Reprisal waves are too big compared to normal waves

[TechSY730]

I've said this several times in the past, but this is the first forum post where I just come straight out and say it directly.

Reprisal waves are too big compared to normal waves. In our co-op game, reprisal waves level 1 with only a small fraction of our fleet lost are regularly 4.5K ships in size, while normal waves are a mere 700 ships (we are at 300 AIP, rather high I know, but this sort of disparity has been present the whole game.

I know reprisal waves are supposed to be more punishing, but I think 4500 to 700 is not the kind of ratios that were intended, even for difficulty level 8. This magnitude of disparity, although manageable, is not fun.


What to do?

-I think the biggest would be to reduce the salvage thresholds for reprisal waves; I think they may have gotten jacked up a bit too much.
-Maybe also reduce the base AI salvage efficiency rate, it may have been over-buffed. BTW, how is new salvage efficiency rate calculated for an AI planet?
-If the reprisal waves get a nerf, then maybe a bit of a buff to normal wave sizes for difficulty levels where this disparity is the worst (mostly these mid difficulties, like 8-ish). This is more about the extreme disparity between reprisal waves and normal waves, rather than the size of the reprisal waves per-say.

EDIT: Maybe make the current cutoffs for level 1 reprisal waves be level 2 cutoff (which the new level 1 being something less), current level 2 be the new level 3, etc.

[vigilo confido]

I am just going to add my bit here. The reprisal waves are just as deadly as the hard golem exo. Me and tech would of lost long ago if it was not for the golems. We can not dare lose any of our ships or else the AI murders everything with its reprisal waves. We are actually doing 90% of the game with the golems alone. It does not feel right having a 4K fleet never leave your territory because reprisals are so deadly. I do mean literally never leave the territory.


edit: Is it possible the threshold for reprisals is being multiplied by 4X in our co-op game which combines with the wave size buff to difficulty 8? That could lead to not so nice situations.

[TechSY730]

Just a thought. Maybe there is a glitch with co-op and salvage cutoffs for reprisal waves? Like the multiplier is being applied twice so we are getting 4x the "salvage needed for wave" as intended, compared to the intended 2x? There have been several bugs of this nature in the pass, hence this guess.

[Kahuna]

This (among other things) is still a problem? Well gonna have to keep playing other games until AI War gets fixed.

[re4der]

I did not notice that issue myself(excepting deadly beam drones reprisals). On difficulties 7.0 and 7.0 and AIP 600 I had no single reprisal higher then 4k of  non-suicidal or short life-span units.

[Vacuity]

I've also noticed a massive disparity in size/strength between regular waves and reprisal waves. I'm also a bit confused how losing maybe a dozen fleet ships leads to a reprisal of over 2,000 + starships.  I also normally use multi-HW starts. If I didn't also typically use protector starships, it would probably be a big problem.

[Tridus]

This might be a multiplayer thing. In my single hw game the reprisal waves are big, but not that big compared to normal waves.

Those numbers are out of whack for sure.

[keith.lamothe]

Are there any saves out there I can look at where, for instance, a level 1 reprisal results in something way more than (say) 1.5x the size of a normal wave?

[Vacuity]

Let me update to the most recent version and I'll get a save for you.  Do you want any logs with it?  I take it a save with wave announcements currently sitting in the notification box is what you're looking for?

[keith.lamothe]

Let me update to the most recent version and I'll get a save for you.  Do you want any logs with it?  I take it a save with wave announcements currently sitting in the notification box is what you're looking for?

Recent logs leading up to the announcement of the reprisal wave would be good, but not necessary.  And the perfect timing would be after the "Reprisal Level X" warning has shown up but before the wave is actually announced (announcement is when it starts the visible timer).

[orzelek]

Might be a silly comment but salvage wave calculation specifically states that salvage wave should be at least double strength of normal wave - so that would be kinda by design?

I'm trying to understand some of the wave logic log but I'm getting kinda confused.
And I'm not sure how to relate AISalvage amount with reprisal counter.

As an example from my game:
Normal AI wave from AI 9 is 200 strength results in wave of strength 304 total (large negative budget on starships).
Scrap wave from same AI generated from 1.2mil AISalvage counter results in 1500 potential wave strength that ends up as total 1763 wave strength (also large starship negative budget).

It seems for me that quite often last starship in wave is mostly for free - even if it's not the only one.

I have 1.2 MB log from current play through (at game time of around 15h atm) if you would be interested.

[MaxAstro]

I will mention that I like the large reprisal waves, but part of that comes from feeling like normal waves are almost ignorable.

Although what really feels like nothing, at least at difficulty 7, is CPAs.  Oh, 1200 ship CPA in 10 minutes?  I'll have more ships from normal waves alone before that gets here...

There is something off when reprisal waves are bigger than CPAs, but I'm not sure is the reprisals that are wrong.

[re4der]

In my games reprisals are often much bigger then and deadlier then cross-planets too. It feels like cross planet attacks should really get boosted.

[Qatu]

 These observations are interesting but fail to mention which super weapons are enabled. Golems, botnet, spirecrafts, fallenspire. Each of them can make normal waves pretty trivial in their own way. I rather wish superweapons increased normal waves instead of creating exo waves, I don't enjoy the super chokepoint play promoted by exo waves. Reprisals are really hard in a no super weapon game when an accident happens to the fleet.

 I've only played a little with nomads so far, and I can imagine getting unlucky and having a nomad create a path for an incoming combo of exos straight to my homeworld. Outside of that though, I really like them a lot, I think I will restart a new game with no super weapons at all, just base+nomads, I expect this to be pretty fun and mostly balanced with normal turrets now available everywhere. I'm worried about reprisals though as playing on 8.6 with no pause means I lose a lot of ships.

[vigilo confido]

I never play chokepoint strategy and try to go the be stealthy as possible strategy and exos appear on the homeworld all day long on difficulty 8. The exos are actually no more threatening then reprisal waves. Reprisals are doable if you have your entire fleet there and all the mark V turrets there along with a mark II logistic station so the carriers just don't brute force to the fabricators.