Are new NPRs in 2.2.3 so strong at the beginning?

[acantoni (OP)]

Kind of standard newtonian game with 1 NPR from start, basically all default except reduced survey speed
Its december 2029 (4 years in the game) and i just found out my 7th system Alpha Centauri and is an amazing system with 8 planet/moons at 2.0, one planet at 0.3 and other dozen moons at 2.0 LG.
There are 2 races in the system and it seems they are fighting each other... i belive one is an NPR in the 0.3 planet and there is Rak i believe in one of the 2.0 system. I lose my scout getting too close to the Rak and so i move my only battle fleet to the system to scout a bit and i am welcomed by a salvo of 660 size 11 missile...

It seems a good game ! Any suggestion on how to deal with this??? i mean the only explanation is that maybe they just have 44 box launchers in every ship so if i have a force big enough to survive then i can maul them down ?

 

[Ultimoos]

I'm 35 years in to the game. Conventional start with some buffs. I have a total of 140kt of military ships. I did not even consider putting PD on my ships yet (pure missile offence doctrine). One salvo of those would end me. I think you have a very bad luck. Still strange that NPR would use such excessive force to shoot down one ship. Maybe, you can bait them with fighters?

[nuclearslurpee]

A quick back-of-the-envelope check suggests that these NPRs are using much larger ships than NPRs historically have used, which is one of the many 2.2+ changes. This means NPRs can sometimes be much stronger just by virtue of having more tonnage in a given battle fleet.

The plus side is their speed looks very low so they may be rather low-tech. You can probably defeat such low-tech missiles with a large enough fleet and/or a very robust AMM doctrine. Otherwise, if they are fighting another NPR, best to leave them to their devices. And build up your own fleet for the eventual border crisis of course.

[acantoni (OP)]

This game is absolute bonkers!!!!
After that crazyness of the system with 2 species in Alpha Centauri (homeworld most likely of a generated NP3 at system creation) , I went ahead and found out a Precursor system in 70 Opiuchi and what i believe is the starting NPR in 69 Sagittaris (not their homeworld) and then in the neighbouring systems in NN and 87 Cancri,

Its now year 2039, there are dozens of wrecks in multiple systems for all the fighting that is happening mostly in Alpha Centauri and 69 Sagittaris where there has been some ground invasions too !

I am keeping multiple saves while i play never experienced so much action in any previous game and i see those NPRs have crazy military tonnage which i have no idea how they are pumping it out.


When the dust settles i am curious to see more of what happened... is there a DESIGNER mode like in the previous versions of Aurora to see what other NPR have?

[Kaiser]

The ground invasions must be a recent thing, I had two moons with 100x automated mines each, both invaded and looted by barbarians which seems they did loot nothing in the end.
I am wondering if the automated mines have disappeared or they are still there once I reconquer the moons.

Also, I am not against the ferocity and activity of the NPRs, on the contrary, as long as they do not cheat for example magically popping out ships from nowhere, otherwise it became a lost cause.

[Ulzgoroth]

The ground invasions must be a recent thing, I had two moons with 100x automated mines each, both invaded and looted by barbarians which seems they did loot nothing in the end.
I am wondering if the automated mines have disappeared or they are still there once I reconquer the moons.

Also, I am not against the ferocity and activity of the NPRs, on the contrary, as long as they do not cheat for example magically popping out ships from nowhere, otherwise it became a lost cause.

This sounds like you may be dealing with spoilers, though I haven't seen them perform the behavior you describe myself.

Some nice heavy STO weapons might work against the invasions. I recently blew away a ship belonging to what I think are the same lot with a 25 cm laser when it flew over one of my outposts. OTOH I'm not sure how fast their troop dropping is, it's possible they'd get to the ground before their ship got wrecked.

Big stacks of sensor array installations in the system goes a long way to know what's happening.