@Peter:
- Very interesting on the waves seeming to be more frequent but same size, I would definitely need to fix that if so.
- On the reinforcement diversion to waves, yea, seems I nerfed that too hard. That is basically the mechanic that's supposed to stop this memoless-victory nonsense 
But it was also throwing a major wrench in "I didn't get the memo because it was vaporized by a wall of photon lances" games, i.e. FS. So I think I'll go with one of the things we discussed in ArnaudB's FS thread, where each Spire City redirects, say, 20% of the "reinforcement diversion" from the-next-wave to the-next-exo.
-- Edit: actually, to maintain "AIP does not increase FS exos", which I think important, perhaps it just needs to accidentally the extra reinforcements. Or perhaps lets it actually deploy them as normal reinforcements again, since you have a pretty big hammer with which to smash them. The idea being that it's made sufficiently paranoid about its defensive situation, etc. Though the cap ships need a buff in that case.
- On the Prot V bug, yea, I've heard of that but keep forgetting to do something about it; on the short list now.
- In general I'm kind of wondering about whether extra HWs should increase energy 1:1 like that, but it's probably not a problem as long as the waves properly scale up, etc.
Congratulations on breaking the game over your knee, again
While I agree a "What memo?" game should NOT be beatable without super weapons, I also want to point out that FS will ALWAYS be a "What memo?" due to the territory that has to be taken, even if you never go beyond 5 cities. Also, FS Exos hit like heavy artillery, because they are. So buffing the waves from massive AIP is also going to make defending in an FS game much harder. While currently your average wave doesn't do much to a fully defensive Spire City, one Hab and 5 Reactors, if you buff the waves from AIP too much its going to actually make them a major threat to Cities, which already have to deal with ever increasing Exogalactic Death Squads, even one of which can and most certainly will crush a Spire City that isn't ready.
The problem is that there isn't a lore friendly way to compensate that I can see. You can't have FS reduce AIP in anyway, because the idea is that the very thought of a Human/Spire alliance scares the crap out of the AI, that's why its the only way to have Motherships spawn. Because no other superweapon worries the AI as much. If you reduce the territory needed to build Spire Cities, it will, IMO, break the FS entirely. Being able to fit cities in a smaller area does NOT mean less AIP for FS. It means I build MORE CITIES. Right now I build my Spire Cities as follows. First shard, full defense front line base, one hab and five reactors. Second shard, behind the choke, one hab and five shipyards. Repeat pattern until game ends. This design allows for the most possible defense, while also giving maximum number of shipyards. Assuming an even number of cities, I have 1 shipyard per reactor. And even if the main choke falls I have my other defensive points to fall back on. The only weakness to this build is how much territory it takes early on, prior to getting the fifth city up, before I get a good sized FS fleet going. I find that while a 5 shipyard fleet is powerful, its not until it hits 10+ that its really starting to just steamroll anything less than other superweapons/exo forces. That is 4 full spire cities. Given the number of planets involved that is more territory to claim/defend than pretty much any other playstyle, and thus more AIP than any other play style. An FS game is at it's weakest/most vulnerable point around the time you are setting up that 3rd-4th city, at least I have found it to be so. You may have a major chokepoint, but the exo response can be devastating and the AIP is impossible to keep on the floor, unless you are deliberately cheesing to do it. And while AIP doesn't affect FS exos, I have noticed it does seem to affect shard chases. (I do) Reducing the territory I would need take, even if you only drop it from "Must be 3 hops away" to "Must be 2 hops away", would allow me to easily keep the AIP on the floor, even without cheese. This keeps waves from being dangerous ever, 4 cities gives you so much territory for energy use, which means more defenses, and also means MUCH more K too, for even more defenses. As shard chases are less dangerous, I need to spend less K/energy on mobile forces, again leaving more for defense.
About the only buff I could see for Spire Cities, baring stat increases, (though the recent one seem rather sufficient to me) would be to allow them to be placed in one wormhole systems. It does open up some space, and could be of some impact on some maps, but completely negated on others. Thus, I'm not sure if it would be buff at all. (Though I think it should be done, if only to see what kind of impact it makes.)
