Question about ship-caps and ai scaling with champions

[Lancefighter]

If I am not mistaken, a normal player and a champion player each are counted the same as far as 'how many players are in the game', yes? (i believe multiple homeworlds on a single player also count as multiple people, but I am not entirely sure)

Are normal+champion players only counted as a single person?

I mostly would like to know the answers to this, but I have a few potential questions to follow this up

[wyvern83]

My understanding was that normal + champion was the same as normal and a champion player being separate. However I don't think the champion player is weighted as much as a normal second player would be. I seem to recall something like 20% increase from it to standard modifiers but I'll have to double check where I saw that.

Found it. It was in the "Hybrid Signal Tracker" thread.

Each champion increases the "special difficulty multiplier" used by hybrids, exos, etc, by 20% of what a "normal" player would (a normal+champion player thus increases said multiplier by 120% of what a normal player would).

EDIT: I almost forgot your other question. Having multiple homeworlds as a single player counts as multiple people but I'm not sure if its 1 to 1. Keith or Chris explained how exo-strike forces in the Fallen Spire campaign were calculated once and having multiple homewards had a per multplier but I can't remember if it was smaller or as big as the per player one.

EDIT 2: If you have multiple HW's and players, which ever number is higher is the number used.

[keith.lamothe]

Assuming no normal or normal+champion players have joined midgame and no human home command stations are died, the multiplier is:

1 + (1 * number of human home command stations beyond the first) + (0.2 * number of human champions)

That's used a lot of places, though the second two terms are divided by 3 when computing for the purpose of CPA size.

[Lancefighter]

So not nearly as drastic as I thought.

Still, it brings up the question, I feel - Should normal players be benefited in unit caps somehow because of the champion players?

Say I am hosting a game, and I am the only normal player amung 8 players. I still have to contend with 1x unit caps all over the place, despite having about 3x the ai strength for waves? Its a somewhat extreme case, and in theory 7 champions should counter the effect of having three times as many waves.. But I dont know.

[keith.lamothe]

Seven champions properly fitted and micro'd could eat quite-enormous waves.  You also get to produce extra ships from nebulae you've won, and modular fortresses of the other three races.

[Lancefighter]

Mmm yes possibly - But the minor issue of "no wave warnings" makes that.. slightly less viable.

I get a minute or so notice due to huge numbers of threat (cross planet waves), but then suddenly 4 thousand ships appear randomly at my front, and champions are nowhere to be found

[Mánagarmr]

Then you have bad friends