MARAUDERS ARE BROKEN

[Teknical Mage]

Literally just OP 12K stacks that do nothing

[bradicus]

Fully agree. Marauder strength needs to be deeply reworked. There is absolutely no reason they should always be ludicrously overpowered.

Why not have them be tough but manageable strength? They spawn as 8k or 12k stacks when the largest fleet of any empire is 3 or 4k; it makes absolutely no sense. It isn't fun in any way to watch an unstoppable deathball roll through your entire empire and smash your capital system.

Even if they weren't broken so that they categorically eradicate everything in their path even from other empires, their strength is absolutely stupid. I've stopped two different games now because I've had 1/3 of my systems wiped out and my capital and fleet reduced to nothing.

Also, the ethic that prevents you from selecting rivals means you don't get to use marauders either. oops.

[ArcticISAF]

Originally posted by brad.miller:

It isn't fun in any way to watch an unstoppable deathball roll through your entire empire and smash your capital system.

Even if they weren't broken so that they categorically eradicate everything in their path even from other empires.

This is fixed in the 2.0.2 beta. Played and tested them being neutral to everyone else but their target. Plus they sent me a message offering to call off the attack if I gave them 500 of a resource of my choice (so gave them 500 minerals).

They've been pretty benign actually because of that. They go try and attack - but they were fairly weak really. I think their strength is rebalanced maybe as well.

[Tempest Fox3]

The idea is that you can't beat them at first, you just have to put up with the occasional raid until you can fortify your borders and keep them out.

They won't completely eliminate you anyway, they fly to one of your planets bomb it a bit then leave.

If you know what path they take fortify it with Bastion defensive stations. Your fleet combined with a station should be able to win. You should be trying to fortify your borders anyway.

[Teknical Mage]

Originally posted by brad.miller:

Fully agree. Marauder strength needs to be deeply reworked. There is absolutely no reason they should always be ludicrously overpowered.

Why not have them be tough but manageable strength? They spawn as 8k or 12k stacks when the largest fleet of any empire is 3 or 4k; it makes absolutely no sense. It isn't fun in any way to watch an unstoppable deathball roll through your entire empire and smash your capital system.

Even if they weren't broken so that they categorically eradicate everything in their path even from other empires, their strength is absolutely stupid. I've stopped two different games now because I've had 1/3 of my systems wiped out and my capital and fleet reduced to nothing.

Also, the ethic that prevents you from selecting rivals means you don't get to use marauders either. oops.

Yeah Something like that sounds nicer. Having a Army more proportional to the rivials fleet power or maybe averaged out compared to all empirers (minus fallens and crisis/levatians) Would make way more sense.

[Mmeat]

they're beyond broken since around the time you can think about dealing with them they unite under 1 ruler get multiple 25k fleets, and a 40k fleet when the best you can do is about 10k and they take half your teritory and cripple you. They're just not fun to have in any game.

[vindicator]

Dont explore marauders area until you build some fleets. Game will eventually force you to explore them by event but start of the game will be safe.

[Red Dox]

Originally posted by Mmeat:

they're beyond broken since around the time you can think about dealing with them they unite under 1 ruler get multiple 25k fleets, and a 40k fleet when the best you can do is about 10k and they take half your teritory and cripple you. They're just not fun to have in any game.

I have defeatet them in the last week like three times in 2.0.2 (Insane included). Sadly I beat their first 40k stack, the Khan retreats for rebuilding, then another empire swoops in and makes the kill.
The lesson here is: You can beat their fleets. And even FE/AE will take care of the Khan problem if you are useless in a fight.

If you get rofl stomped and can't even beat one of their fleets, the problem is you (either your sad RNGesus cursed start or your own inabilitiy to have a decent fleet around 2300 and a chokepoint defense). Not the Marauders. The bigger the galaxy, the more powerful Empires around, the faster the whole Khan Crisis might also end. Especially FE fleets can do the job alone once they decide to take a part in it.

[Larzous]

I’m having the same problem. Get about 60 years in and the enemy spends 3k energy to drop a 6k fleet on my head when I have 3k fleet tops. And 1k stations can’t block a 3.8k fleet that’s left.

Until the balance is fixed I’m turning them off.

[_ALuX_]

Step 1: KHAAAAAAAAAAN!

Step 2: Repeat.

[bradicus]

Originally posted by Larzous:

I’m having the same problem. Get about 60 years in and the enemy spends 3k energy to drop a 6k fleet on my head when I have 3k fleet tops. And 1k stations can’t block a 3.8k fleet that’s left.

Until the balance is fixed I’m turning them off.

I'll try the 2.02 update to address the path of destruction issue, but this is the part that still gets me. I'm not sure I enjoy the core mechanic - right around the time that I'm getting into what my empire is doing, what we're all about, fortifying my territory, starting to enjoy some of the role-playing aspects.... a fleet 2-3 times the size of mine comes in and unstoppably rolls into my capital and wipes everything out. I could just do the whole "get out of the way and wait for them to retreat," but that kind of kills the mood ;-)

[DrUltraLux]

Started new game.
-AI rival pays for Marauders to raid me early on (only ~15 years in).
-Popup for paying them off fails to appear for some reason.
-60k of fleets (multiple 6-12k fleets) lands in my systems while I only have a single 3.3k fleet.
-Trash my second world, destroying all of the buildings and killing half the pops, clean out all my resources leaving me negative food and energy.
-Negative food leads to starvation, which leads to massive unhappiness, which leads to all my production tanking to almost nothing - including food (making the starvation worse).
-Now every resource is negative, no way to solve any of the issues at all.
-All my worlds except homeworld rebell with 40-60 assault armies attacking per planet...
-They win against the half a dozen defence armies, spawn in 15-20k fleets each with tech more advanced than mine...
-I am forced to surrender. Left with just my home system with marauder fleets just sitting in it permanently killing my construction and science ships and any new fleets I make...


I play with Marauders turned off every game now. They are a sad pathetic waste of time.
Totally broken with stupidly OP fleet right from the start of the game.

The Khan event though usually comes late enough in the game (occurs at mid-game time) that you should be able to handle it by then assuming the marauders haven't already decimated every world you own...

[Zyme]

Yeah lets remove everything in the game that is an actual threat to the player. Playing on normal is not enough for these casuals.

[Ruinous]

Posted this in another thread. If they are marauder fleets, you should either pay them off when they ask or avoid them until they leave. They'll bomb a planet, 'raid' it for 500 of each resource, they ruin *one* building not several and leave, knocking offline any stations along their route to and from the target system. You only should be taking them on when you've fleets capable of doing it, and that'll be mid game, by 2300 if not sooner.

If you are throwing ships at fleets you haven't a hope of defeating, more fool you.

2.0.2 'fixed' the AI repeatedly paying them to raid you by giving it a 20 year cooldown for that AI to pay them to target you again. You don't not get an option to pay off marauders if they've been paid to target your empire btw. You get that same option and can take advantage of it yourself.

[HeLLfire]

Not all of them accept bribes, tough i'm not sure how many does, it feels less then half.
The 20 year CD is welcome. Tough they now don't ruin every mine in in their path, only starbases and go straight for the planet\loot.

[DrUltraLux]

Originally posted by Ruinous:

Posted this in another thread. If they are marauder fleets, you should either pay them off when they ask or avoid them until they leave. They'll bomb a planet, 'raid' it for 500 of each resource, they ruin *one* building not several and leave, knocking offline any stations along their route to and from the target system. You only should be taking them on when you've fleets capable of doing it, and that'll be mid game, by 2300 if not sooner.

If you are throwing ships at fleets you haven't a hope of defeating, more fool you.

2.0.2 'fixed' the AI repeatedly paying them to raid you by giving it a 20 year cooldown for that AI to pay them to target you again. You don't not get an option to pay off marauders if they've been paid to target your empire btw. You get that same option and can take advantage of it yourself.

From 2.02 the popup to pay them off seems to not always occur. Also the AI seems to be good at timing it while your resources are too low to afford it.

They bomb the planet until the defending armies are destroyed. The next building they ruin after that they loot and then leave.

So if your planet has a lot of defences (fortress and a military academy) you can lose several buildings before it destroys the last defending army. This is what happened to me. You can lose multiple pops due to this also as the pop on the military buildings dies, plus potentially others in the meantime from the bombardment.

The fix only applies to the single AI repeatedly asking them to raid you. Multiple different AI can each pay for them to raid you. So you can still be constantly raided out of existence.

Also the Marauder fleets often bug out and spend the rest of the game sitting in a random system in your borders.

It only costs 2000 energy to call for a raid. With the AI having significantly reduced costs for upkeep, it can afford to do this very early in the game.