Fleet Power Literally Means Nothing.

[TheWarHunter]

So, I'm playing a Humanoid race exploring around and I find an Ether Drake. I ask the curators and they say I should be capable enough. I muster all my forces together and charge into the system after about a minute my fleet of 49K Fleet Power prevails. I get offered to resurrect it since my people are necromancers. I'm ecstatic. Of course I resurrect it and add it to my fleet as an addition of 43.6K. I feel absolutely unkillable. I repair my fleets during this whole time and get a message from a machine race saying they are coming to wipe me out. I laugh as they have no idea what they are walking into. I watch as a 28.2K fleet power fleet hits me from a lower area killing a cosmic horror and hammering through my Citadels each at 30K. I'm already wearing the arched eyebrow look as it seemingly slices through 6 of them but next they are about to attack my homeworld with a 30K Citadel, my combined forces of 49K and a freshly resurrected Ether Drake with 43.6K...... They had a red bar of 1/3 my entire force, but I watch as it literally eats its way through everything. They killed my citadel, my fleets and my Drake and then to slap me in the face they invaded my homeworld, killed my leader and I lost...... On the lowest difficulty.... Are the machine race just broken or are they just unkillable Gods of war in this? Either way Fleet power means nothing and I may have been having fun up until this point but this isn't just frustrating. This is a major buzzkill. Like maybe I'll revisit in another month buzzkill. Is this an intended feature, for the lowest difficulty none the less? If so, maybe the developers should nerf God-mode machine race. Just a thought. Anyone else experience this?

[db48x]

Fleet power is basically just DPS * HP. It doesn’t take into account a lot of factors, like weapon types and defense types. It doesn’t account for evasion, penetration, flak, and so on. No single number _can_ account for all those factors. Maybe your defenses were primarily shields, and their weapons did bonus damage to shields. Or maybe their weapons bypass shields entirely. Etc, Etc.

You said that this machine race killed your empire leader? That sounds like you were fighting a Fallen Empire, who start out with thousands of times your strength even though they control only a few planets. If you anger them, they will declare a Humiliation war against you, and as a bonus will assassinate your leader after they win, something normal empires cannot do.

Hopefully you killed at least one of their ships. If you did, it will leave behind wreckage that you can study to gain some very nice tech.

[Lady Crimson (RIP)]

Generally bigger ships will suffer when not in groups regardless, including giant space monsters.

So you can never feel too safe, though the numbers will try their best to reflect it.

[Oakshadow]

Something about this story feels..... off.
If you have 110k+ fleet power in a system a 20k or even 40k fleet, no matter how its built, should never win. That's just not how the game works.
Also you mention a red bar? The only red bar I can think of is the one that appears during combat to give a rough estimate as to which direction the fight is going. Red means its going in the direction of your enemies wining. So if it's 2/3rds red and 1/3rd blue that means you're losing the fight.

The only explanation I can think of is that you're reading their fleet power wrong and the enemy you're fighting is the end game crisis and not a normal npc empire. Because on Cadet difficulty the AI is kind of a wet blanket rarely attacking or reaching a high enough fleet power to pose a threat to a badly player run empire, let alone a well managed one.

[Stormwind]

Please never let me be a noob at a game and come on the forums and embarass myself like this. Being a noob is fine. Everyone is a noob at some point.

"Hey this game you guys have been playing for years? Well I have been playing for 17 minutes and I just figured out the stats dont mean anything at all. Why havent you guys firgured this out in 3 years of playing?"

[yuzhonglu]

The only stat that matters later is the amount of neutron launchers and spinal mounts in your fleet.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by TheWarHunter:

I'm already wearing the arched eyebrow look as it seemingly slices through 6 of them but next they are about to attack my homeworld with a 30K Citadel, my combined forces of 49K and a freshly resurrected Ether Drake with 43.6K...... They had a red bar of 1/3 my entire force, but I watch as it literally eats its way through everything. They killed my citadel, my fleets and my Drake and then to slap me in the face they invaded my homeworld, killed my leader and I lost......

Did they murder your wife, too? It's not a proper 80s revenge movie until they do.

Joking aside though, that sounds highly exaggerated. Under normal circumstances, the AI wouldn't even dare flying into a system with more than twice their fleet power. And unlike the player who knows that fleet power is a rough estimation and can make an informed guess on how their fleets will really perform, the AI takes that number at face value.

Anyway, the only explanation I can think of, assuming your retelling of the events is reliable, is that the fleet ran into the immunity bug. In that case, your fleets and starbases simply didn't fight back and somehow you did not notice.

[Stormwind]

Oh yeah that bug ugh. I have only seen it a couple of times. I cant believe they still havent fixed that,

[Nullpersona]

We claimed a system and had happily repaired a sensor array, when a fallen empire decided they wanted the system empty. Of course I told them what they could do with their claim, and started popping edicts like bubble wrap. It wasn't enough. While destroying a few of their smaller fleets, I was surprised by the difficulty, considering how much the numbers were in my favor. Reading the post battle reports made it obvious they were far beyond my level of development. Just when I thought things were handled, they brought the big guns into a system on the other side of my empire, instantly vaporizing the best defenses we had. I immediately surrendered. I will tolerate humiliation before losing my people, especially over a silly sensor array. The fallen went back to doing whatever it is they do, and we salvaged their ships for some sweet tech. A win, all things considered. We would have gotten steamrolled if I had been more stubborn, and I stand by the decisions that took the empire into and out of a conflict we had no chance of winning. The numbers don't tell you the whole story, not even who has a longer range or weapons that bypass the shields and armor, which have a significant impact on those numbers.

tl;dr
You gotta know when to hold, and when to fold.

[Stormwind]

Also helps to know when to walk away, and when to run.

A lot of people make the mistake of counting all their money when they are sitting at the table. I tell them there will be time enough for counting when the deal is done.

[Evol_Prodigy]

28.2k or 282k? Because everything else you said points at it being 282k.

[CyrusWindstrider]

Have to agree with Evol here, that sounds like a 282K rather than 28.2; Maybe reload one autosave back to take a closer look? If they assassinated your leader they were definitely a fallen empire, they who are scary powerful but also incredibly lazy unless you accidentally piss them off.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Nah, its probably the immunity bug, since you failed to mention anythijg about damaging it.

[TheWarHunter]

Originally posted by Stormwind:

Please never let me be a noob at a game and come on the forums and embarass myself like this. Being a noob is fine. Everyone is a noob at some point.

"Hey this game you guys have been playing for years? Well I have been playing for 17 minutes and I just figured out the stats dont mean anything at all. Why havent you guys firgured this out in 3 years of playing?"

Yeah, my mistake. Going to the forum to see if either I was experiencing a bug or seeking advice is generally a terrible idea isn't it?

[Elitewrecker PT]

No, that's alright, the problem is your title isn't asking if it was a bug or not, your title already says a conclusion that people know is wrong (to a certain degree)

[TheWarHunter]

Originally posted by Jay:

Something about this story feels..... off.
If you have 110k+ fleet power in a system a 20k or even 40k fleet, no matter how its built, should never win. That's just not how the game works.
Also you mention a red bar? The only red bar I can think of is the one that appears during combat to give a rough estimate as to which direction the fight is going. Red means its going in the direction of your enemies wining. So if it's 2/3rds red and 1/3rd blue that means you're losing the fight.

The only explanation I can think of is that you're reading their fleet power wrong and the enemy you're fighting is the end game crisis and not a normal npc empire. Because on Cadet difficulty the AI is kind of a wet blanket rarely attacking or reaching a high enough fleet power to pose a threat to a badly player run empire, let alone a well managed one.

I don't know what to tell you. I watched as a machine race wiped my empire out and no my numbers were all exact. Ironman mode autosaved me just before my empire was wiped out, but after my fleets were destroyed so no luck of an explanation there. They were named The Omni Directive and they wiped through a hivemind empire I was neighboring, killed the Khan in combat and killed a dimensional horror that was a neutral due to me "letting it out". Thought it'd make a good defense.