What attracts preservation wardens?

[Vinraith]

The description says nukes (which is clear enough) and "rapid resource extraction." What exactly does that second one mean? Lots of extractors? High mark extractors? Any extractors at all?

[Lancefighter]

An extractor.

[wyvern83]

Actually, do we know that they are attracted to nukes?

I wrote the favor text originally but that doesn't mean they were implemented exactly as I described them.

[keith.lamothe]

They don't actually respond to nukes at all but it was my intent to have them do so.  It's generally a rare enough case that it doesn't matter

Anyway, the spawn rate of wardens and each warden's internal spawn rate of drones is directly related to the number of metal and crystal harvesters in the galaxy.  Also, one of the triggers for releasing their drones is being on or adjacent to a planet with a harvester.

[Vinraith]

They don't actually respond to nukes at all but it was my intent to have them do so.  It's generally a rare enough case that it doesn't matter

Anyway, the spawn rate of wardens and each warden's internal spawn rate of drones is directly related to the number of metal and crystal harvesters in the galaxy.  Also, one of the triggers for releasing their drones is being on or adjacent to a planet with a harvester.

I see, so it's less about where they attack (since most any system you control is likely to have a harvester) than it is about how often they attack (which is related to the total number of harvesters out there). Neat. 

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, each warden spawns at an ai homeworld and travels to the ai's border with you, then back to the ai homeworld, repeat.  In theory their numbers should increase at an accelerating rate as you continue to expand and build more reactors.

But I haven't heard of anyone facing an unending stream of the things in late-game, so maybe there's a bug where they're getting scrapped or something.

[Lancefighter]

nah, they tend to die if they stick around too long in a player system.

I'm not sure, but they might stick with their destination even if the player has taken over a few systems in their path, meaning they tend to die, possibly more often than intended.

[wyvern83]

They don't actually respond to nukes at all but it was my intent to have them do so.  It's generally a rare enough case that it doesn't matter

Should they be attracted to missile silos and/or missiles? It should be easy to add if you still wanted to implement something like that.