Can someone explain why Cylons cheat so much in campaign?

[Bahamut]

Theres nothing really to say here, I've played cylons in skirmish and im 100% positive they get sensor and subsystem power hacks in campaign to an absurd degree, their ships can zip around the field with ludicrious damage output and missile spams while still having absurd damage reduction and sensor range. Not to mention that cylons can spawn 2-4 fleets EVERY TURN and the only way to stop that is getting a RNG mission to stop it for just 3 turns. Even with my ships at +11 defense to raise dradis up to 7.5km detection they can still outrange me by several kilometers yet in skirmish Cylons dont even have close to that kind of sensor range. Its a rigged joke made to torture the player with the Devs "WE WISH WE WERE BORN CYLON" ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

The deadlock campaign is an utterly brutal ♥♥♥♥ing experience, ive fought fleets that started at 8.6k and had extra reinforcements that pushed the value up to 12k. Im at like 250+ battles and well over half of them i just auto resolve, even the basestar fleets because im so fed up with the same repetitive ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ battles of missile spam, absurdly powerful cylon gunships with more dps then battlestars, and endless stacks over and over again that can FTL anywhere in the known map in 1 turn, meanwhile I have to take 3-4 turns to move around while paying to cover the same distance.

I'm frankly about to uninstall the game, its a miserable grueling experience to play. As far as ive seen the devs are sucking cylon ♥♥♥♥♥ or wish they were born cylon cause they have so many advantages in campaign it just becomes a waste of time and effort to play the same repetitive garbage

[Bahamut]

I already know the game well, I've been playing it on the normal difficulty and know all the features of the game and how to play, its not even a case of learning curve. Its a case of cylons in the campaign flat out have cheats that aren't present when using them in skirmish, their absurd dradis range for instance. They don't get it in skirmish even when fully overclocking the system, but in campaign they can see you across the map

[Half Phased]

The cylons have ridiculous dradis ranges with their tech bay at full power, it’s just how cylon fleets work, since most of their firepower comes from missiles, they need the extreme dradis to be able to use it before the colonials reach gun range and shred them. It’s well known in the community that the lowly nemesis has a dradis range of 10+km, with the talon and Phobos not being that far behind.

As for everything else: cylon ships are exceptionally maneuverable at full navigation power, accurate with a fully operational fire control, and can tank well with power in engineering.

As for the rest of your gripes... yes, the game is horribly grueling at admiral difficulty. I personally do like the large battles with multiple basestars, I find them far more interesting to do battle with than the smaller fleets, but I find the strategic level on admiral difficulty to be too grueling to play, so I play most of the campaign at lieutenant or commander difficulty. Next beta I’m going to suggest detaching tactical difficulty from strategic difficulty, giving people the option to face the larger fleets of admiral difficulty without the shear number of fleets and low resupply of admiral.

But those fleets aren’t “cheats” it’s difficulty scaling. I’m pretty sick and tired of people crying that an AI cheats. If the developer gives the AI bonuses to keep up with a human, fair enough, programming an AI that can beat a human is hard. And on the strategic level, there’s not much more to do there than hamper the humans resupply and spawn more fleets to increase the difficulty, especially once the player has 12 fleets, one for each colony.

[Tachyon_100]

Hmm, maybe it has something to do with the veterancy system aswell, maybe elite nemesis get a boost on their already pretty damn good dradis range?

[TheRealDJ]

Here's what's really BS: The Cylon fleet strength automatically adjusts to your max fleet strength. If there was a systemic progression based on how many turns have passed, that'd make more sense, but for them to automatically make them as powerful as your most powerful means you actually want to keep your fleets weak. That just ruins the feeling of a real strategic war.

[Elidrin]

Meh a ranger with PCMs can shut down everything coming your way. Just fire PCMs on turn 1 and 3 to set up a field between you and them. What little gets through (if any) wont matter. Even better once you get into the scrum littering the battle field with PCMs will prevent future missile attacks.

Given how reliant cylons are on missiles this tactic seriously hampers them.

[Bahamut]

Cylon missile spam bothers the hell out of me, but revenants absurdly high dps, speed & armor profile combined with its cheap cost & cylon power management systems and you get a fleet of 4-5+ its horrible. Each one can put out monsterous dps, 4-5 of them can chew through a ship within a turn if its not on full defense and you dont trash them as quickly as possible. Once that many revenants close in to close range its a horrible brawl

[gmuir77]

I don't know if the latest updates rebalanced how the main campaign plays. You are correct that 4 to 5 araches or revs will put a hurting on your day. There's various tactics used to work with the big fleets late in the game. Read the guides, see what people have come up with. I used to be more of a torp spam guy and loved hitting the battlestars across the map blind-firing. I realized it's not really worth the effort.

If you manage your flak well, the battlestars spamming from the distance aren't a problem. They never flank you which is the real danger you'd face if going up against a human opponent. You can't put up flak on both sides.

What I find is you need to have flak for the missiles and some proper gunships to whack arachnes and revenants that close. Revenants in particular. If the enemy strings out, you can defeat them in detail by playing smart. That's when you turn tail, hit the boost, let them string out and then turn to engage.

Micromanage your fleet. For example, when you see which of your ships has become the designated target, switch it to full defense, put the armor drones on it, start turning to rotate the damage around the hull. Everyone else you can leave on full offense because the cylons don't care. Be sure to paint the target as well.

Vipers work well on intercept so don't neglect to put them on that duty when you're getting heavy missile spam.

I've never had luck with sweepers but others swear by them. If you figure it out, good for you.

[Gryphon_Space]

you should be having a much easier time considering on full posture with an admiral in campaign you can get iirc 7k plus gun range while the cylons are stuck at 6k (this matters a lot) and what phased said about the nemesis with 10k dradis range, but he did get the phobos wrong, for as cylons go it's got average dradis st around 6.4k iirc. Nezt best dradis options are as so, cerastes with 9k, talon and gorgon with 8.7k, argos with 8.4k and cratus with 7.5k


now the AI does cheat just not in the way you think it does. since by default max point cap is 8k but the AI doesn't follow the same rules as you in the campaign still having some limits, biggest example I can think og is the AI looking at your moves which was implemented to avoid ramming but it has some other effects for difficulty.