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[chicken]

Unfortunately I no longer have a savefile so I will just describe in detail.

To reproduce:
1) Attract Pather attention on your colony until you get a Pather cell
2) Wait until the Colony Crisis event hits 425 progress and roll the Luddic Path Satbomb Attack Colony Crisis.
3) Immediately reduce your technological use to reduce the Pather attention, in my case, by removing my AI cores, colony items, and shutting down my mining.
4) The Pather cell will "dissolve" on its own, without you needing to fight the Luddic Path.
You are now here:


What I expected to happen:
I expected this to cancel the impending Luddic Path Satbomb Attack Colony Crisis, just like paying the tithe would, or disrupting the Pather cell by attacking the star fortress.

What actually happened:
It seems the crisis is not scripted to recognize this as a possibility, so the crisis event continues like nothing had happened and you will indeed get satbombed my friend.
What's worse, since you technically no longer have an active Pather cell, you can no longer pay the tithe, you can no longer start the Scythe of Orion quest, and killing Pather ships does not affect the crisis progress (see how "hostile ships destroyed" is empty in the screenshot). I assume destroying the star fortress wouldn't work either, but I didn't try it.
But essentially, not only does peaceful dissolution of the Pather cell not stop the crisis, it makes it effectively impossible to stop by any other means.

[Alex]

Hi - thank you for the report! Moving this to suggestions because I'm not seeing anything here that's strictly speaking a bug. The crisis continuing if you remove AI cores/shut down industries/etc is very much intentional; it's "too late" for this at that point, and it being an option would just encourage "cheesing" the crisis by removing these things (sans industries, perhaps - but the other stuff is basically free to do) and putting them back right after the crisis aborts.

It's a good point re: the lack of cells limiting your other options as well, though that also ... does kind of makes sense, if looked at from a certain point of view. I'll mull that aspect of it over, though!

[Phenir]

It's kind of the same thing as removing your AI cores when a hegemony inspection is coming in older patches. They would still get mad because they "found evidence of ai core usage" and disrupt some industries. I imagine this still happens in the current patch alongside also not stopping the inspection.

[chicken]

Thanks for the quick response Alex! I get where you're coming from on the player "cheesing" and I concur that it's fine if this doesn't stop the crisis, as coming up with something that can effectively stop player cheese can be nigh impossible.
As for the lack of options once the cell is gone: Since we're in the suggestions forum now, I'll post some subjective feedback.
From my perspective as a new player, it felt very rail-road-ey. Since beating the fleet is effectively impossible until the lategame, from the moment that I dissolved the cell, I had zero choice anymore - the colony would get deleted. This is pretty bad in a sandbox game, and it really felt like a bug because it's hard to rationalize the fact that even attacking pather ships would no longer affect the event progress.
I think the main culprit here is the "one big fleet" design of this crisis. For other crisis and faux-crisis, the force of the fleets that attack you slowly escalates, which feels very fun and fair. For this crisis (and a couple other more), instead you get slapped by an immersion-destroying fleet that could solo the entire Hegemony core worlds. I'm really not a fan of this style, and the flipside of it (defeating the fleet one time deletes the crisis forever) just feels like a second downside. I would much rather see escalating Pather attacks that don't go away until you seek a very decisive conclusion. There's gotta be better ways to make the player take the crisis seriously and seek out indirect resolutions than spawning in fifteen capitals from year one.

[Alex]

Hmm. I think you could probably install some AI cores and get the cells back, if you really wanted to resolve it going by that route?

And, I appreciate your new-player-perspective feedback! I get what you're saying.

One thing is that - well, as you say it's a sandbox game, so the level of challenge this fleet presents is hard to make "correct" for every player. Overall, it's supposed to be a medium-level threat, certainly one that can be fought before the endgame. There are non-combat options for dealing with it, though, right, the way you approached it sort of foreclosed them (though, again, I think you could get the cells back). For comparison, a bunch of the other crises send much stronger fleets - though in those cases, the consequences for not stopping them are less severe. For the Pather crisis, the strength of the fleet is medium, but the consequences of failing to stop it are high, so it probably stands out more.

[Megas]

When I got the Pather crisis, it appeared to be near the size of a classic max-strength expedition of three or four fleets.  I generally waited until my colonies are size 5 before trying to fight fleets that big in the old expedition spam releases.

Aside from Pathers, from the looks of the pics, it looks like the OP had two colonies, size 4 and size 3, and he has attracted the League!  Looks like attracting the (infamous) League is too easy for what they do.  I am definitely keeping all colonies at size 3 until I have a near-endgame fleet that can crush human fleets from crises, at least to purge jRPG random encounter fest in my home system ASAP, and to get rewards for winning (usually) instead of diplomatically paying extortion money or something.

[chicken]

Indeed, my colonies were size 4 and 3. This was pretty early into the game. I was able to fight off 3 waves of escalating Hegemony fleets who wanted to satbomb me for not respecting their claim, that felt fun and fair and they seemed to scale perfectly for my pace - and made me feel glad to install an orbital station.

This "medium" Pather fleet had about 10 capitals plus a bunch of cruisers, which gave me the (perhaps uninformed) new player of impression of "wow, these guys could easily satbomb Chicomoztoc". As a general theme, colony crisis fleets are the only time I've seen more than 3-4 capitals in one place so far.

[Megas]

This "medium" Pather fleet had about 10 capitals plus a bunch of cruisers, which gave me the (perhaps uninformed) new player of impression of "wow, these guys could easily satbomb Chicomoztoc". As a general theme, colony crisis fleets are the only time I've seen more than 3-4 capitals in one place so far.

10 capitals in a single fleet, or 10 total from all three or four fleets?

In some earlier 0.9x releases, a single (human faction) fleet had about ten capitals and nearly twenty cruisers.  A little later and now current, a single fleet generally tops at about five capitals and a more balanced fleet composition.

Wait until you see the Grand Armada from the League.  They have more than a dozen fleets, some of them huge, flying around your system to enforce a blockade.  While you only need to kill two supply fleets to end it, they tend to hover near the rest of the others.  That crisis can be waited out, but if you do not want to wait that long (-60% accessibility can be crippling if your system is isolated enough in the fringe), it will be a huge fight.

For me, the big crises I need to deal with early are Pirates and League.  Pirate can be bribed (for better reward), but League, I cannot avoid them short of abandoning either the size 4 or size 3 (not gonna happen) and I need to be ready to kill-'em-all until they leave.  (Build a fleet that can kill the Grand Armada will kill every other crisis from human factions.)  Pathers and Hegemony, I do not use cores and never see them.  Diktat, I do not build fuel early; I build it later when I can kill them.  Tri-Tachyon, they only bother you if you produce too much, and is not hard to avoid them until a colony grows to size 5.  Church, build Mining or other anti-Ludd industry first instead of Farming if not ready to fight them early.

[chicken]

I saw the League armada, I also found that one disproportionately powerful to the point of being immersion-breaking (hey these guys could easily curbstomp the entire hegemony but are instead spending 100 supplies a day to blockade my size 4 colony) but I figured, hey, at least the downside is manageable. I still dislike the "one impossibly big fleet that you have to only beat once" model, though - I think I would enjoy both crisis a lot more if they were an escalating battle, like the Hegemony fleets.

[Megas]

I saw the League armada, I also found that one disproportionately powerful to the point of being immersion-breaking (hey these guys could easily curbstomp the entire hegemony but are instead spending 100 supplies a day to blockade my size 4 colony) but I figured, hey, at least the downside is manageable. I still dislike the "one impossibly big fleet that you have to only beat once" model, though - I think I would enjoy both crisis a lot more if they were an escalating battle, like the Hegemony fleets.

For me, I would not want escalating crises that repeat.  That is like old expedition spam (but worse since crises fleets are at least as big if not bigger), and that would encourage me to bomb all the major factions off the map as soon as possible to prevent it or stop it once and for all.  No income is worth unending babysitting.  That is the one thing I like most about crises - no more expedition spam.

[basileus]

I'll second what Megas has said.  While I understand why the idea of repeated and escalating crises seems more appealing, in practice it forces you to babysit your colonies too much, and depending where they are can make exploration and quests in significant parts of the sector unpalatable because it would leave your colonies exposed.  I tended to found colonies much later on back in those days, and only if I had a system that had at least 3 viable colony options (for stacking 2 high commands) and a nearby gate.

Stacking colonies in the same system for overlapping defenses is still a pretty solid plan.

[chicken]

I get what you guys mean, and maybe I haven't truly experienced it yet since I haven't played the previous versions of the game. I do agree that there should be a way to permanently conclude the crisis if you have the strength for it, so that you don't have to babysit your colony against weak attacks. But I think that ending the crisis the very first time you beat it (and making it impossible to fight at all until the mid-late game) is not a good way to implement that. If you have amassed a mighty fleet before you set up your first colony, then surely a little peaceful gunboat diplomacy should prevent weak attacks altogether.

[Megas]

I'll second what Megas has said.  While I understand why the idea of repeated and escalating crises seems more appealing, in practice it forces you to babysit your colonies too much, and depending where they are can make exploration and quests in significant parts of the sector unpalatable because it would leave your colonies exposed.  I tended to found colonies much later on back in those days, and only if I had a system that had at least 3 viable colony options (for stacking 2 high commands) and a nearby gate.

For me, it is the reverse.  I could dodge or avoid most expeditions (from major factions) until colonies reach size 5 (and early pirates could be repelled from ground defenses alone, back when it was still useful for the player) in those older releases.  Even if I got an expedition, it was relatively weak at first, and then ramped up (to about the size of current Pather/Diktat crisis fleet size at max strength).  Now in the crises releases, thanks to League, I need to have my killer near-endgame fleet ready much sooner, before my colonies grow to size 4.  Which means I need to start colonies later than I used to (or get into Spaceport removal and rebuild loop because of inability to block colony growth any other way).

[landryraccoon]

So just my two cents - I’ve actually never found any of the colony crises to be a big threat. When I started a new game after the crisis system was announced, I really prepped for it. I had several capitals in my fleet and enough money to go straight to star fortress on defenses.

Maybe I’m playing too conservatively? It took me about 2 in game years before I founded my first colony. None of the crises felt like a big threat. Just, like, kill them all, man - or go for a diplomatic solution, they all are avoidable.

[FooF]

So just my two cents - I’ve actually never found any of the colony crises to be a big threat. When I started a new game after the crisis system was announced, I really prepped for it. I had several capitals in my fleet and enough money to go straight to star fortress on defenses.

Maybe I’m playing too conservatively? It took me about 2 in game years before I founded my first colony. None of the crises felt like a big threat. Just, like, kill them all, man - or go for a diplomatic solution, they all are avoidable.

To add to this: it feels like the folks that complain the most about colony crises supercharge their colonies for maximum growth. AI Cores, domain colony items, free markets, hazard pay, etc. If you take a “max profit” mentality, you’ll attract unwanted attention faster than you can reasonably deal with it and that’s the point…

But as the poster above said, it could be the timing of the colonies. If you’ve already got a sizable fleet before getting colonies, the first few events aren’t bad at all. I think it’s just a combination of too early/too fast with colonies and not having a fleet sufficient to deal with semi-major fleets.