So... I'm not sure if I'm using the formula correct; my maximum budget based on broken golems medium, spirecraft hard, and 15 spire cities, (110000+110000+10000+(60000*15)+60000)*3=3570000 should be correct (?), but mindlessly skimming through the logs it seems I'm definitely already capped with what I have to assume is the spire campaign exo since 48:27:01?
I'm not sure, one way to find out is to see if the next round of exos have higher points than the previous, but it looks like your hour-57 one is actually smaller than your hour-56 one (were your spire cities all fully built at the beginning of both ones? losing some buildings temporarily reduces the cap a bit).
The way-smaller exos are presumably the spirecraft-hard ones.
effectiveAIPForCPAPurposes = this.AIProgressionLevelEffective = 750
This means your AIP is 750, and that's what it normally bases the CPA on.
since diff > 9, numberOfSecondsPerPointOfMinimumAIPForCPAPurposes = 240 + ( (FInt)120 * ( (FInt)9 - this.AIDifficulty ) ).IntValue = 120
This means you're playing above difficulty 9, and that therefore the minimum base value for the CPA is 1 for every two minutes (120 seconds) that the game's run. On lower difficulties this number is higher (and the resulting number thus lower), and past a certain point the rule isn't there at all.
minimumAIPForCPAPurposes = Game.Instance.GameSecond / numberOfSecondsPerPointOfMinimumAIPForCPAPurposes = 1186
This is the result of (game time) / (two minutes).
effectiveAIPForCPAPurposes = Max(effectiveAIPForCPAPurposes,minimumAIPForCPAPurposes) = 1186
This is where it takes either your AIP or the (game time) / (two minutes), whichever is larger.
At 57h I have a total AIP of 1479 but reduced it by 966; however it seems like waiting is literally killing me because the CPA just keeps growing regardless.
The CPAs will keep growing regardless, yes, though at some point the strategic reserve and special forces will bottom out and it just won't have anything left to throw. Though I don't know if you can reach that point in this case.
Anyway, I'm guessing the CPAs aren't the main threat to you, compared to the exos. Though it does so kindly like to synchronize, iirc...
I'm basically now wondering if in this situation I should just reload my save as far back as possible and just try to rush transceiver or capture more planets for spirefleet, given that the original plan of lowering the AIP through Spire Civilian Leaders almost does literally nothing in this scope if I'm in AIP MK3 territory and my spire fleet of 250something becomes less capable of defeating 150k units in carriers every hour, plus what seems to be a very substantial reinforcement/threat replenishment rate, plus these puny golem+spirecraft+hybrid+spire exo waves. I don't even know if it's feasible at this point, reading that the spire exo wave strength is multiplied by 1.5 and spawns every minute... it almost seems like having 960 AIP was far more easier than having 513.Warheads.
Fixed that for you.
I guess the question is whether you specifically want to win via FS or if you just want to win. The latter could probably be accomplished by rebuilding your capital fleet after the last exo, selecting said fleet, and right-clicking the enemy homeworlds (assuming the CSGs are down or absent).
The former would be dicier, but I guess if you've got your homeworld on the opposite end of the snake and really concentrate on fighting the AI at every planet, they simply can't reach the transceiver in time once it's up. At that point the question is whether the entire imperial spire fleet is sufficient to win the war. If it's not, well, that answers a more fundamental question about this scenario
also apparently my reinforcements log is 525mb and hybridhives_mainthread is 200mb compared to everything else neat and tidy below 2mb
I'd suggest turning Reinforcements Logging off (it's on a separate toggle from Advanced Logging for this reason) unless you're trying to debug something specific, as it does get honking huge and the generation of those long log entries may be contributing to your memory woes
Though I'm surprised at the hybrids gobbling so much log space. I guess they have to do something. You could just genocide them to cut down on memory usage.