Why are the aliens attacking me?

[Hawkeye]

Ok, so I'm new to the forum, even though I have played some 100 hours already, only to re-start after reaching the late 20s, because that's the point the aliens start blowing up my earth-based stations all the time.

Now, in my latest game (only 3 factions with me being the Resistance and cinematic difficulty), it's 2028, I have two stations, one in Earth and one in Mars orbit, I have 3 bases on the Moon and 4 on Mars and have not a single ship, so I am _way_ below the point where this should make the aliens angry.
I have killed a couple of Servant operatives (seriously, Councilors?) and a total of 3 aliens (two Hydras and a Salamander - those kills were spread out over the last two years or so).

I have checked the save file and factionhate for the aliens is 27.9, which, as far as I'm aware, should _not_ be enough to trigger an alien attack.

So how comes, an alien ship just blew up the International Space Station?
BTW, I'm not aware of doing anything to trigger that in the first place, in fact, I have gone out of the way to _not_ provoke the aliens during the last half year, even haven't killed a single Servant operative, just a little harassment, taking their orgs and sabotaging their research.

Does the number of factions influence how soon the aliens will attack, like, less factions, sooner attacks?
Is there something off in general when playing with less factions?

I mean, I'm probably missing something, but I can't, for the life of me, think of anything.

[Meow67]

It's kinda rare that aliens just come and blow up your station in 2028 without being provoked. Yet you mentioned you killed some servant councilors. That's one of the reasons why aliens might target you for a bit. Servants and aliens are directly connected. Especially when they finish specific research. Sometimes you can even get a warning that aliens might target you, if you keep doing enemy actions against them or their puppets (servants) on earth. So not only killing their councilors counts. Not gonna lie, I don't remember exactly how that notification looked but I saw them a couple of times.

And blowing up two stations? That's nothing really, just a little slap over fingers. Be glad they did not bombed your base on Mars.

Yet eventually if you are not playing as the Servants, aliens will fight you in a few years anyway. Even on cinematic difficulty. In the end, they are here to invade earth…

About the question about playing with less factions, I found it a little unbalanced. Alien AI does not need to care about more factions at once, so when you make them a little angry, that's it. Retaliation is coming.

In its way it makes the game a little harder, but also more dynamic because human AI is able to do more things and unify countries far easier than in game with all the factions.

[Hawkeye]

Well, thing is, aren't the aliens supposed to cool off after they blow up a station?
Because it goes like this:
Aliens come in and blow up the ISS
I start a new station.
5 seconds later, the alien ship heads for it and blows it up.
I start a new station
5 seconds later, the alien ship heads for it and blows it up.
and this goes on and on and on.

Funnily enough, I _can_ build station at Luna or Mars, no problem, it's only the Earth-bound stations that are attacked the second they start construction.

Edit:
Does the amount of "power" I have play a role?
Because with only the Servants as another player on Earth, I control the entire EU + USA + Canada + Japan + Taiwan. So maybe being too strong too early is a factor too?

[Hawkeye]

Update:
So, since I couldn't keep a station alive at Earth, I build one in Lunar orbit and had it build a fleet of 5 Escorts and 3 Monitors (2 ES and 1 M with PD, the rest with Copperhead missiles) and moved it into Earth orbit in an attempt to guard a LEO station (you know, where I get those research boni) - and it seemed to work.
Early 2030, the base completes and the aliens don't do anything.
Great, I think, I can keep going.
Yeah, nope.
It's now June 2030 and the aliens shoved a dreadnought up my backside, laying waste to everything I had near Earth.

Sorry, but this is complete BS


Also, the space-combat UI...

So I have to order around every ship individually?
And to make matters worse, the "waypoint" system is fiddly as all hell.
Of course, this means my plan of having my missile-boats in a "wall" formation (yes, this is a Homeworld reference), all at the same distance to the target, so I can get a "time-on-target" salvo off, went up in smokes from the get-go.


Like seriously, give me kind of a formation builder, so I can set-up my fleet like this

M - PD - M
M - M - PD - M - M (M = Missile Boat, PD = PD boat)
M - PD - M

and then let me order that formation with a set facing to a point in space - done.


I mean, I _have_ watched Stealth and Perun play the game and sure, they somehow make this work, but for me this is just too tedious and, to be frank, stupid.


P.s.
factionhate in the save just before the aliens went on a rampage is 21 for the aliens.
Why the bloody hell are they even attacking me?

[Dartanis]

This is a bug, seemingly in any new game thats started after 0.3.23 (no idea what triggers it, or if it is is in all games or just some). I have a post here that describes this same problem, and incase you are curious what happens if you keep playing, its a guaranteed alien hate spiral. Even if you destroy that ship, they will send more that just flat out destroy anything in orbit. And if you destroy those, they start forming them into larger and larger fleets that do not interact with the Alien hate mechanic in any way.

I suggest sending a save file with this problem to the devs, as described in the "How to report bugs (A forum post is not the way)" announcement. Hopefully with enough save files and bug reports, the devs can fix it as the game is unplayable for those with this bug.

[Hawkeye]

Will do - and thanks for the heads up.