Questions Concerning the CPA Guard Post

[Wingflier]

The description (on the wiki) says:

Launches brutal galaxy-wide cross planet attacks as soon as the human players bring military ships to this post's planet. These CPAs happen around every 13 minutes and are heavily influenced in their size by both the current AI Progress and the difficulty level of the AI controlling this post.
Once a CPA wave is triggered by this guard post, it can not be stopped even by destroying the guard post. Once the timer reaches zero and the CPA wave spawns, if the CPA Guard Post is still alive and you still have miltary ships in the system, another CPA wave timer will start counting down.
Must be destroyed before humans can damage the AI Command Station on this planet. All Core Shield Generators (if enabled) in the galaxy must be destroyed before this can be damaged.
This is a Core Guard Post and will only spawn on AI homeworlds.
Increases AI Progress by 2 when destroyed.

It seems to be suggesting that when you enter an enemy Homeworld planet, a CPA attack begins counting down from the minute you enter.  However, in the games I've been playing, the second you enter the planet, the CPA happens instantly.

Is that the way it's supposed to be, or am I interpreting this correctly?

[Eternaly_Lost]

The description (on the wiki) says:

Launches brutal galaxy-wide cross planet attacks as soon as the human players bring military ships to this post's planet. These CPAs happen around every 13 minutes and are heavily influenced in their size by both the current AI Progress and the difficulty level of the AI controlling this post.
Once a CPA wave is triggered by this guard post, it can not be stopped even by destroying the guard post. Once the timer reaches zero and the CPA wave spawns, if the CPA Guard Post is still alive and you still have miltary ships in the system, another CPA wave timer will start counting down.
Must be destroyed before humans can damage the AI Command Station on this planet. All Core Shield Generators (if enabled) in the galaxy must be destroyed before this can be damaged.
This is a Core Guard Post and will only spawn on AI homeworlds.
Increases AI Progress by 2 when destroyed.

It seems to be suggesting that when you enter an enemy Homeworld planet, a CPA attack begins counting down from the minute you enter.  However, in the games I've been playing, the second you enter the planet, the CPA happens instantly.

Is that the way it's supposed to be, or am I interpreting this correctly?

Here how it works.

The recharge timer on the ability is 13 minutes. However, it does not send a wave unless the conditions to send one are meet. So it starts the game fully charged, and the second it can trigger it does. Then it starts to recharge and that takes 13 minutes.

That is what the description says in a very bad way. Note this line: "it can not be stopped even by destroying the guard post."

The wave is already launched, so you can't stop it.

[Wingflier]

So the minute you enter the planet it sends the wave?

[Diazo]

I can see where the confusion is coming from, there are two scenarios possible.

1st:
(0min) Human Military Enters System
(0min) CPA Wave spawns
(0min) 13 minute cooldown starts
(13min) 2nd CPA Wave Spawns
(13min) 13 minute cooldown starts
(15min) CPA Post destroyed
(26min) 3rd CPA wave does not spawn.

2:
(0min) Human Military Enters System
(0min) 13 minute cooldown starts
(13min) 1st CPA Wave Spawns
(13min) 13 minute cooldown starts
(15min) CPA Post destroyed
(26min) 2nd CPA wave still spawns.

I have not seen one of these posts in my games recently, if someone can confirm which scenario is accurate I'll update the wiki.

D.

[TechSY730]

So the minute you enter the planet it sends the wave?

If you don't make it to the homeworld within the first 13:00 minutes of it spawning, which is at game start, yep, it will launch as soon as you as you have military there to trip it.

EDIT: Clarification, the CPA will be queued up as soon as it is tripped, not instantly spawned. If you are seeing it instantly spawned without a normal CPA announcement and countdown, that is a bug.

The countdown (if >0 of course) always runs, even if the other conditions for triggering are not met.

As mentioned, the description does a poor job of communicating that.

@Diazo

It's actually a hybrid of the two. The post itself has a 13 minute countdown, that must be 0 for it to launch the wave. Then once the CPA is launched, it is a normal CPA with an announcement and a countdown of its own, that is separate from the post's timer.

If you can kill the post before its own timer get to 0, no wave will be launched. If you kill the post after the CPA has been queued up and is going through a normal CPA wave countdown, then the CPA will still be spawned.

[Diazo]

Okay, so like this?

(0min) Human Military Enters System
(0min) CPA Wave spawns (15minute CPA warning comes up in top left of screen.)
(0min) 13 minute cooldown starts (Guard Post)
(13min) 2nd CPA Wave Spawns (15minute CPA warning comes up in top left of screen.)
(13min) 13 minute cooldown starts (Guard Post)
(15min) 1st CPA wave hits zero and is loosed.
(20min) CPA Post Destroyed, 3rd wave that is currently counting down towards will not launch.
(30min) 2nd CPA wave hits zero and is loosed.

This look right?

D.

[TechSY730]

Okay, so like this?

(0min) Human Military Enters System
(0min) CPA Wave spawns (15minute CPA warning comes up in top left of screen.)
(0min) 13 minute cooldown starts (Guard Post)
(13min) 2nd CPA Wave Spawns (15minute CPA warning comes up in top left of screen.)
(13min) 13 minute cooldown starts (Guard Post)
(15min) 1st CPA wave hits zero and is loosed.
(20min) CPA Post Destroyed, 3rd wave that is currently counting down towards will not launch.
(30min) 2nd CPA wave hits zero and is loosed.

This look right?

D.

I'm pretty sure that the CPA wave countdown time is less than the core guard post countdown time, but other than that, that seems like the right idea.

EDIT: So it would actually be something like:

(0min) Human Military Enters System
(0min) CPA Wave spawns (12 minute CPA warning comes up in top left of screen.)
(0min) 13 minute cooldown starts (Guard Post)
(12min) 1st CPA wave hits zero and is loosed. (1 minute left on the Guard Post)
(13min) 2nd CPA Wave Spawns (12 minute CPA warning comes up in top left of screen.)
(13min) 13 minute cooldown starts (Guard Post)
(20min) CPA Post Destroyed, 3rd wave that is currently counting down towards will not launch. (the Guard post was at 6 minutes left at destruction. CPA is at 5 minutes left)
(25min) 2nd CPA wave hits zero and is loosed.

You may want to clean up the formatting some.

Also, this flow is the same for all raid engine type buildings, though different types of raid engines have different self countdowns (the countdown for the CPA itself is determined by factors outside of the guard post)

[Wingflier]

Okay thank you for the clarification everybody. I knew this couldn't be right. In the past THREE games I've played, entering an AI homeworld planet means spawning a Counter Attack of over 1000 MKIV ships immediately. This on top of the Raid Engine Guard Post Spawn and pretty much every unit on the homeworld being set loose effectively means over 2000 mk4 and core ships being released from every direction immediately. This is insurmountable. This has happened to me for my last THREE games, I can't believe I'm the only person experiencing this. Anyway I'll report it on Mantis when I get home. Curse my luck lately.

[Wingflier]

Mantis link:

http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=8180

Unfortunately I can't really play until it's fixed.  I guess I could start over and try doing a Fallen Spire Campaign?

[Diazo]

Okay, I loaded your save Wingflier and here's what I saw. (I cheated significantly to survive this, that's a seriously nasty setup you have there.)

Time stamps are from the time I warp forces into the AI Homeworld and I'm only showing the CPA post, the Raid Engine post was behaving as expected.
00:00 First CPA Wave gets released, about 2400 ships.
13:50 Second CPA Wave gets released, 46 ships.

When I say released, I mean the CPA is loosed and the threat meter jumps. At no time do any of the CPA waves show up in the wave warning box, they just happen.
You can see the countdown to the next wave on the guard post itself, but not in the wave warning box.

There is a small silver lining in that because it does not go into the wave warning box, once the CPA guard post is destroyed, no more CPA's get loosed at all.

Reading the description of the guard post, I'm not sure these are bugged. It looks like they just trigger a CPA every 13 minutes and based on the huge number freed, I would expect you would get a CPA anyway reasonably soon. (Note the immediately in the guard post description.)

With the second wave only being 46 ships, it does not look like the AI gets to warp in any extra ships for the CPA, if you can somehow weather the giant threat spike of the first CPA, the follow up ones should be tiny in comparison.

You can still make a case for this being unbalanced I think, but from what I see I don't think there is a bug affecting your game.

D.

[Wingflier]

Based on the explanations of the people in the thread, it is bugged -  Unless there are two different types of CPA Guard Posts.

You saw it yourself, there is no possible way I could win in that scenario.  As soon as I enter the AI Homeworld, that's it:  Game Over.

Of course we need developer confirmation, but based on the way I've been told CPA Guard Posts work in this thread, the instant spawn shouldn't be happening.

Anyways, thanks for spending your time to check it out ;p

[Diazo]

Ah, I see now.

What I left off my previous post is that I think my first posts in thread are now wrong.

From the description: Launches brutal galaxy-wide cross planet attacks as soon as the human players bring military ships to this post's planet.

Because of that, I now think the post is working as intended. Note that despite them both being labeled CPA, this means it mechanically works very different then the normal CPA that gets announced in the top left wave warnings box.

D.

[Wingflier]

We need a confirmation either way.  Personally I think that if it's working as intended, it's incredibly broken.

[Wanderer]

It's working as intended.  CPA and Raid Engine guardposts are the absolute nastiest things you can find on an AI planet.  The released enemies are based on your earned AIP.  Thus, it's good to scout the homeworlds as early as possible to find out if you can afford massive AIP gains.

[keith.lamothe]

It does sound working as intended, yes.  If your AIP is high enough and the RNG has dealt you that pair of homeworld structures then yea, you can be pretty up a creek.  If you keep AIP low enough it's doable, but AIP getting high is certainly one way to "lose" this game by stalemate.

Even 2400 MkIV ships can be cheesed with sufficient willingness to apply warheads, riots, chokepoints, etc.  Stuff like putting powered-down forcefields over a wormhole into your turret/fleet ball, then turning on the forcefields after (say) half of the enemy force has passed through, so your defenses can chew up the first part before the rest can beat down the door and join it.  Really cheesy stuff.  But CPAs are generally pretty diffuse, so it's a bit harder to do that.

A more sane strategy would be to "bleed" the AI of ships so that its total available forces for a CPA are manageable if they all come at you at once.  That can take quite a while (in some scenarios, the only feasible way to beat the AI is to use patience as a weapon, as Wanderer has shown) and possibly be counterproductive if there's any auto-AIP active.

If you can do that, you've de-fanged one of the dynamic duo.  The Core Raid Engine... not much around that, I'm afraid.  Just make sure the core shield network is down and build the biggest sledgehammer you can to take it out so you only have to deal with one spawn from it.