Emergency FTL Mechanics—Where do fleets respawn?

[LordQulex]

I'm usually a peaceful player. I prefer federations and protectorate integration over warfare. I enjoy bartering for favors and convincing empires to join me more than building a massive fleet while managing fleet cap and upkeep. Mostly because I get very frustrated when I force an enemy fleet to emergency ftl and they exit hyperspace in an occupied system, forcing me to split my fleet to chase them down and re-occupy chunks of territory.

This usually happens because in wars against federations or defense treaties, there comes a point where they can't beat my fleet, I've occupied all their territory, but they won't capitulate because their war weariness isn't at 100% so I just need to wait until it ticks up. (Usually occupying 2-3 allied empires has too many choke points to reasonably defend even with overwhelming numbers.) I've grown a bit wiser and always left them a single starbase for respawns behind some choke point, but I feel there has got to be a better way.

What are the respawn mechanics? My gut tells me that a fleet returning from emergency FTL has a priority list of places it wants to respawn. It's probably home base first, followed by nearest unoccupied starbase, then nearest unoccupied planet, then lastly... somewhere? If I were writing the logic I'd say the default should always be in the homeworld starbase, occupied or not. But these fleets seem to reappear at a random system when the opposing empire is at 100% occupation. Is there a logic behind respawns to make them predictable, or is the least common denominator a random system and always leaving one station unoccupied is the best strategy to compensate for emergency FTL?

Thanks!

 

[Quinzal]

I don't know exactly, but from what I could scrap up from the wiki:

The priority is:​

1. It's home starbase, provided it is non-hostile
2. The capital starbase, provided it is non-hostile
3. The nearest shipyard, provided it is non-hostile
4. The nearest starbase, provided it is non-hostile
5. In a system bordering one of the above, in the same order of priority
6. Somewhere random in your empire's space

The amount of time a ship is gone depends on how far it is from it's home starbase, though if it cannot reach the home starbase it will still take the same amount of time.​

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In my opinion, the best way to deal is to just knock down every shipyard you can find. AI fleets will automatically EFTL if half of their fleet is destroyed, which means, if they have no way of reinforcing, they're pretty much a non-issue. By the time you've killed all their shipyards they're already done for.

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