Waves a bit large?

[superking]

I really love it atm, its actually a challenge... I often scout out for useful defensive planets (planetary armour boosters/nullifiers, radar jammers, lots of MK I/ MK II Ion cannons, black hole gens) super early on and rush to capture them, slap down a logistic station and turn them into fort knox in the first hour or two of the game.. even then, its pretty rough 

[Dyers_Eve]

Yes the big waves are brutal at times (like 600-800 bulletproof fighters within first 2 hours of a game yikes) It makes the game harder but I like it. Before you would just laugh at the waves and steamroll and only have to worry about the CPAs. Now it's like you are more often in a intense fight.

[Wingflier]

Don't know what you guys are talking about. CPAs seem deadly as ever to me. The other day I got hit by a CPA wave of 3500+ which on top of the 2000 wave was positively devastating

That's the only time they're dangerous, though, when they arrive right on top of a wave. I suppose if you had an incredibly confined frontier (if you were playing a snake map or the like, though it's always seemed to me that snake maps kind of break the game) they'd pack a real whallop, but spread over a large number of systems they're pretty easy to manage (much moreso than the aforementioned waves).

My experience has been quite the opposite.  Normal waves are fairly easy to handle, but CPAs are the scariest.  Maybe I just don't have enough CC, but 3,500 units spread across 5 planets (chokepoints) is much tougher to handle than 2000 units against 1 or 2.  In addition, the waves don't have to arrive "right on top of them", if the waves come within a few minutes before or after (this is common in my experience), it still makes CPAs fairly difficult (they're difficult enough) to handle.

Another problem with CPAs is the time factor.  At least on hard, you simply don't have the luxury of time to take your entire mobile fleet and spread them across 5 locations (once again chokepoints) in preparation for the oncoming attack.  Since you get a warning of about 12 minutes, you can usually use the first 7 or so to do what you need in the galaxy, but what are you going to do in 7 minutes?  When that CPA warning arrives, I get on edge because I'm afraid if I use my fleet for assaulting enemy planets, I won't make it home in time to be ready for the attack, and there's not much you can do in ~7 minutes anyway.  When you see a CPA, you are more or less "grounded" in your base for a good 15 minutes or more, usually more because you have to rebuild your base and fend off waves, making it 30 minutes or greater before you finally are ready to go on the offensive again.  30 minutes of time lost on hard mode, especially late game where they are building carriers and such, translates into a much harder time than before.  And since CPAs seem to ALWAYS hit me when I'm attacking or about to attack an AI homeworld, 30+ minutes of reinforcement on that planet is such a bad, bad thing.

[Mánagarmr]

Just to make something perfectly clear, I'm not complaining about the wave sizes which I feel are spot on at present. My only concern was with the huge leap in difficulty. From 300 to almost 800 with an additional 1001 ship wave was nothing you could be prepared for this early and with such short (3 minutes)  notice.  But apparently that was indeed a bug.

[superking]

defender mode is seriously hard atm, like impossible hard

[NickAragua]

So the overall "vibe" I'm getting is that if we want to play at difficulty 7, we'll be putting up with 500-ship waves at AI progress ~10? I mean, I like a challenge and all but when the size of the first wave is about the size of my whole fleet (2x if both AIs pop waves at the same time) and the wave consists of bombers, unless I've been specifically preparing for that, I really have very little chance of stopping them before they blast my home command station to bits (and they usually make a beeline straight for it - keep in mind I haven't left my homeworld yet!)

I guess it's off to the 1/2 AI waves checkbox for me.

[Vinraith]

So the overall "vibe" I'm getting is that if we want to play at difficulty 7, we'll be putting up with 500-ship waves at AI progress ~10? I mean, I like a challenge and all but when the size of the first wave is about the size of my whole fleet (2x if both AIs pop waves at the same time) and the wave consists of bombers, unless I've been specifically preparing for that, I really have very little chance of stopping them before they blast my home command station to bits (and they usually make a beeline straight for it - keep in mind I haven't left my homeworld yet!)

I guess it's off to the 1/2 AI waves checkbox for me.

Odd, at diff 7 my first waves are almost always in the 100-200 range, if that. Maybe you've got a couple of particularly aggressive AI types? The nastier ones do have double wave sizes, so 500 wouldn't be impossible. Heck, at AI Progress 400 I'm seeing AI waves of around 700, and they scale linearly, so I think you've probably got a bug there.

Edit: Just started a game under 4.038 at diff 7, first waves are 78 and 72.

[Mánagarmr]

Yeah, I was going to say that as well that my usual waves on diff 7.6 are around 170-250.

[superking]

my first wave at difficulty 7.6 was 1600 ships lol though that was a vicious raider & a tag teamer, and vicious raiders are both very aggressive and include raider ships in waves, which have high shipcaps