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Im playing a game with pirates, sectoids, and machine ai all set to waves. What I've noticed:
1) Pirates sometimes ambush my fleets when LEAVING unoccupied systems, when it should be on arriving, but generally seem to be all but non existant on the map. They never try to raid planets, they have no bases, and they dont seem to spawn fleets on the map at all. All in all, pretty much zero threat, when they should be your early game nemesis
2) Machine AI sit around their couple of black holes in the entire galaxy and generally do nothing. Every once in a great while they'll send out a single fleet to patrol through some nearby unexplored systems, but thats it. No threat to the empire, and not even enough of them to really salvage any tech from. Never seen an AI fleet show up at one of my colonies.
3) Sectoids...are EVERYWHERE. By turn 100 they had occupied nearly every uninhabited system in the galaxy and with 3+ fleets in every system. They even attacked my systems a couple of times. While they only start with a few systems, they quickly send out brood fleets and double the number of systems under their control, which then send out twice as many brood fleets, and repeat. The problem is that their insane growth makes it very hard to expand at all unless you turtle up until you have a high tech fleet or 2 to throw at them, because as soon as you clear the system out another brood fleet and its escorts are going to be on the way to retake the system, so you have to withstand wave after wave of attacks on that system while you try to get a colony established. The insane number of fleets everywhere also REALLY slowed down the end turn. As it stands, you would need multiple combat fleets devoted to nothing but hunting down and eliminating sectoids from the very start of the game to just keep them from getting ludicrously out of hand.
So, some suggestions:
1) Pirates need to be more active, especially in the early game. They should launch raids of colonies, actively chase mining fleets/freighters/colony ships. I like the power balance of their vessels, just enough to match a base config warship fleet. They should be active enough that leaving a colony undefended for too long, or that sending a civilian fleet out into the black should be a risk. Make them blockade colonies without any defensive stations/platforms, too. I think pirates should be a constant thorn in your side at the undeveloped fringes of the empire. They should also have some 'pirate haven' systems, that every 30 turns or so builds up enough of a fleet to send out a raid against a player or ai colony somewhere in the galaxy, prioritizing those with less defenses and high trade.
2) Machine AI are a cool concept. I like that they hang around their infinite energy source, making more machines. The problem is that's about all they do...they should be after that sweet sweet material for building machines with! So I think that each black hole should have a radius around it, say 5 or 10% of the galaxy size, and within that bubble the machines should be constantly sending patrols to every star looking for fleets to eat. Any colony built within the radius should be under threat of a major fleet raid to bomb it out of existence (give them all gas bombs), again say every 30 turns or so. Have the raid target a random colony within the radius, with priority given to most developed but least defended, to maximize those sweet sweet materials gained. If no colony exist in range, the timer waits 10 turns and checks again. This would make them a serious, but destroyable issue, but entirely avoidable until you want to go up against them.
3) Sectoids need to slow down. Massed projectile weapons are fine for killing them, the issue is how quickly they spread. I propose that the INITIAL sectoid colony systems should be designated as 'nests'. These nest systems would receive a much larger and more powerful version of the battlestation, but would be the only systems capable of spawning the brood fleets. The systems they colonize and build battlestations in should allow them to build combat fleets in that system for defense but no brood fleets, meaning that only the nest systems with their uber station would be the source of the spread. The extra powerful nest station would mean that multiple advanced fleets would be required to put a stop to the spread, preventing them from getting taken out early game, but at the same time would keep them from overrunning the galaxy before youre thinking about building your 4th colony.
At the very least, I think doubling the relations drop for Condemn and also doing a drop when an empire responds negatively would be help reduce the time spent waiting to get to war.
I also think that even with the updates to the curve for pioneers the numbers hang out easily in the 80k range which is still far more than you'll typically need. I think that the curve could shift a bit more to start the falloff earlier.
Use of stimulus is also skewed to the fixed percentage boost to pioneers and military. Why should I invest capital in endorsements when I can get 1.3% of the population converted in a single turn. I can jump from 50 to 12k easily.
Are you sure about that? It's got longer range and faster projectiles and double damage with half the shots so it's technically equal in damage, but I wonder if each projectile is subject to the damage reduction of of shields and armor and if there's a chance for each projectile to miss. If so, vulcan might be better because there's fewer chances to miss and less damage lost per hit.
They drain a lot of power. Loading manual is slow. Aiming manually is fun but missing is very likely. Timing the shots right to have a significent impact is very difficult because of the high shield recovery rate and repair rate.
In SOTS there are also big weapons that have to be managed manually but this was fun. You could snipe enemy main guns, shield generators or drives. Or you could destoy whole sections or even ships.
Suggestion:
Set one or two systems as sectoid homeworlds and only allow the generation of brood ships from there or only allow one brood ship to exist at a time generated from a single random battlestation. Further, only allow brood ships to travel to systems than Sectoids have a fleet to give players a warning.
Order of events would be Sectoids send fleet to system. A time later sectoids send a second fleet and brood ship to system.
Sure I can make sure that only the green system's battle station generates brood ships. The green systems where they spawn in the first place. Let see if that is better.
I find them as a amazing source of steady material income, however they did kill off 2 of the AI players in my hardest settings game.
a player only using defensive stations/platforms can farm them quite easily without even having to use a fleet - 1 orbital station and 3 T1, and 3T2 platforms with the right loadout and some ~T2 tech.
So for that reason i think that a change would be good, they just seem to handicap the AI players alot since every system is full of them and the AI just can't handle it, while a player will take out a entire system+base with 2 dedicated fleets for 'cleaning up', without taking any losses at all, and will be fully repped in 1-2-3 turns for the 'counter attack' when they want to retake the system so it's a very easy and pretty safe farm to set up in the early game if you just rush vulcans and missiles for T1 platforms, and then T2 platforms with torps, which you can see from my saves games that is quite easy/fast to get - And then you're safe.
This is one of my 2 farm systems ->> https://i.imgur.com/8thndOo.png
My 2 specialised fleets just hit it last turn, all my ships are at 90%+ health, and i knew that they would send a tripple fleet, with a brood, and when i destroy those 3+1 fleets, they will send from the next system, and in the end, i'll end up with 18+ wreckage fleets to salvage lol
My most southwards system on the galaxy map that I have is my capital system, 2 close farms systems, and 4 'far systems'
--> https://i.imgur.com/Q6xKFkH.png //all these 6 systems sends me waves every ~40-60-70 turns or so.
My starting defence station, have all the 'extra upgrades' now, for faster combats
Missile launchers, +4
Hangars (6)
Signal Intelligence +10LY scan range on galaxy map (great upgrade before you reach T2 upgrades/modules so you can move in a cleanse fleet), and mainly vulcans and "cutting beams" combined with the T1 and T2 platforms, with all their upgrades, it's a killing field, lol,
The Station stats are insane after a couple of upgrades,
-- > https://i.imgur.com/4CCRKub.jpeg
And then you combine it all, with the inspect solar system view, where you can place/station, your defences for the ultimate station tanking-soak station
--> https://i.imgur.com/TKamPx4.png
The station will tank 120Shield+2750+1100 HP, 3 Sec fleets can't touch it on T2 Tech level, and then you'll have the platforms just slightly behind it spamming missiles/torps
I think as the sectoids expand, they should get a 'evolution counter' the more systems they manage to settle the more evolution points they should get making their races tech stronger with some small buff, so they'll start exactly as they are now early game, but later in the game would just keep evolving and on the highest levels passive regen in combat to counter that they do not have shields and just die :P
Using more power for shields, and using "Interceptor cannons (later beams)" on your escorts (or using capitals that have good ~180degree coverage) really does a good job of taking out the pirates missiles.
I like using a battleship with either replacing the close to ~330 something degree arc(/the particle beam or laser battery slot in the front, combined with replacing the "back high slot" on the destroyer escort that have 360 degree arc with a Interceptor cannon, with 2 interceptor weapons from the 2 escorts, and then add in 1+1+1 from the battleship you'll have a wall of 4-5 interceptors. this way i easily beat the tripple pirate fleets on hard dif even being on tech level 1 . but i also always buy 1-2 extra capital ships (without escorts) and use a damage dealers behind the "point defence - escort fleet"
Damagedealer Capital | DDescort <- attacker 3 pirates
(Damagedealed Cap if solo slot) | BBescort <- attacker 3 pirates
Damagedealer capital | DDescort <- attacker 3 pirates
if my BB escort takes to much damage ill activate it's rotation to turn itself around, or rotate it with one of the undamaged damagedealer ones,
My standad set up for these fights in early game is 1 DN as maindamage dealer, 1 BB as damage/escort, 2 DDs with 1 PD support with some microing, also don't forget that you can use your ships to physically block the missiles to having them kamikaze into the missiles, to soak damage if you're close to losing a valuble ship, i sometimes use the starter mining ship to do just this, soak some damage/alpha attack at 150% shields and take 1 full missile-volley and then place on 'auto settings in the back behind the fleet'