The AI's response to champions question...

[Faulty Logic]

I just want something to discourage you getting that with one HW. The nemesis feel like half the puzzle to me. They become mobile core posts if you have 150ish aip when you attack the HW. So you treat them like core posts. Knock out one or two, retreat, rinse and repeat. I don't see that as anything more then a time sink.

They easily doubled the difficulty of the HWs. It is quite hard to take out an individual nemesis, in the face of overlapping shields, and they are too fast to engage them individually for more than a few seconds. They also make it really difficulty to, say, take out CREs before anything else. Also, said time sink is more expeditions to the AI homeworlds, which also alerts all the core worlds, and more time for things to go wrong while your fleet is away.

 And then there is the difficulty of actually getting to all the nebulae (deepstrike, raid engines, SF). I know there are ways to do it, but it is not trivial. And if it is really easy, that probably means a well-connected map, reducing the value of the mod forts, and making FS a royal pain.

Makes the middle game too easy? Increases endgame difficulty enough to compensate.
No offensive response? .2 HW count makes waves a little harder and planets somewhat nastier. But it really shines in CPAs, where it translates to ship numbers in the thousands. And then it gets more for every single exo.

So I really see no issue with the AI champion response, except that one FS-endgame tweak (here).

[chemical_art]

I wished I kept  good AAR records.

Right now in my current game I would classify my actions as 0:00:00 - 10:00:00 toward nebula, 10:00:00 - 11:00:00 toward aquireing ARS, 11:00:10 - 16:50:00 Launching waves against AI homeworlds.

I admit despite having two exo wave sources that I have taken no advantage of during my current 9 / 9 game, I've had no trouble aside from the exo waves that I haven't taken advantage of to begin with. I've had NO threat to my HW aside from exo waves. Every 2 hours I launch a champ + allied + shield bearer + bomber assualt, and I do on average 200 million damage to guard posts despite me being only 80 AIP.

[TechSY730]

I wished I kept  good AAR records.

Right now in my current game I would classify my actions as 0:00:00 - 10:00:00 toward nebula, 10:00:00 - 11:00:00 toward aquireing ARS, 11:00:10 - 16:50:00 Launching waves against AI homeworlds.

I admit despite having two exo wave sources that I have taken no advantage of during my current 9 / 9 game, I've had no trouble aside from the exo waves that I haven't taken advantage of to begin with. I've had NO threat to my HW aside from exo waves. Every 2 hours I launch a champ + allied + shield bearer + bomber assualt, and I do on average 200 million damage to guard posts despite me being only 80 AIP.

So, the AI HW counters to champs are still too weak?

[Toranth]

I wished I kept  good AAR records.

Right now in my current game I would classify my actions as 0:00:00 - 10:00:00 toward nebula, 10:00:00 - 11:00:00 toward aquireing ARS, 11:00:10 - 16:50:00 Launching waves against AI homeworlds.

I admit despite having two exo wave sources that I have taken no advantage of during my current 9 / 9 game, I've had no trouble aside from the exo waves that I haven't taken advantage of to begin with. I've had NO threat to my HW aside from exo waves. Every 2 hours I launch a champ + allied + shield bearer + bomber assualt, and I do on average 200 million damage to guard posts despite me being only 80 AIP.

So, the AI HW counters to champs are still too weak?

Spending 6 hours sending the Champion and several caps of Nebula starships plus some really good fleetships on suicide missions doesn't really seem "weak".

[chemical_art]

I wished I kept  good AAR records.

Right now in my current game I would classify my actions as 0:00:00 - 10:00:00 toward nebula, 10:00:00 - 11:00:00 toward aquireing ARS, 11:00:10 - 16:50:00 Launching waves against AI homeworlds.

I admit despite having two exo wave sources that I have taken no advantage of during my current 9 / 9 game, I've had no trouble aside from the exo waves that I haven't taken advantage of to begin with. I've had NO threat to my HW aside from exo waves. Every 2 hours I launch a champ + allied + shield bearer + bomber assualt, and I do on average 200 million damage to guard posts despite me being only 80 AIP.

So, the AI HW counters to champs are still too weak?

Spending 6 hours sending the Champion and several caps of Nebula starships plus some really good fleetships on suicide missions doesn't really seem "weak".

Considering I can't lose unless I tried, its not effective nor strong either. Espcially with current mechanics meaning I'd have to fight several frigates regardless of whether I followed the 150ish aip goal. I'd rather launch 12 waves with me mostly being AFK then 4 waves wondering if I could die any 10 minute period.

[Faulty Logic]

The nemeses have done their job, forcing you to launch multiple waves, and giving stuff like hybrids, exos, and cpas their chance to build up. If you can deal with all the timed-based responses, and still have enough left over to launch multiple powerful waves against the AI HWs, you deserve to win. That isn't a champion-balance problem, it is you winning a game fair-and-square, using a champion.

You seem to be arguing that if you can get an advantage from the champion, then it is unbalanced.

[chemical_art]

The nemeses have done their job, forcing you to launch multiple waves, and giving stuff like hybrids, exos, and cpas their chance to build up. If you can deal with all the timed-based responses, and still have enough left over to launch multiple powerful waves against the AI HWs, you deserve to win. That isn't a champion-balance problem, it is you winning a game fair-and-square, using a champion.

You seem to be arguing that if you can get an advantage from the champion, then it is unbalanced.

But...if I can shrug off exo waves mostly (and if I was power gaming I wouldn't need them at all, I haven't used a the botnet nor spirecraft that cause the exos), I don't have hybrids, and CPA's are non existent  (eat rival factions / barrack raiding?).

Most of my waves are just my single nenzul battleship suciding doing ~10% damage to a brutal post, or wiping out a minor post.

I've been afk for almost half my game now, and my HW has not been threatened aside from what might be bugged ai plasma starships, and I have neutered an AI HW before 20 hours despite not owning more then one world. On a 9/9 game.

[Toranth]

The nemeses have done their job, forcing you to launch multiple waves, and giving stuff like hybrids, exos, and cpas their chance to build up. If you can deal with all the timed-based responses, and still have enough left over to launch multiple powerful waves against the AI HWs, you deserve to win. That isn't a champion-balance problem, it is you winning a game fair-and-square, using a champion.

You seem to be arguing that if you can get an advantage from the champion, then it is unbalanced.

But...if I can shrug off exo waves mostly (and if I was power gaming I wouldn't need them at all, I haven't used a the botnet nor spirecraft that cause the exos), I don't have hybrids, and CPA's are non existent  (eat rival factions / barrack raiding?).

Most of my waves are just my single nenzul battleship suciding doing ~10% damage to a brutal post, or wiping out a minor post.

I've been afk for almost half my game now, and my HW has not been threatened aside from what might be bugged ai plasma starships, and I have neutered an AI HW before 20 hours despite not owning more then one world. On a 9/9 game.

Are you playing without CSGs?  If so, then yeah, I'm not surprised.  When the AI is flat out asleep, there's not much that can threaten your homeworld if you choose to fortify it.  I did that myself, once (although I did pop the Dyson planet's command center).  I won't do it again, because you're correct, unlimited resource free powerful ships that can suicide-attack the AI HWs at the start of the game *are* kinda game breaking.  But when I play with CSGs on, the 150 or so AIP I have to take pumps up the AI response a lot.

Although it sounds more like you're complaining about how easy the game is with low AIP rather than anything specific to the Champions.  All I can think of is "up the difficulty"?

[chemical_art]

Are you playing without CSGs?  If so, then yeah, I'm not surprised.  When the AI is flat out asleep, there's not much that can threaten your homeworld if you choose to fortify it.  I did that myself, once (although I did pop the Dyson planet's command center).  I won't do it again, because you're correct, unlimited resource free powerful ships that can suicide-attack the AI HWs at the start of the game *are* kinda game breaking.  But when I play with CSGs on, the 150 or so AIP I have to take pumps up the AI response a lot.

Although it sounds more like you're complaining about how easy the game is with low AIP rather than anything specific to the Champions.  All I can think of is "up the difficulty"?

I do not have CSG on, but my total ai progress is currently 229 (dropped by 140 points due to popping CSG and data centers) so my aip is like if I was.  As far as "upping the difficulty" I'm already doing two medium AI's at 9/9. Next game I'll remove the source of exo waves (since I'm not using the goodies they provide anyway) and go for 10 / 10.

I am on the path to victory (I've neutered about half of my second ai hw now) and I had a spike of about 160ish aip. I had plenty of aip reducing structures still but didn't use them because I thought about the nemesis response, but instead of having 11 nemesis frigates I had 8...which for me didn't make the higher aip worth it since the ai hw was reinforceing the hw strongly.

So I'm back down to 80ish aip. Every 10 minutes my nenzul champ reaches the ai hw and despite the 11 frigates there it rushes to do at least 10% damage to a brutal structure. Every 90 minutes or so I send my allies to act as meat shields, and then my champ does around 50% to brutal structures.