forum search as I had a similar query to the OP. A couple of supplementary questions to understand Raid Engines, I just encountered my first one early in a campaign. Diff 7 and about 150 AIP. I sent in one Mark 1 Raid Starship and killed it, crossing one alerted neighbouring AI planet to get there. This triggered a wave of about 200 Mk1 fleet ships to ? (not specified).

 - On what basis is the raid engine's counter attack wave calculated - presumably it's the firepower of my ships entering the system?

- Why did I get no warning of the destination of the incoming wave - when all my planets have either a Warp Detector or a Military Command station? I'm guessing it's because the Raid Engine sent it to the neighbouring AI-held planet that I first crossed and not to one of my worlds? I am guessing this is why because the wave didn't ever materialise on any of my planets (after a minute clicking around my worlds in a panic....)

I sent the Raid Starship through in Low Power mode but I guess this just got detected and aggroed the Raid Engine straight away. These guys are ultra-sensitive and extremely bad tempered it would appear.

[BobTheJanitor]

To the main question, I have no clue how it calculates the wave sizes, I figured it was just some preset number. The reason you got 'wave to ' is because it only sends them to adjacent worlds, just like warp gates do. Since you didn't actually own any of those worlds, you don't see where it's going. So your interpretation was correct on that. And yeah, if it sees even one single ship on one of the planets it's watching, it'll start pumping out those waves. Raid engines are mean.