Starships In Raids

[Kalzarius]

It took some time to decide whether or not to post this as a suggestion or a bug, but I eventually settled on the latter.  Given our 1300 AI progress, the idea of only having 20-30-ship raids seems laughable.  Having said that, they tend to be accompanied by two or three Mark III starships, all of which are too fast to be even minimally damaged by our gate defenses.  The only things that can keep up with them without being obliterated are the teleport battlestations (by micromanaging them), which since the starships having their health quintripled, do so little damage that it has grown to the point that by the time they've been destroyed, so has most of that system.  Would it be possible to increase the number of ships and decrease the number or level of the starships coming through?

On a related note, why is the Flagship faster than the Light Starship?  That just seems so odd to me...

[Oewyn]

What AI levels are you playing against?

That has a big impact on the size of waves.

And at 1300 AI progress, expect bad things to happen.  The game isn't designed so that you take over/nuke every planet between your home planet and the AIs home planet.  You need to carefully consider which planets to take and which ones to skip.  On my 80 planet games that i've played, i generally have maximum 200-300 AI progress.

[Volatar]

Consider the AI progress to be the Defcon level of the AI, though in reverse and therefore effectively infinite. The AI control the galaxy, you start with one planet and have to surgically take them down. You CANNOT fight a full out war with someone that owns 100's or 1000's of star systems of resources. The AI progress meter is a measurement of how mobilized for war with you the AI is. The higher it is, the more you get outclassed and outproduced.

[dumpsterKEEPER]

I believe that Kalzarius and some friends are playing a game where they are intentionally taking every planet. Obviously that means they're playing with a significantly higher than normal AI progress, but it is an informed choice they're making

[darke]

Just FYI, from memory this guy's deliberately playing an ultra-long (so far 30+ hours long?), wipe everything out game.

The rest of us sane people simply assume he's doing it to shake the bugs, out rather then assume he's actually insane. So we haven't called for the men in white coats to go around and give him a chat and a nice wrap-around jumper yet.

[Revenantus]

The rest of us sane people simply assume he's doing it to shake the bugs, out rather then assume he's actually insane. So we haven't called for the men in white coats to go around and give him a chat and a nice wrap-around jumper yet.

True, but that's really only because we haven't managed to find his address yet.

I'm inclined to think that given your 1300 AI progress, if the AI was not consistently trashing your planets then something would be amiss, hence I'm not sure there's cause to make the raids easier to deal with at that point. There's an arachnid turret planned for potential future DLC that will be especially effective against starships, so perhaps once those are implemented we'll see what the situation is.

As ever, Kalzarius, I'm hugely impressed by your determination to conquer the entire galaxy - good luck.

On a related note, why is the Flagship faster than the Light Starship?  That just seems so odd to me...

Well, there were some issues with the starship constructor's union during the design process, some whiny complaint along the lines of, "We need more air". There were some necessary budget cuts... it was all a lowest bidder situation on the propulsion systems really. I'm happy with the Flagship being a bit faster, I tend to think of the 'light' aspect referring to the armaments.

[darke]

On a related note, why is the Flagship faster than the Light Starship?  That just seems so odd to me...

Well, there were some issues with the starship constructor's union during the design process, some whiny complaint along the lines of, "We need more air". There were some necessary budget cuts... it was all a lowest bidder situation on the propulsion systems really. I'm happy with the Flagship being a bit faster, I tend to think of the 'light' aspect referring to the armaments.

Plus the armour's a bit flimsier too.

That and you know how managers are, one of them decided that they absolutely had to have external hull lights to show off it's polished finish and such.

(Have we run out of "light" jokes yet?)

[Echo35]

Just FYI, from memory this guy's deliberately playing an ultra-long (so far 30+ hours long?), wipe everything out game.

The rest of us sane people simply assume he's doing it to shake the bugs, out rather then assume he's actually insane. So we haven't called for the men in white coats to go around and give him a chat and a nice wrap-around jumper yet.

He's just a sucker for punishment. Besides, if you threw him in the white padded room, AI progress and ship cap calculations would be scratched all over the walls.