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Surviving exo waves

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Worblehat:
I gather that the FS exos should become nontrivial if I could get a few more cities. :)

The game is at 8/8 Spireling and Experimentalist, no handicap, standard 4/10 Fallen Spire (plus Trader, Easy Spirecraft, Neinzul Roaming Enclaves 4, Alt Champ Progress 5, Alt Champ Nemesis 5, none of which should matter for this). The chase waves were almost entirely the color for AI 1, the Experimentalist AI, so maybe there's some weird non-obvious interaction there?  ???

The wiki says that the chase waves are supposed to be 50% stronger than the first city-shard chase, but only every 90 seconds instead of every 60 seconds. The first part of that may be plausible from what I saw, the second ... not sure if this is just a subjective perception bias, but it sure felt like they were spawning *way* faster.

The "how it really works" wiki page does say
--- Quote ---Third, it builds a list of eligible spawning locations, which is basically the nearby warp gates but also other things that act as warp gates (AI Eyes, Special Forces Guard Posts, etc).
--- End quote ---
The last bit is irrelevant since I've killed all the guard posts in nearby systems, but there are quite a lot of them and I haven't gate raided any. So if *each* valid spawn point (not entirely sure what "nearby" means quantitatively) gets a full strength chase wave, that might explain what I'm seeing. I've been assuming that the wave strength is divided equally-ish among all the spawn points. Compared to the first city chase, the new start location is one jump deeper into enemy territory, so even more places to spawn waves from... But unless that "every 90 seconds" thing really is wrong too it's not enough to explain the huge increase in severity that I saw.  ???

Edit: I have an idea what the problem could be. The game bugged slightly early on, such that the refugee ship still exists even though it was supposed to be consumed when I built the refugee outpost. So it's conceivable that two sets of waves are being spawned, one for the second city shard and one for the refugee ship that shouldn't still exist but does. I'll check tomorrow to see if the game will let me scrap the ship, and if so whether attempting to recover the second city shard becomes more feasible...

AnnoyingOrange:
If you have easy spirecraft, you might be able to cheese large waves via SC Martyrs and SC Attritioners, maybe even throw in a few SC Shield Bearers to block passage into certain wormholes, 30k might still be too much unless you have a good multi-planet chokepoint but at least it's a start: keep in mind that spirecraft asteroids are a finite resource, and that Attritioners die if you look at them funny.
If all else fails, try conquering more planets/gate raiding near the shard path.

Worblehat:
Well, ugh, catch-22 detected...  ::)

I've proceeded with one Spire city, now ready to start a homeworld assault, popped the easiest two of the guard posts (and more importantly the OMD). Hello, AI Mothership! I did not know that you existed.  :o So much for that plan, or at least that iteration of that plan... Silly me thinking that my one-city Spire fleet could continue kicking ass even on a homeworld.  :P

Returning to previous discussions - I cannot scrap the bugged refugee ship, and chase waves for city shard #2 spawn at a rate of 1000 ships every 30 seconds. Which does imply that my doomed last stands at the chokepoint city and the homeworld lasted a lot longer than I thought. But so much for the wiki's claim that the spawn frequency is every 90 seconds (though possibly screwy things are going on here thanks to the refugee ship still existing). I do have a save game where I actually got the second shard - thanks to the cruiser I was barely able to keep the chase wave strength under control, but that was by far the toughest fight until visiting the homeworld... Doesn't seem worth the effort when one can instead just neuter the entire map without even trying.

Looks like the path to victory is building up full caps of armored warheads before starting the homeworld assault. Then doing it again for the other homeworld (why wouldn't each AI get a Mothership? Heck, why should I assume they only get one each?  :(). Should work, but at the cost of incredible tedium...  :-\

AnnoyingOrange:
If your game bugged out that seriously, restarting might be a good idea.


--- Quote from: Worblehat on December 17, 2018, 02:05:18 am ---Heck, why should I assume they only get one each?
--- End quote ---

That would be an ill-fated assumption.

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