Another variable to this might be how the raiders interact with NPRs.
Does the ships built up get divide among all systems with active NPRs/players?
If it does, having more NPRs in the game will make the raiders considerably easier to deal with.
It’s my understanding that they pop into systems randomly, so if there are more systems then it does seem like you would see them less often. Perhaps people habitually turn off the starting NPRs so that the game will be easier, but that inadvertently makes the raiders more difficult. That’s a really interesting game design idea: a self–balancing game where the options only shift what type of difficulty you get.
In my game I have seen neither hide nor hair of the raiders, though I did lose some geo survey ships to rakhas and the remnants. But now that I think about it, I might have had the bright idea to set them to start after discovering 20 systems. I started this game last weekend, and now I am not sure… There have been some slow downs for enemy action, and the same remnants that got one of my exploration fleet also got two alien ships as well. I guess I will see soon enough.
Personally, I think that these types of game design questions are easier to answer if you have more information than is available in a typical forum post: starting conditions, research choices, ship designs, etc, etc. Luckily we have some kind folks who record their whole game and post it to Youtube;
, for example.
This one is definitely worth watching because he has really been pushing himself to be ready for the raiders, and it looks like he failed. At the very least he will suffer significant losses. After watching it, I think the reason is fairly obvious.
He settled four extra–solar colonies then garrisoned them with ground troops and a fighter wing. He moved people, maintenance facilities, and MSP to those colonies to support the fighters. It seemed like he was doing everything right, and certainly he put far more effort into his defenses than I ever did prior to 2.0.
When he discovered his tenth system (
about 23 minutes in to the episode, and 21 years into the game), he was probed in four systems in fairly short order. He didn’t lose the exploration ship in the tenth system, because they all carry three fighters with them and that was enough to scare off the single raider ship he encountered in that system. I like that design more than the larger carriers with fighters and survey craft that I decided to go with. The second probe was also just a single ship raider, this time going up against a dozen fighters based at a colony. The fighters were able to destroy the raider, though he did lose about 10% of the fighters. The third probe went badly because he had no deep–space tracking systems in place, so an unknown number of raiders simply flew undetected up to his fighter base and destroyed it. Oops.
The final probe, however, revealed the real flaw in his plan. More raiders showed up back in the same system where he easily destroyed a lone raider ship, but this time it was a sizable force. Multiple groups of ships, some with civilian engines and all of them escorted. His fighter squadron was quickly destroyed fighting a group of three ships. Troop transports arrived a few days later, and his colony was invaded. His 50kt garrison was lost in the first combat cycle and the colony fell.
So what went wrong?
His forces were too concentrated. He had a handful of carriers each armed with dozens of fighters, but they were mostly stationed in Sol at the time. That put them practically right next door to the fighting, but also 33 days away. They simply could not arrive at any of his extra–solar colonies in time to prevent an invasion; they would have to already be in place when that main fleet arrives in order to do any good. It probably would have taken at least half of his carriers to be certain of success against the three or four raider groups that we saw, and while you can put half of your forces in two places at once, you can’t put them in four places.
He also didn’t expand his ground forces very much. He had a lot more of them on Earth, but hadn’t moved any more out to the colonies. Given the raider’s tech advantages he might not have been able to save his colony, but he might have had enough troops to get a kill or two. Worse, he had no STOs. I think all of his weapons are railguns, and he was perhaps waiting until they had more range and stopping power, but some fortified STOs might have put some holes in some ships.
I think the obvious conclusion is that he should have limited himself to just one extra–solar colony. His defense stations should have been larger, even though that means needing a larger population to support them. 36 of his fighters would fare a lot better against a raider group than the 18 he was using, so that is the minimum he should use. He would have been able to split his carriers between Sol and his colony, to drive off any large force that attacked either one. After killing some raiders he would be able to start a third colony.
Changing the game settings might also be a good idea. He could start with 4× population, like Steve did in his most recent AAR. That would give him more forces at the start of the game, and more exploration ships to survey those first 10 systems more quickly. I don’t know if he had any NPRs enabled at game start, that might have helped as punchkid surmises. He could have set the raiders to attack after the 5th system is explored instead of the 10th; they would have had half the forces and he would have had half as many colonies to protect.
What lessons can I learn for my game? Well, I have colonies in both Proxima and Alpha Centauri, and although I was planning to start another that is probably plenty for now. My ground forces are larger than Defran’s, but I too need to actually move more significant forces to my colonies. I have gotten a few weapon and armor techs and my latest armor designs have significantly more stopping power than my initial forces. My anchorages are already twice as large as his. I made them as large as my carriers, with 43 fighters each plus an assault shuttle full of very bored Space Marines and a scout. Unfortunately I actually have _two_ colonies in Alpha Centauri; Alpha Centauri-B II’s gallicite deposits were just too tempting. I have no anchorage there yet, but even worse I have no fighters to put in it and gallicite is very tight. All of my existing fighters are at other anchorages or in carriers. And with just barely enough gallicite coming in for making maintenance supplies, I haven’t upgraded many of my existing fighters. I have half a squadron of my third–generation fighter (50% faster than the first generation), two squadrons of the second generation (40% faster than the original), and 7 squadrons of the originals. It seems a bit thin when divided amongst three systems. Maybe I shouldn’t have upgraded any of them, and instead used that gallicite to build new fighters and carriers to carry them. I guess we will see. Also, I see that Earth is about to have 78 million very bored miners unless I find some other place to put all these mines. And the miners.
That turned out to be rather longer than I expected. Once sentence summary, in case your eyes glazed over: there are obvious ways to get ready for the raiders, but it is also very easy to spread yourself too thin.
