Ah okay, that makes more sense on the decloaking. I wouldn't necessarily call for deep strike threat exactly like AIWC, but with the current slightly broken cloaker transport I haven't had any issue diving 10 hops away to take out data centres/co-processors. Presumably you want something to stop people jumping all the way across the map.
I just managed my first victory against a diff 8 AI today, so a couple of comments about that game:
ARRRGH PHASE TWO WHAT.
Yup that victory message is underwhelming.
Are usurpers supposed to join the threat fleet and go walk about? I've come across at least one that's gotten chased off the dyson golem world and ended up five hops away attacking one of my speedbump planets.
I hacked the dyson a lot this game, for 2x dyson ships, 3x build speed boost and +max strength. Makes a nice distraction world, although honestly I don't think the boosts are worth it. Apart from the constant reconquest waves (which at one point left it with about 250 strength and 30+ guardposts the dysons hadn't got around to killing), I also somehow appear to have gotten three dyson spheres. Not quite sure how. And yes, that means I get a tripled hacking options.
Dyson gatlings set off raid engines. Ow.
Knowing I can never permanently lose a golem / spire frigate means I'm much more likely to send them to random planets as a distraction now. Feels like a real lack of consequences.
The multiple planet scouting messages as per screenshot. Because I've scouted everything already, or because the dysons have destroyed so many reconquest command stations?
The cloaked transport makes hacks really, really easy. Does the AI not tachyon blast planets as part of the hacking response anymore? For instance I did a spire archive hack on a 2.5 extreme response, six hops away from my territory, and just sat there calmly for 15 minutes. The only disadvantage is locking down the fleet for that amount of time.
The instant-shot on unloading of (cloaked) transports can be cheesed massively. Park one full of fusion (for bypassing shields) ships, next to a guardpost. Ideally with a factory on the next planet. Unload, shoot, load so you don't lose too many ships. Wait 6 seconds, you'll be back up to a full cap anyway. Repeat. Really needs the reload-on-unload timer adding back.
Not increasing AIP floor when killing homeworld guardposts also makes things a lot easier. Given I was sitting on 157 AIP with 412 reduction, and a floor of 113.
Similarly, the removal of strategic reserve. No harm in parking right next to the AI homeworld now that it won't go on alert either.
Anti-AI zombies count towards extending counter strikes. This really screwed me at one point, as a nice manageable 200 strength reprisal turning into 600 because the AI just would ... not ... kill a random zombified MK VII tractor guardian. In retrospect I would have been far better off flinging the fleet around the planet to take out the guardposts than retreating, because the zombies capped out the reprisal strength anyway.
Actually scratch that, it looks like sometimes the counter strength goes up even when there's no ships on the planet at all. See attached save where I just caught the tail end of that.
I ended up eating a 700-odd strength counter-strike when moving all my ships onto the homeworld to wake up all the guard ships (to make them threat, so they go away and let me cheese the cloaker transport...). However as it was released as loose threat on the homeworld, I managed to kill the AI command well before it slowly wended it's way towards my planets. Maybe this needs to be an exo-strike, or even an actual wave?
Last one, can I suggest that if you have a cap of something on a planet and get an upgrade you automatically build up to the new cap. Nothing is as aggravating as clicking around 20 planets to add a watchman frigate because you just took a 1.3x frigate cap structure, let alone turrets and mines when a planet levels up. Turrets and mines in general really need some kind of template system, I ended up building about 600 combined per planet with ctrl+shift+click click click click click click click.
