My armies have a terrifying and debilitating fear of victory.

[ShiroIchida]

So, I've built a Federation with the Skylaxians, Actuians, Thoraxians and Evuck. Between the four of them they can field some terribly impressive fleets - upwards of three and a half million combat strength - but they seem pathologically unable to get boots on the ground, or bombard the enemies, or do anything other than sit in orbit around the enemy planets. See the attached images - the first is from year 3040, and shows my Federation's terrifying deathball hovering over the homeworld of those poor, doomed Andor.

If you look at the second, you will notice that it's six years later, the doomfleet has 1 million more combat strength, and the population of the Andor has nearly tripled.

What in the world is going on here? Am I missing something important? Has my game bugged out and some calculation exploded? I also included the diplomacy screen so the colors were readable since I definitely can't relate the colors to races. I also attached what I think is the save, anybody wants to load it up.

[GC13]

Yeah, this is vexing me too. It started as a 45,000-power swarm, slowly expanded up to 600,000, and I'm sure it would continue rising.

I'd really like to kill that planet before they kill one of my allies' planets with their darn moon, but they outright refuse to do anything.

[Orelius]

I think the ground troops' strengths are a bit overtuned right now;  some races are just far too powerful or far too weak.  This is especially hilarious when the thoraxians get surrounded by a huge fleet but take decades to die.

[Azurian]

I feel that the Acutians armadas are overpowered, in the past few observer modes they tend to take over planets really easy and form a Fear Empire.

[Ryusacerdos]

At high levels of planetary compatibility, plus high tech and infrastructure levels, population grow can easily outstrip orbital bombardment

You need to sabotage there buildings until environmental and medical go very negative so their compatibility drops to near zero so their population no longer grows.

[kasnavada]

Yes, I have the same problem.

I built a federation and some (enemy) planets have been sieged for like 20 years, yet no hope of victory in sight... it's getting a bit ridiculous.

[GC13]

Yeah, the swarm works its six million power and it still can't kill the Acutians faster than they can build them. Back when the armada power was lower, maybe a million, I helped them out by sabotaging all of the planetary ion cannons, all of the bomb shelters, and dropping the planet's Environment score to about -95. Still didn't matter: they didn't even make a dent in the population, and that Environmental score recovers quickly. Even when they went to the recently conquered world they couldn't do anything to slow their rate of growth.

Which is weird, because a few tens of thousands of fleet power were able to crush the Burlusts down to one million population and then leave, laughing the whole time. So if I kept that save (which I didn't, since I blew all my money on sabotage), I'd be at a point where the Thoraxians were wiped out by a Peltian fleet, the Peltians and Boarines were dropped to one million by plague, the Burlusts were dropped to one million by a diversionary fleet, and the Acutians survived the Grand Armada of the Federation without the benefit any defensive structures without even blinking.

EDIT: Forgot about the Thoraxians.

[DeBunny]

More fuel for this little fire.
Had an Observer mode game running last night, Thoraxians and Burlusts were first into space. As soon as the Evucks hit space, they launch a doom fleet and wipe out the Burlusts. Fun stuff.
Thoraxians, Boarines, and Peltians follow suit through a combination of Skylaxian/Evuck death blobs, and periodic Acutian mini-blobs.

Which is where the problem is.
At the stage in the game I left it, everyone had more or less all the techs, so it should just be down to racial differences, but the Skylaxians and Evucks had a freakishly huge fleet around the Acutian world at the bottom right (used to be the Thoraxian world) and they had about 214m population. I wake up this morning and note it has grown into the billions without a care in the world. And that the Acutians have managed to form a Fear Empire on the side.

Funny. But something's probably a little wonky somewhere. 

Edit: Glancing at the tech tree this morning, the Skylaxians actually researched the two Ultimate techs (didn't know they could do that on their own, interesting!). So that huge death fleet around the planet should have 100x more effective ground troops. Hmmmmmmm.

[GC13]

Yeah, there's no way the Acutians can be working properly. Judging from the OP it doesn't look like the Andor are either.

EDIT: If anyone's interested, I'm uploading two saves so they can have a look. It's Hari that usually draws all of the attention, but the fleets are on the weaker Acutian world in the later save (the autosave). I have included a much earlier save where I have the credit to go on a sabotaging spree if you want, but the fleet isn't as large.

[Feragore]

I posted a similar thread about the Acutians but got no response. But that was only with a about 20-100k enemy fleet and a constantly refreshing defense fleet blocking the ground attack. Which would have worked considering they only had 1 mil pop left from the -10k medical.

Observer mode is completely broken though - I've ran through two simulations and both times there's a giant 10+ million strong fleet of Skylaxians/Evucks over a Burlust planet doing nothing at all. Even when Time Travel is researched.

[AcidWeb]

Yeah... I'm watching this for last 5 years:

[Hartmann]

Yeah... I'm watching this for last 5 years:

Holy carp. Ship just got real here.
There are so many fleets you could build a moon with these ship. It'll be a giant pile of ship. And then a Jedi will say "that's no moon. That's a giant piece of ship". And then Han Solo will say "we're in deep ship now."
And I'll laugh and wink all the way down to the teleporter.

[Ryusacerdos]

Yeah... I'm watching this for last 5 years:

That planet's population affinity is that 12 because its environmental is at 142.

If you drop affinity to .1 by dropping environmental to -300 (through sabotaging buildings that lower environment on sabotage), it will get taken over when its population drops to zero.

The main mechanic missing is that orbital bombardment should lower planet stats in addition to killing population. Since it doesn't, once those levels get high enough population growth outstrips any amount of invasion and orbital bombardment.

[Rujasu]

Are planetary compatability and environmental score actually tied together so directly?

[Ryusacerdos]

Yes, compatability is increased by positive environment scores and lowered by negative. High positive environmental score means high compatibility means insane population growth.