Vengeance Generators, How do they work?

[Chthon]

The description is a little vague on the vengeance generators.  It suggests that ships that die near the planet charge up the generator, then it spawns dark spire ships in response.  How does this ultimately work though?
Does near include neighboring planets?
Is it one ship per ship that dies delayed by time?
Is it an accumulated total which builds over time?
Does it lose energy when it spawns ships?
Once it spawns ships, will it ever stop spawning ships?

Right now we have 2 vengeance generators behind our first main choke point (there is a second there to fall back to that surrounds the generator)  There are about 7 worlds directly adjacent to the generators, as well as about 4-5 more between the two choke points.

We destroyed the command stations in those worlds with the vengeance generators, and then let the ships chase us out of there to kill them elsewhere, one generator in the process produced about a dozen ships.  Once out of there, we killed all the enemy ships and then went back for the guard posts.

We waited till there were no ships left between the two choke points, and then claimed all the worlds back there.  Nothing had spawned in that time so we thought it pretty safe.  Soon after one of the two generators spawned 3 ships, and has regularly spawned 1-2 ships every 5 minutes after.  We don't fight them there (no defenses at all) and wait till they are away from the generator before killing them.  However they've kept coming.

Should we just suck it up and accept that there will be a few ships preventing us from holding that one world, or will it eventually stop?

Edit:  Search finally worked and I found the answers to all my questions and more.  Just for posterity I'm putting them here so other people new to them can see them.
1.  Vengeance generators get build points as ships die on their planet.  Not neighboring planets.
2.  Vengeance generators are linked in a fashion.  When one gets enough build points for a wave, it spawns ships, and all other spawn a smaller wave of ships.
3.  If no ships die at any of them, they stop getting build points altogether, and are inactive.
4.  To make a Vengeance generator totally safe to colonize, you have to control all of them, and make sure no ship ever dies there.

Our situation turns out that there are 4 generators, only 2 we control.  One is right next to the Dyson Sphere and also has a Super Terminal there, so the game is inviting us to have !!FUN!!  We freed the Dyson, so it's repaying us by generating vengeance.  Thanks bros.

[Histidine]

Clean out all enemies from the Dyson world (including the guardposts with their silly gatling-maiming powers) and things will stop dying there.

[Chthon]

Clean out all enemies from the Dyson world (including the guardposts with their silly gatling-maiming powers) and things will stop dying there.

No, the Vengeance Generator is on a neighboring world to there XD  The dyson planet is clean so they just run out to bother the AI elsewhere.

[Histidine]

Clean out all enemies from the Dyson world (including the guardposts with their silly gatling-maiming powers) and things will stop dying there.

No, the Vengeance Generator is on a neighboring world to there XD  The dyson planet is clean so they just run out to bother the AI elsewhere.

Ah, sorry, I missed that. 

...WELL CLEAN OUT THAT PLANET TOO! Assuming you want to use the Superterminal, you're going to have to do it eventually. On the other hand, I don't know if killing zombie ships sets feeds the generator, so using the terminal at all may be contraindicated as you noted.

Even if you don't punch out that planet, though, neutering should reduce the AI spawn rate and thus the Dark Spire spawn rate. I think. AI reinforcements probably don't work how I'm imagining them to work.

[Chthon]

Clean out all enemies from the Dyson world (including the guardposts with their silly gatling-maiming powers) and things will stop dying there.

No, the Vengeance Generator is on a neighboring world to there XD  The dyson planet is clean so they just run out to bother the AI elsewhere.

Ah, sorry, I missed that. 

...WELL CLEAN OUT THAT PLANET TOO! Assuming you want to use the Superterminal, you're going to have to do it eventually. On the other hand, I don't know if killing zombie ships sets feeds the generator, so using the terminal at all may be contraindicated as you noted.

Even if you don't punch out that planet, though, neutering should reduce the AI spawn rate and thus the Dark Spire spawn rate. I think. AI reinforcements probably don't work how I'm imagining them to work.

It's a moot point anyways, but someone else reported that temporary drones and Neinzul Younglings wearing off cause ships to spawn, so I don't see why Zombies wouldn't.  I would imagine trying to use the superterminal would cause waves of zombies AND Dark Spire to come at you as you defend it.  A pretty scary thought.

[zoutzakje]

I once played a 1/1 game with all minor factions and plots to 10/10. Vengeance generators ruled most of the 80 planet galaxy in less than an hour. It's been a long time since i played (AI War in general) with the dark spire so I'm not entirely sure about the details, but I remember there were lots of things that could trigger the VG's. Enclaves shooting at stuff, marauders shooting at stuff, dysons shooting at stuff, the devourer roaming around the galaxy and nom nom noming on stuff, etc. I don't know if ships dying on adjacent planets to VG's will trigger them. But depending on the options you've enabled, VG's can be entirely out of your control, no matter what you try.
That's probably the reason why i usually don't play with Dark Spire. I prefer to have some control over the AI's actions, or at least knowing what they're up to. VG's are just to much chaos.

[Chthon]

I once played a 1/1 game with all minor factions and plots to 10/10. Vengeance generators ruled most of the 80 planet galaxy in less than an hour. It's been a long time since i played (AI War in general) with the dark spire so I'm not entirely sure about the details, but I remember there were lots of things that could trigger the VG's. Enclaves shooting at stuff, marauders shooting at stuff, dysons shooting at stuff, the devourer roaming around the galaxy and nom nom noming on stuff, etc. I don't know if ships dying on adjacent planets to VG's will trigger them. But depending on the options you've enabled, VG's can be entirely out of your control, no matter what you try.
That's probably the reason why i usually don't play with Dark Spire. I prefer to have some control over the AI's actions, or at least knowing what they're up to. VG's are just to much chaos.

As I noted at the bottom of my post is the actual explanation I found digging through the board.  Shooting at something doesn't trigger it, it's if any ship dies, and I confirmed scrapping ships count as we scrapped 12K ships for fun.  Triggered a massive wave in all planets with Vengeance generators.  Next thing to try might be seeing if Reserves redeploying back to the Reserves can trigger them, as technically the game may treat them as "dying" on that technicality.  Drones who time out naturally trigger it, as well as Neinzul Younglings who attrition themselves to death.  Golems too I assume.

Using a colony ship to construct a command station, building a new command station from the command station interface, and using a spire colony ship to build a spire city would also be interesting to try.  Deleting modules for rebuilding as well on ships with modules.  All of these things require one unit to be "deleted" for another one to be built.  It could possibly trigger it in the code.  Whether or not it was meant to I do not know.

[zoutzakje]

with shooting I meant killing (when enclaves, marauders, dysons, etc start shooting, something always dies). I'm not sure if scrapping is supposed to trigger it. I don't know if it's something that should be fixed or not. Gameplay wise you'd say it's silly to have the VG's trigger when you delete something. Then again, description of VG does say it will spawn ships when other ships die and technically they do die when you scrap them. So if that's intended, self-attritioning units triggering it on death makes sense too.
I'm not sure about colony ships though. They don't really die, they just... change into something else. Modules shouldn't count as well, as they're not supposed to be considered a seperate unit. You can't shoot or kill modules, you kill the ship they're attached to.
If you find out that colony ships transforming into cc's and destroying modules trigger the VG's, I think it should probably be put on mantis.

As for redeploying into carriers and whatnot... those really shouldn't trigger the VG's. That'd be a serious balance issue so I doubt Keith would have let that one slip through.

Hope any of this makes any sense to ya. Haven't played with Dark Spire for a long time so I'm just going on on what i think I know/remember.

[Chthon]

with shooting I meant killing (when enclaves, marauders, dysons, etc start shooting, something always dies). I'm not sure if scrapping is supposed to trigger it. I don't know if it's something that should be fixed or not. Gameplay wise you'd say it's silly to have the VG's trigger when you delete something. Then again, description of VG does say it will spawn ships when other ships die and technically they do die when you scrap them. So if that's intended, self-attritioning units triggering it on death makes sense too.
I'm not sure about colony ships though. They don't really die, they just... change into something else. Modules shouldn't count as well, as they're not supposed to be considered a seperate unit. You can't shoot or kill modules, you kill the ship they're attached to.
If you find out that colony ships transforming into cc's and destroying modules trigger the VG's, I think it should probably be put on mantis.

As for redeploying into carriers and whatnot... those really shouldn't trigger the VG's. That'd be a serious balance issue so I doubt Keith would have let that one slip through.

Hope any of this makes any sense to ya. Haven't played with Dark Spire for a long time so I'm just going on on what i think I know/remember.

Technically a ship is never alive.  A scrapped ship is actually dismantled and used for parts.  This isn't an overly hostile action.  It is silly that they would take it as such.

Colony ships are scrapped to build the command stations, so it is actually really the same idea.  Same with command stations that are converted.