How to defend against the cravers ?

[tvanpouille]

I'm playing on normal difficulty and I'm on lap 34. The cravers just destroyed one of my small fleets with 4 small attack ships immediately after a battle where I destroyed two of their same size ships. I have the impression that they already have a lot of ships. What would be your advices to defend myself and beat them ?

Thanks a lot

Vlad

[ZumZoom]

It's not that difficult on normal. Just research medium ships, make a couple of stronger fleets and put them on defencive positions (chokepoints, if there are any)/ If you are at war and win or tie a few battles, or say invade their system (even just with couple of scout ships, if it's not well defended - ideally a new colony) - then you can easily persuade them for truce. That should buy you time to build defences.
Even a fleet of small attacker ships can fend them off early game.

[CursedPanther]

There is nothing much you can do if you're unfortunate enough to have the Cravers as an immediate neighbor as they're by default the most aggressive faction outta the entire game. Once they've made their presence known your only option is to build up as big a fleet as possible before they inevitably declare war on you.

[Cat®]

You have to be able to match them in numbers and tech, there isn't much more to it. If they have 5 attackers with whites; you should bring 6 attackers with whites. If they bring 12, you bring more.

If you have the luxury of going for medium ships that's a good way to stem the tide, if not you just have to make sure your industry is capable of holding the line against them. If cravers are your neighbours you are playing a military focused early game; that's simply how it is. A dedicated combat hero early on will dramatically improve your odds.

[tvanpouille]

Thanks guys, I appreciate your advices

[DNLH]

I'd actually say you have to plan to include medium ships as fast as you can without totally compromising your gameplan, because, from my experience, Cravers with their planet-eating boost will have those soon.

Try looking around for right minor factions to befriend, last game I had Cravers spawn couple of jumps from me and only thing that saved me was spamming expeditionary forces from one of the nearby minors. It almost felt like cheating, until their crumbling empire in their death throes puked out a single Hunter that ate a couple of my mercs like they were nothing. Other playthrough they were stuck in the opposite corner of the galaxy, getting bullied by every other faction until all of sudden they exploded and started taking systems left and right. Just a reminder not to ever think that Cravers are done before last one of them is dead.

[Derick]

these craver are annoying as hell. have medium ship model. Just camp a choke point where theyy have to cross and "guard" so their fleet cant get pass and keep killing its fleet until you get a "truce". even if you declare war, their planet are depleted so it not even worth it to colonized them in my opinion

[ZumZoom]

Originally posted by Derick:

these craver are annoying as hell. have medium ship model. Just camp a choke point where theyy have to cross and "guard" so their fleet cant get pass and keep killing its fleet until you get a "truce". even if you declare war, their planet are depleted so it not even worth it to colonized them in my opinion

I just take their systems in exchange for truce, then trade them for other systems from my alliance partners, so that I don't have to deal with craver pops infesting my planets.

[tvanpouille]

Thank you so much for your different tips !

[Singularity's Marauder]

You can go to menu and quit the game, they can't attack you in real life.
For now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOc8yz985T4

[freek_o_nature]

I have kind of a thing for "caretaking" in games like these, and I've been fiddling with the Depletion/restoration mechanic to figure it out, and if I understand it correctly, Depleted planets are not permanently ruined, but are expensive to restore.

From what I've gathered, Behemoths with the Advanced Climate Engineering module will passively restore Depleted planets in the systems they orbit, irrespective of the planet's level of Depletion. If my math is correct, (and it may not be,) each module reduces 2 Depletion points per turn, but I believe this is divided evenly between all partially and fully Depleted planets in the system. Ergo, using 1 Behemoth equipped with 1 module will restore 2 points per turn to 1 planet, or 1 each to 2 planets, or 0.5 each to 4 planets, et cetera. Equipping more modules increases the number of points restored each turn, and multiple Behemoths will increase the number of module slots available, but the division of points between planets cannot be directed or controlled; all planets with any Depletion points are included in the equation. Thus, using 3 Behemoths, each with 5 modules, will restore 30 points per turn, divided evenly between all planets with any Depletion points, whether partially or fully Depleted: 10 each to 3 planets, 15 each to 2, 30 to a single 1, etc.

Another important interaction I've noticed is that the UI will show partially Depleted planets respond immediately to changes in the formula (that is, the addition or subtraction of more modules and/or Behemoths carrying them), but won't show fully Depleted planets responding the same way, even though both planets are receiving restoration points. For example, on a system with 1 fully and 1 partially Depleted planet, moving a restoration Behemoth into the system or changing the number of restoration modules it has will update the system UI immediately to show how many turns remain before complete restoration for the partially Depleted planet, but it won't show any change at all for the fully Depleted planet, implying that it can't be restored. However! Once the turn is passed, that fully Depleted planet will have Depletion points removed, and will then show up as a partially Depleted planet that the UI updates immediately.

In the last game I played, trying to tidy up a corner of the galaxy that the Cravers had ruined, I had a system with 5 planets, 4 of which had Depletion points, 1 of these being fully Depleted. I was using Boosted Sowers to match the remaining Cravers on a one-to-one basis (rather than the standard 2-to-1) in order to offset their Depletion—I thought it was cruel to just exterminate them :P —and I had 1 restoration Behemoth with full modules in orbit, providing 10 points per turn. Each planet received 2.5 points per turn, and although the fully Depleted planet didn't move at first, (which confused me, since I couldn't figure out where those points were going,) it later surprised me by jumping up to partially Depleted once I had the Sower/Craver ratio fixed (i.e. the Cravers were overwhelming the Behemoth until the Sowers levelled them out and made the Behemoth "profitable"). When I parked a second Behemoth there with another 10 points from modules, it turned up the restoration to 5 per planet per turn (4 planets, remember, totals 20 points). Further Behemoths increased restoration at the same rate, and when the first planet was fully restored, the restoration points were divided 3 ways instead of 4. Eventually, the entire system was fully restored, and with the Super Sowers matching the Cravers for Depletion points, my Behemoths were free to move on to the next Depleted system. All those planets, irrespective of whether they were fully or partially Depleted, were eventually completely restored. I may be wrong in my interpretation of these observations, so if anyone has any more testimony or evidence on how this mechanic works, or if anyone would like to try it out for themselves, I'll be happy to read about it!

Like I said at the start, restoring planets this way is ridiculously expensive, because getting it done within any period of time that's reasonable for the game length requires a huge fleet of restoration Behemoths; I was running 6 and restoring systems in about 15 to 25 turns, depending on how many planets they had and how Depleted they were, and I won the game (Easy difficulty) before I could fully restore that corner of the galaxy. In a legitimate game—a high-difficulty or multiplayer game where you don't have the freedom to screw around and dump resources into hobby projects—those 6 Behemoths could have won it for me much, much earlier if I'd geared them for war and gone on a rampage, which likely means the game could've been won much sooner than it was, had I focused on winning instead of messing around with planet restoration. So, if you're playing tall and you don't need much space to be a powerhouse, then maybe you could afford to invest this much time and effort and capital into restoring Craver-Depleted planets; but, in actual practice, I just can't see how any strategy other than abandoning Depleted planets and/or systems could pay off without already having a lead so large as to make winning the game easier than restoring those planets in the first place...so, sadly, it does seem easier to just not play against the Cravers altogether. :( Sorry to be so long-winded! I hope this info is useful in the long run!