Personally I like the space harpy invaders much better then the human pirate raids for a few reasons. They don't clear an enemy defended system, and they are beatable with a little preparation. I do have a few issues with them though. In my opinion they get to their target world far too quickly. Perhaps a warning that they are swarming, and maybe drop their deep space speed down a bit? As it is, unless you get really lucky, there is no way to mount a last ditch defense. Also, if you destroy the group, it does not give the research point boost that roosting harpies do, which I see as a bit of a bug.

Chasm wrote:Also, if you destroy the group, it does not give the research point boost that roosting harpies do, which I see as a bit of a bug.

Yeah, I'm moving towards a more consistent 'autopsy' standard, so that you'll get research the first time you kill one of the various Arda Seed units, regardless of where it happens. It's not yet working with the harpy raiders though -- that behavior will probably change as part of the first post DLC patch (for now, I don't want to poke too much at the guts of the event code, but, it shouldn't be a hard change).

I just had my first Harpy attack.

I had just annexed a human refugee planet, and my ships were returning. The harpies simply appeared. I didn't notice anything approach. By the time my fleet arrived, my only human colony, which was perhaps five cycles old, lost three (of 3.7) population units and a factory. (Edit: factory and farm...)

Some warning would be nice.

Inbound detection time seems to be about 2 turns, compared to human pirates 5 or 6.