I hate ******* Star Swarm

[Arwyn (OP)]

/message repeats

Yet another game goes down in flames due to Star Swarm. Running into them early is just game over for me every time.

I just dont see how you can viably fight the damn things early game. Anyone manage to stop them early?

[Droll]

I want to know what the spawn conditions are for star swarm. I have never had them naturally spawn in my games and I've played multiple 100+ year games across multiple game versions across both VB6 and C#, and yes they have been enabled every time.

It's always weird when I hear about people encountering the enigmatic star swarm that just doesn't seem to exist for me.

[brondi00]

I usually stay away until ion at a minimum and usually later.  Because until then they're too hard.

You could just turn them off at the start and then turn them on when you're further a long

[serger]

It's important not to feed them, if you cannot beat them just now.

[Blogaugis]

I disable star swarm in my games.
I find the idea of life surviving out in the open space to be... Unrealistic.

[kilo]

Unfortunately, I have never met them in C# until now. It has always been Precusors and buggy Rakkas for me. Does the swarm have jump drives and grav survey ships? Man I would like to see some spoilers to be honest.

[Droll]

Unfortunately, I have never met them in C# until now. It has always been Precusors and buggy Rakkas for me. Does the swarm have jump drives and grav survey ships? Man I would like to see some spoilers to be honest.

Are you on 1.12? 1.13 fixes the rakhas and has been released for quite a while.

As for the star swarm I think they can jump through JPs somehow using some jump drive equivalent, otherwise they wouldn't be an existential threat.

[Polestar]

I've had the same problems as the OP re. the Swarm ... to such an extent that I typed up the linked report/suggestion for Steve. http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10640.msg152683#msg152683. Follow-up posts in that thread, each with new player reports, may be of service to Steve.

Here's what little I know about the Swarm, or merely guess about it. Everything's in spoilers, despite this thread now being in the spoiler forum.
Independent Swarms appear in random star systems, as they are generated (or if you SP place them manually). I wonder if they are preferentially placed in resource-rich systems. There appears to be no check on how distant these systems are to your homeworld, or on the size and strength of your empire, or on whether and how many swarms already exist in the universe. The failure to check for this sort of thing is a general issue with Aurora game design.

A Swarm can travel between stars using jump points (!), which means it can be far more dangerous than the Precursors. Its fleet consists of vessels that search for jump points, that scout for new targets, that serve as major fleet combatants, lots of small fast attack craft, and that harvest wrecks (and perhaps other rescources?) to generate more members of the swarm. Their technology level starts at (I think) about ion or magneto-plasma, and can (slowly) increase over time.

The Swarm means death if you cannot beat it off. If it can, it will wipe out your fleet, your shipyards, and endlessly bombard your colonies to dust. If your empire is facing doom, consider editing the database to remove the entire swarm.
Please report any errors or omissions in the above!

If you start the game with the swarm active, then one of two things will happen:
1. The swarm will find and attack you early. You will either already have a fleet in place that can kill several tens of thousands of tons-worth of ion or magneto-plasma ships ... or you will die.
2. The swarm will either never appear, or appear far away or late, having little or no effect upon the game.

Without painstakingly using the database to determine if systems have had a swarm generated in them, you won't know which of these will happen until they start appearing ... or never do.

I therefore recommend that you turn the swarm off, and - when you think you're ready for a minor, but mobile opponent - manually place a swarm in a suitable system.

[kilo]

@Droll

Yes, this is my first 1.13 game and it is like 3 weeks old. The one before was started in 2020 and ended due to some function error.


@Polestar

This is interesting. My game is at 20% research speed and now after 50 years in the game I might be able to begin building competitive ships at that tech level. I deactivated invaders for this reason, maybe I should deactivate the swarm the next time I begin a new game for a few years.

[Arwyn (OP)]

If you havent run into them before, you must have incredible luck. I have had multiple games die due to early encounters with them.

I have turned them off in my latest game, just to give my empire a chance to get established.

[misanthropope]

i mean, i think the real crux of the matter is their *eagerness* to come after you.  its pretty common for players to report on these forums that they really only start building navy after first contact ("for RP reasons").  if nprs werent so dependably passive about prosecuting a war, that behavior would be a non-starter.

conceivably the bugs' willingness to advance out of a system could be made a function of time and maybe distance from their system of origin.  without getting super fiddly they could be dialed back as existential threats without ceasing to be extremely dangerous for quite a while.

[ExChairman]

Okay, first time finding these aliens... Darn they board my ships...
Oh crap need to put marines on every warship, atlest from destroyer and up, a squad or two for small ships and company sized for capitals...
Ah new wave of refits in the making, making my ships slightly slower...

Now we shall se what happens, need first to get some fixed defence around the nearest colony.

[Arwyn (OP)]

Yep, always a fun time when they show up demanding cuddles.

[ExChairman]

Yep, always a fun time when they show up demanding cuddles.

 

[Stormtrooper]

If you havent run into them before, you must have incredible luck. I have had multiple games die due to early encounters with them.

I have turned them off in my latest game, just to give my empire a chance to get established.

I haven't run into them at all and I consider THIS a bad luck. They seem like super fun and something challenging, unlike invaders who suffered a nerf and don't increase tech so they're not that dangerous, but they always bugged out for me and refused to spawn even with sm.